Whacky Weekend: Is Internet Access a Human Right?

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Vint Cerf says no: http://j.mp/wwL9Ip

But I wonder to what degree that's dependent on how much our governments make
Internet access the most practical/only practical way to interact with them.

Understand: I'm not saying that FiOS should be a human right. But as a
society, America's recognized for decades that you gotta have a telephone,
and subsidized local/lifeline service to that extent; that sort of subsidy
applies to cellular phones now as well.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
-- jr 'yes, I know I'm early...' a

2

Vint Cerf says no: http://j.mp/wwL9Ip

With all due respect to Vint, I think that it isn't now, but it will be.

Regards
Marshall

3

In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 10:22:52AM -0500, Jay Ashworth wrote:

Understand: I'm not saying that FiOS should be a human right. But as a
society, America's recognized for decades that you gotta have a telephone,
and subsidized local/lifeline service to that extent; that sort of subsidy
applies to cellular phones now as well.

There's a pretty big gap between providing subsidized service because
it's good for people/society/the government/business/whatever and
a "human right". The government subsidizes lots of things, roads,
electric service, planting of wheat that doesn't make any of them
human rights.

A few years back I read the Wikipedia page on Human Rights, and it
made me realize the topic is far deeper than I had initially thought.
There really are a lot of nuances to the topic.

Broadband, to me, is not a human right. It is something that makes our
society more efficient, and improves the quality of life for virtually
every citizen, so I do think the government has a role and interest in
seeing widespread, if not universal broadband deployment. Failure to
provide broadband to someone is not a human rights violation though,
and the idea that it is probably is offensive to those who have
experienced real human rights violations.

4

I agree with Vint here. Basic human rights are access to food, clothing
and shelter. I think we are still struggling in the world with that. With
your logic one would expect the radio and TV to be a basic human right but
they are not, they are and will remain powerful medium which be enablers
of something else and the Internet would fit there.

Zaid

5

There is a subtlety here too - when we grant a monopoly (e.g. to operate a
physical loop or in licensing spectrum) in return we often place a
"universal service obligation" on the operator in order they don't abuse
their monoply by not providing service to "less profitable" customers.

This isn't the same as a "right" to a phone.

Aled

6

Well, I dunno... as I think was obvious from my other comments: TV and Radio
are *broadcast* media; telephones and the internet are not; they're *two-way*
communications media... and they're the communications media which have been
chosen by the organs of government we've constituted to run things for us.

You hit the important word, though, in your reply: "*access to* food, clothing,
and shelter"... not the things themselves.

The question here is "is *access to* the Internet a human right, something
which the government ought to recognize and protect"? I sort of think it is,
myself... and I think that Vint is missing the point: *all* of the things
we generally view as human rights are enablers to other things, and we
generally dub them *as those things*, by synecdoche... at least in my
experience.

If I'm not mistaken, Vint's on this list; perhaps he'll chime in. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-- jra

7

Didn't *say* broadband. Didn't even say "Internet service". Said "Internet
*access*", in the non-techspeak meaning of those words.

Cheers,
-- jra

8

From: "Zaid Ali" <zaid@zaidali.com>

>Vint Cerf says no: http://j.mp/wwL9Ip
>
>But I wonder to what degree that's dependent on how much our governments
>make Internet access the most practical/only practical way to interact
>with them.
>
>Understand: I'm not saying that FiOS should be a human right. But as a
>society, America's recognized for decades that you gotta have a telephone,
>and subsidized local/lifeline service to that extent; that sort of subsidy
>applies to cellular phones now as well.

I agree with Vint here. Basic human rights are access to food, clothing
and shelter. I think we are still struggling in the world with that. With
your logic one would expect the radio and TV to be a basic human right but
they are not, they are and will remain powerful medium which be enablers
of something else and the Internet would fit there.

Well, I dunno... as I think was obvious from my other comments: TV and Radio
are *broadcast* media; telephones and the internet are not; they're *two-way*
communications media... and they're the communications media which have been
chosen by the organs of government we've constituted to run things for us.

You hit the important word, though, in your reply: "*access to* food, clothing,
and shelter"... not the things themselves.

The question here is "is *access to* the Internet a human right, something
which the government ought to recognize and protect"? I sort of think it is,
myself... and I think that Vint is missing the point: *all* of the things
we generally view as human rights are enablers to other things, and we
generally dub them *as those things*, by synecdoche... at least in my
experience.

If I'm not mistaken, Vint's on this list; perhaps he'll chime in. :slight_smile:

Here is a way to think about it - is denial of X a violation of human
rights ? If so, access to X should be viewed as a human right.

Denial of food, for example, is certainly a violation of human rights.
That is not the same as saying that everyone always will be able to
afford to eat anything they want,
or in dire circumstances even all they need, but to deny food is
certainly to violate human rights.

