
Internet access is now a basic human right (2016) - Tomte
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/aug/04/internet-access-human-right-2-tech-podcast
======
bischofs
I don't think internet access is a human right, a simple test is if the
internet goes down are my rights being violated?

Can you really put this in the same category as the right to pursue happiness
or health? or the right to defend yourself?

Classifying everything as a right is super fun and feels important but it
actually takes away from the _actual_ human rights.

Health care is another example - do you have the right to an EKG machine? or a
drug that was just invented using thousands of man hours of pharma research?
Should those people work for free so that a poor persons rights are not
violated?

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Food or shelter are not produced for free either, and they are still widely
accepted human rights. Of course it's clear that one cannot just go and label
arbitrarily expensive things as human rights, but of course guaranteeing human
rights can take a nontrivial amount of work.

This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other
administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for
that work.

~~~
lolsal
I think the difference is that you have a right to procure food and a right to
create your own shelter. You don't have a right that requires someone to give
you food or give you shelter.

~~~
scarmig
You don't have a right as an individual to force another individual to give
you material goods.

You do have a right to food, shelter, and physical security, and if you don't
have those, then yes, your rights are being violated and the government is
failing in it's responsibilities.

~~~
lolsal
I guess we disagree on fundamental principals. Governments require humans to
exist. Humans do not require governments to exist. Rights exist for humans
regardless of whether or not they are being governed (or in spite of being
governed!).

~~~
vilmosi
>>> Rights exist for humans regardless of whether or not they are being
governed

I don't know, I mean rights as we know it didn't exist until relatively
recently when they were recognised and enforced by governments.

I don't see how "free speech" can exist without something protecting that
right. Yes, I know, technically the person shutting you up is technically
violating your right. But without an objective arbiter such as society, they
were just exercising their right to shut you up, which, in their view, is
their god given right, who's to say.

------
a_diplomat
I negotiated this resolution on behalf of a UN government. The title is very
misleading. The resolution states that human rights are applicable on the
internet, not that access to the internet is a human right.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
Cool

When are you going to charge Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit for banning speech
that they don't like on the Internet?

Is Free Speech a human right according to UN?

Is criticism of religion, or ideology, included in that right?

~~~
traverseda
I presumed this wouldn't apply, but article 19 does look interesting.

"""

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.

"""

There may actually be a case for the US needing to change their laws to extend
free-speech protections to things that happen on the internet. But that's a
whole separate issue. Maybe something the EFF would be interested in?

~~~
msla
The Constitution already applies to what happens on the Internet.

That Article would be more relevant to countries with hate speech laws or
blasphemy laws.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
What about private corporation that provide platforms for modern day public
discourse enforcing their own blasphemy laws?

~~~
msla
What about them? The US Constitution only binds on the Federal government and,
through the process of incorporation, state (and, therefore, county and local)
governments. Private entities can do what they want.

In a more normative sense (that is, describing what _should_ be as opposed to
simply what _is_ ), private entities _should_ be able to enforce their own
rules, there _shouldn 't_ be any limits to how many private entities there
are, and it _should_ be simple to move from one private entity to another.

In fact, I'd support data portability laws, simply based on the concept that
data is an objectively valuable property and should be owned by the people it
was generated from.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
>Private entities can do what they want.

The baker should be able to deny baking a cake to gay couple?

A pharmacist should be able to deny knowing options about birth control based
on religious rights?

A hospital should be able to deny removal of life sustaining device when I
don't want it anymore?

>Private entities can do what they want.

Is there a difference between a private entity and a public corporation?

If I run my own plumbing company, I can hire my son without putting up an ad
in the paper. Should a Google executive be allowed to hire her husband without
putting up an ad?

We hold public companies at a higher standard that private individuals,
correctly so.

What if Mead stopped you from using their notebook to write down a thought
that they don't agree with?

~~~
msla
> The baker should be able to deny baking a cake to gay couple?

Protected class.

> A pharmacist should be able to deny knowing options about birth control
> based on religious rights?

> A hospital should be able to deny removal of life sustaining device when I
> don't want it anymore?

You want to get into the special laws and regulations the medical field
operates under? Really? _Really?_ Because I can guarantee you don't. I can
guarantee you are not qualified to do that, and do not have the patience to
even start.

Leave it alone. It is its own world and always has been.

> What if Mead stopped you from using their notebook to write down a thought
> that they don't agree with?

It's more useful to have competition than regulation, because regulation can
be gamed. Regulation is required when competition is not possible, does not
happen, or when the potential for harm is so high that we cannot simply trust
to competition, as in the medical field.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
>Regulation is required when competition is not possible, does not happen, or
when the potential for harm is so high that we cannot simply trust to
competition, as in the medical field.

