That is a fairly bad take tbh.
I mentioned this in my previous comment about this treaty, and the primary driver is the fact that most countries (especially China, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, India) are NOT parties of the Budapest Convention because of the Censorship or Surveillance portions.
Now that offensive security capabilities have proliferated, some amount of norms are required (which is what Article 12, 13 and 17 touch on), but the countries listed above will not budge on their censorship or surveillance stance.
This treaty is itself is a result of the Track 1.5 Dialogues around cyberwarfare happening between the 5 Eyes and China [1][2] after tensions became dangerously bad in the early 2020s.
If letting China continue their Great Firewall means we can formalize the rules of engagement for gray-zone operations using a third party (Appin/India, LockBit/Russia, ChamelGang/China or NK), so be it.
The UN treaty is superseded by American jurisdiction anyhow.
> future of a free internet
The internet was never truly free. Access was always arbitrated by telcos (and a major reason why the tech industry has been a major donor to the EFF) who themselves are strongly regulated by governments.
The difference is, the internet isn't only a Western project anymore, and consensus will need to be formed with other nations, unless we want to end up forming regionalized "internets"
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110#41211961
[1] - https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-departments/intern...
[2] - https://www.idcpc.org.cn/english2023/bzhd/202406/t20240618_1...