I think that if we had heard that (say) Libya's Khaddafi had denied
(say) the people of Benghazi all access
to telephony, that that would be regarded as a violation of human
rights. (Actually, he did and it was).
People would, for example, start dying because no one could call an
ambulance in an emergency. It would
set the stage for further human rights violations, because no one
could alert the world to what was happening. Etc. In 1880, that
would not have been true, but today it is.

Is the Internet at that level ? IMO, no, but it will be soon. That is
not the same to say that everyone will get 100 Gbps for free,
any more than everyone gets to eat at La Tour d'Argent in Paris.

Regards
Marshall

9

In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 11:09:59AM -0500, Jay Ashworth wrote:

> Broadband, to me, is not a human right. It is something that makes our
> society more efficient, and improves the quality of life for virtually
> every citizen, so I do think the government has a role and interest in
> seeing widespread, if not universal broadband deployment. Failure to
> provide broadband to someone is not a human rights violation though,
> and the idea that it is probably is offensive to those who have
> experienced real human rights violations.

Didn't *say* broadband. Didn't even say "Internet service". Said "Internet
*access*", in the non-techspeak meaning of those words.

For the purposes of my e-mail and this point in time, they are all
synonymous.

That is, if "interenet access" is a right, providing someone a
9600bps dial up does not, in my mind, qualify. That might qualify
for e-mail access, but you can not use a reasonable fraction of the
Internet at that access speed. Similarly, denying someone internet
service denies them internet access. The only difference between your
terms and mine, is that mine are fixed to this point in time while
yours is a general concept that may move in the future. One day 50Mbps
broadband may not qualify anymore as "internet access" due to where the
interernet ends up.

But let's take a specific (famous) example. Kevin Mitnick. From
his wikipedia page:

  "During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was
  initially forbidden to use any communications technology other than a
  landline telephone."

If Internet access (to use your term) had been a human right than
his human rights were violated by the government when they banned
him from using any communications technology. Do we really want to
suggest that banning him from using the computer is the same level of
violation as enslaving him, torturing him, or even killing him?

10

If I wrote a blog article that criticized the government and it was
shutdown along with my Internet access I wouldn't say that my right to the
Internet was violated. I would say that my right to free speech was
violated. Regardless of one way or two way communication it is
communication.

Zaid

11

In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 11:09:59AM -0500, Jay Ashworth wrote:

Didn't *say* broadband. Didn't even say "Internet service". Said "Internet
*access*", in the non-techspeak meaning of those words.

For the purposes of my e-mail and this point in time, they are all
synonymous.

That is, if "interenet access" is a right, providing someone a
9600bps dial up does not, in my mind, qualify. That might qualify
for e-mail access, but you can not use a reasonable fraction of the
Internet at that access speed. Similarly, denying someone internet
service denies them internet access. The only difference between your
terms and mine, is that mine are fixed to this point in time while
yours is a general concept that may move in the future. One day 50Mbps
broadband may not qualify anymore as "internet access" due to where the
interernet ends up.

I think you're still thinking of service, as opposed to access. Public terminals, say at libraries, are also access. Free public wifi is also access.

But let's take a specific (famous) example. Kevin Mitnick. From
his wikipedia page:

   "During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was
   initially forbidden to use any communications technology other than a
   landline telephone."

If Internet access (to use your term) had been a human right than
his human rights were violated by the government when they banned
him from using any communications technology. Do we really want to
suggest that banning him from using the computer is the same level of
violation as enslaving him, torturing him, or even killing him?

Clearly not, at least at this point in history. Internet access is more like access to transportation; the law implicitly requires you to have it (in the form of being able to compel a person to appear at a given place and time), but not only fails to mandate its availability, but includes provisions for explicitly denying access to it in some cases.

Internet access becomes a human right only when your other, more basic human rights depend on it. If a person without internet access cannot obtain food, shelter, or basic transportation, then it is a human right.

As an aside, your example is flawed, because judicial punishment does involve a loss, or at least a curtailment, of what many people consider to be basic rights.

-Dave

12

Convicted felons surrender a number of rights: freedom (jail terms), the
right to vote, etc. And nobody seems to consider that concept a "violation"
(though it *is* of course up for debate exactly what rights it's OK to remove
from a felon, and for how long).

13

There are those who would say "Free Internet access is available at the
Public Library and the Community Center" counts as "internet access".

What say the peanut gallery?

14

It's an interesting question.

Most think of the Internet in the context of entertainment and productivity.

I would ask that those who do remove themselves from the US (or any
other prosperous nation) and think about Internet access in nations
that are oppressed or depressed.

1. The Internet allows people to communicate (important in
environments where the people are victims of oppression).

2. The Internet allows people to learn (if education is a human right,
it's not a giant leap to say the Internet is how you deliver it).