I contend that social media platforms of YouTube/Twitter/Facebook are at that
level now. Competition is not possible and harm has clearly been done.

~~~
msla
> I contend that social media platforms of YouTube/Twitter/Facebook are at
> that level now. Competition is not possible and harm has clearly been done.

I agree with you, and I think the regulation we need includes data portability
regulation: Make it a legal requirement for companies to allow you to get all
of your data (which those companies primarily exist to monetize anyway) out of
their web services complete, in a simple fashion, in a way which allows you to
put it into your own system or upload it into a competitor's system.

Other laws might be required as well, but data portability would be a good
start.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
How about audience portability?

Shouldn't I be allowed to give a forwarding address so that my audience that I
developed, can reach me on the new platform that I go to?

I don't think any youtube creator worth her salt doesn't keep backup of the
videos. The problem with google kicking you out is that you lose your
audience. Severing the connection between you and your audience is the biggest
issue here, not loss of some files.

Google should be forced to honor forwarding URL (e.g. to vimeo) for accounts
that it suspends.

------
bkeroack
If every material thing that the developed world has is a "basic human right",
then effectively nothing is a basic human right. Furthermore it conflates
material comfort with the inherent inalienable rights that human beings are
born with, which I think is quite dangerous.

~~~
AmIFirstToThink
Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. It's not all lost, we still have
a chance.

Edit: I was serious. I really liked what you said, especially: "Human rights
aren't "provided" to you. You are born with them and they can never be taken
away, only violated by thugs and tyrants."

~~~
bkeroack
I upvoted. :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence)

------
cmurf
Why is it any different than a phone line?

 _To ensure that all Americans can afford at least a minimal level of basic
telephone service, the FCC will not allow phone companies to charge more than
$6.50 for a single line._ [https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-
telephone](https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-telephone)

The Subscriber Line Charge and Universal Service Fund and Connect America
Fund, and various other subsidies going back to the early 1900's were
instituted to deal with all kinds of dissatisfaction of unregulated market
outcomes. If people liked what the market arrived at, we wouldn't have such a
complex pile of subsidies: subsidies for rural areas, subsidies for those in
poverty, subsidies for hospitals and doctors, subsidies for libraries.

Today's internet is effectively becoming a superset of the telephone, and it
was massively subsidized especially for rural areas. Whatever the opposite of
economies of scale is, that's what telephone service looked like in rural
areas if only the free market were to apply. Same for roads in rural areas for
that matter.

Anyway, it might be fair to consider internet access a "basic human right" as
hyperbole. It's not itself food, clothing, or shelter. But it's a means of
obtaining and maintaining them. Perhaps it's a civil right to have affordable
and reasonably performing internet service? It's certainly at least a civil
matter, even if it's not a basic human one.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
Making internet access a human right doesn't necessarily mean that someone has
to pay for every home to have a computer and a connection.

You can give free internet access to everyone by e.g. setting up computers
with access in public libraries. That can be done in practically any society,
except those so impoverished that they already fail to guarantee other human
rights in the first place. So I don't think the idea of making Internet access
a human right is as far-fetched as some comments here are making it sound.

------
sol_remmy
When does the UN get off its high horse? It requires governments to meet this
new expensive human right but does it provide funding - of course not!

If the United Nations decides [x] is a human right, than what are the
consequences to civil servants for not providing that human right? Are they
labeled _human rights abusers_?

Is a judge a _human right abuser_ if he takes away internet access from a sex
offender?

~~~
clarry
> Is a judge a human right abuser if he takes away internet access from a sex
> offender?

Yes.

------
jnardiello
Right of using facebook, Right of selling your data to Silicon Valley VCs.
Market is getting saturated, emerging markets are new targets.

------
dukoid
BTW: Why not limit free trade to countries that respect human rights (in
addition to having a market economy)?

------
ithilglin909
Well, I guess I shouldn’t have to pay for it then.

Seriously, can we start being a little more sparing in the use of the word
“right”? What was once a strong word is quickly becoming meaningless political
jargon.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
"Freedom of the press" doesn't mean you don't have to pay for printing presses

~~~
ithilglin909
That's equivocation. Not the same meaning of the word "press".

~~~
dragonwriter
It actually is; freedom of the press is the exact same thing as freedom of
speech applied to printed matter (it is called out distinctly because
historical unwelcome written material, especially when mass distributed as the
printing press enabled, was frequently considered more problematic by
government and so printing was often tightly regulated even where speech, per
se, was less so.)

It is not, despite a fairly popular misconception encouraged by institutional
media, a concept of special rights for a particular industry or class of
occupations.

~~~
ithilglin909
I agree that the idea of the "freedom the of the press" is derived from the
right to free speech. But "press" as in a printing press is a machine, while
"press" as in "freedom of the press" refers to people who work for news media
or news media collectively. Those are not the same thing, regardless of what
wu-ikkyu thinks.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
The printing press was the only form of news media in existence in 1789, hence
why it was more commonly called "the press" back then, rather than "the media"
as it is today.

It was only later in the 1900's that the definition of "the press" was
extended by the courts to cover new media like the radio

[https://www.livescience.com/21312-freedom-of-the-
press.html](https://www.livescience.com/21312-freedom-of-the-press.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> The printing press was the only form of news media

No, it wasn't. Criers existed.

More to the point, though, presses were and are used by more than the news
media, and freedom of the press applies to those wishing to use the press
whether or not it was in the context of news media.

The news media wasn't the focus of the original freedom, nor is it the correct
generalization to new technology (which would be more “freedom to use
mechanisms to reproduce and distribute expressions”.)

------
omarforgotpwd
Internet access is not a right. The internet needs to be maintained and paid
for. It certainly would be nice and likely beneficial if someone paid for
internet access for those who couldn’t afford it, but that doesn’t make it a
“basic human right”