North Korea, at least, would be a very different nation with universal
Internet access. I think a lot of smaller nations as well. There has
never been a greater exporter for American ideals of freedom and
democracy than the Internet. On the whole I think it has become
something people shouldn't be denied access to.

Is "boradband" a human right? I don't know the answer to that. But
some level of access to the Internet (even if it's slow) is something
that would make the world a better place if everyone had access.

As we think about freedom and how our laws affect the Internet (SOPA,
PROTECT IP, etc) this is something we should also keep in mind.

15

In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 11:48:06AM -0500, Dave Israel wrote:

As an aside, your example is flawed, because judicial punishment does
involve a loss, or at least a curtailment, of what many people consider
to be basic rights.

Convicted felons surrender a number of rights: freedom (jail terms), the
right to vote, etc. And nobody seems to consider that concept a "violation"
(though it *is* of course up for debate exactly what rights it's OK to remove
from a felon, and for how long).

You both make the same, very interesting point. I want to point
folks back to the Wikipedia page:

Look at some the substantive rights:

  - Right to life.
  - Freeom from torture.
  - Freedom from slavery.
  - Right to a fair trial.
  - Freedom of speach.
  - Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

For the most part we don't let judical punishment infringe on those
rights. (Yes, there are exceptions, and yes, it depends a lot on
the location in question. For instance the death peanlty infringes
on the first substantive right.)

However, for an ordinary criminal (Kevin Mitnick, in my example)
we generally require the courts to uphold all of the substantive
rights in most civilized societies.

_Human_ rights is a very specific subset of a continium of rights.
Note that the "right to vote" is not in the substantive list above,
and is taken away by judical process in many societies. Not all rights
are human rights.

Should you have a right to internet access, just like a right to vote?
Perhaps. Are either one the specific class of _human rights_, no.

16

I think there's a fundamental difference between human and civil rights.

Human rights come from our humanity, i.e. us being human. As humans,
we can walk, talk, produce things, own property, etc.

Assuming that isn't true, the next logical question is where do you
draw the line?
Vehicles are beneficial to society, can they be a human right? If you
keep bringing these type of questions up and substitute any good in
place of vehicles, you can see how absurd it is. There's no
consistency.

I think the idea that food, shelter etc. are human rights is absurd.
Doesn't that imply that someone must provide those things for me? What
if they don't want to? Does that mean they are forced to? Which would
be a violation of their human rights.

Civil rights are rights that are provided by societal institutions
e.g. governments

This makes the most sense to me anyway. I probably need to go read
some John Locke.

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/difference-between-human-and-civil-rights/

17

There are those who think that it's a government's responsibility to make
sure that people don't die from starvation or lack of access to medical care.
Then there are those who think it's OK to let people die in the gutter.

18

Human rights are things that no government or person should have the
right to *take away* from someone. For example, a government need not
provide food to all people who need it necessarily, but they must not
prevent people from gaining access to food if they want it.

I would argue that the better societies have systems in place for
providing access to things that are human rights via the government when
no one else is able to step up.

19

No, it doesn't mean that someone must provide it for you. It means that
"access" must not be denied. Take for example the homeless situation in
San Francisco, if the city did not provide shelter for the homeless there
would be an outcry our human right violation. If you walk around San
Francisco you still see people sleeping in the streets and this is because
they choose to but they do have the right to go to a shelter so the city
of San Francisco is doing the right thing for basic human right.

In India my observation is that people may be really poor but they do not
go hungry or denied shelter even though they choose to make it out of a
cardboard box. The government makes sure that the lands are protected
which is why the slumps are not bulldozed by a developer. This is a good
example of human right. Electricity, communication mediums are all things
that people get together to bring either as an individual self or a
community.

Zaid

20

> I think the idea that food, shelter etc. are human rights is absurd.
> Doesn't that imply that someone must provide those things for me?
What
> if they don't want to? Does that mean they are forced to? Which would
> be a violation of their human rights.

There are those who think that it's a government's responsibility to
make sure that people don't die from starvation or lack of access to
medical care.
Then there are those who think it's OK to let people die in the gutter.

And as with most things - the 'truth' is probably somewhere between the extremes.

Internet access, as a vehicle for free speech, is at least an important civil right. I wouldn't immediately discard the notion that, as a subset of free speech, it is a human right. Internet access, by way of cell phones, has increasingly enabled repressed peoples to expose their suffering to the outside world. One doesn't have to look any further than the protests in Iran after the reelection of Ahmadinejad to see that. When the reporters and cameras have been exiled, and all that remains is the general public armed with their cellphones against the military police armed with rifles, freedom of speech and internet access become the very same thing.

Certainly, to an oppressive dictator, internet access and free speech are the very same right. In a modern world, to curtail one is to curtail the other.

Nathan