

If you can read this you are very lucky - trikkia
http://www.ahumanright.org/

======
ynniv
Tries to be anonymous, but Google knows better. Looks like this is mostly a
Deutsche Telekom AG project. _Someone_ has to make money providing this
"right".

 _Currently, ahumanright.org is designing a pilot program for a developing
country to roll out 10,000 end-user devices and ground stations to test the
feasibility of such an idea using pre-existing satellite infrastructure. On
their board, the organization has had people like the late Senator Gaylord
Nelson, principal founder of Earth Day International; Lon Levin, founder of XM
Satellite Radio; and Simon P. Warden, Director of the NASA Ames Research
Center. So far, ahumanright.org has secured funding from Deutsche Telekom
(T-Mobile) and are looking for volunteers._

[ [https://www.stanford.edu/group/sdg/cgi-
bin/dev/liber/?q=node...](https://www.stanford.edu/group/sdg/cgi-
bin/dev/liber/?q=node/437) ]

 _Palomar5’s main sponsor has been Deutsche Telekom AG, one of the world’s
leading telecommunication companies._

[ <http://www.gaffta.org/tag/palomar5/> ]

EDIT: As if to prove my point:

 _As the CTO of Deutsche Telekom Thomas Curran advised us: “You’re
evangelizing for access, expanding it. That can only help the industry.”_

[ <http://www.blog.ahumanright.org/2010/10/buy-that-satellite/> ]

------
wccrawford
Not lucky so much as able to Select All and then stand about 4' back from the
screen.

What a horrible design.

~~~
Lagged2Death
You're not supposed to be able to read the majority of the text. That's the
point, analogous to the majority of the population which doesn't have access
to broadband. It's supposed to feel frustrating and exclusionary.

~~~
nborgo
As nice as the concept sounds, they probably should have pointed it out. It's
too subtle, seeing as most of us missed it. Even something like "You think
this is hard to read? Imagine being..." would make it work better.

Making your entire message a pain to read seems like a bad idea, either way.

I sat there expecting a background image to load but ended up closing the tab,
assuming the page was broken.

------
VMG
I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be
provided by somebody else.

~~~
gnaritas
> I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be
> provided by somebody else.

So you don't believe in property rights; the right to an attorney; the right
to a trial by jury; the right of a speedy trial; protection from unreasonable
search and seizure; the right to confront your accuser? All of these things
require someone else to do something they might not be paid to do or would be
paid by the government to do through tax revenue.

~~~
ynniv
Everything that you just mentioned is a limitation on what a person can do to
another person. They are fulfilled by people doing _less_ , not _more_ ,
except for the right to an attorney. Free attorneys are only provided in
criminal cases (which are brought by the state at great expense), and so you
could say that this right is also merely a limit on the state's ability to
punish individuals.

Usage of the term "right" as a benefit and not a limitation comes generally
from humanitarian groups. For instance, there is no "right to clean water". If
you choose to live in the middle of a desert, you can't expect someone else to
bring you water.

The "right to use the Internet" is absurd. It implies the right to a free,
usable computer, and free, well functioning communication systems, with free
electricity. If you live on an island hundreds of miles off the coast, do you
still have this "right"? Who will you expect to provide these for you? This
makes no sense.

~~~
gnaritas
> Everything that you just mentioned is a limitation on what a person can do
> to another person. They are fulfilled by people doing less, not more

Simply not true.

Property rights require someone to enforce them; police don't work for free.

Jury's require jurors who very often don't want to be there.

Speedy trials require judges and jurors to work efficiently, and again, not
free.

Protection from unreasonable search and seizure requires someone to enforce
it.

The right to confront your accuser requires the accuser to testify.

> The "right to use the Internet" is absurd.

I never implied otherwise. I was objecting to your conclusion that rights
shouldn't require other people when the facts are, many of your existing
rights do.

~~~
ynniv
_Property rights require someone to enforce them;_

No, property rights and enforcement of property rights are separate things.

 _Jury's require jurors who very often don't want to be there. Speedy trials
require judges and jurors to work efficiently, and again, not free. Protection
from unreasonable search and seizure requires someone to enforce it. The right
to confront your accuser requires the accuser to testify._

The inability to confront your accuser, produce jurors and promptly render a
verdict results in the inability to prosecute, not the inability to have your
trial heard by jury.

 _Protection from unreasonable search and seizure requires someone to enforce
it._

This someone is the judicial system, which is (likely) the same system
conducting the searches. It is again a "safe by default" system.

 _I was objecting to your conclusion that rights shouldn't require other
people when the facts are, many of your existing rights do._

It is true that you never implied that the right to the Internet was absurd.
That was a comment on the discussion at large. However your arguments that
rights require the actions of others is unconvincing. My argument is that
rights are a limit on the actions of others, and paid for by the agressor.
When they are paid for by idle bystanders (likely through taxation), they are
a form of socialist benefits and not "rights".

~~~
gnaritas
> However your arguments that rights require the actions of others is
> unconvincing.

As are your rebuttals.

~~~
ynniv
I'm glad that you found a friend to upvote you, but that is a ridiculous
retort. If you are going to spend the time typing a reply, you should do us
the courtesy of making it worth the time everyone else spends reading it.

I wonder if there is notion of wall-time in the HN codebase, with which we
could only allow a reply that took at least a minute to compose.

~~~
gnaritas
Whatever, get over yourself. I'm not here to please you.

------
kevinburke
Agreed about the lucky part, but I generally disagree with saying "X is a
human right." Because different resources are always competing with each other
at the margin so if you put in a huge campaign for Internet access, etc,
you're probably crowding out other valuable infrastructure, like plumbing or
electricity.

Furthermore you can take things too far. Water is so cheap in the US because
"it's a human right" but this doesn't mean that it's above the laws of supply
and demand, which in Southern California anyway means that people still take
long showers during droughts, because the water's not priced at market level.
See more here
[http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=davi...](http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=david+and+zetland&aname=David+Zetland)

On another note, just putting in Ethernet lines and computers won't have magic
side effects. I was in India last spring, and when I went out to the field
most places generally had a computer. However it was almost always under-
utilized; for example in one place the computer had been off for 2 months
because the mouse was broken, and another place had Photoshop and was using it
only to resize images because they didn't know how to use it.

------
sbt
I would like to believe these guys but the figures seem a little low and I
couldn't find a citation. What does 'access' mean here? How do they define
'broadband'?

------
CPops
Their campaign to try to equate internet access with a human right is
unfortunate.

It takes whats a very sensible overall idea that almost everybody agrees with
(increasing the unhindered flow of information) and immediately makes it sound
bad or controversial to a large and influential part of the technical
community.

------
xd
Wait, wait. It's "A FREE COMMUNICATION NETWORK AVAILABLE ANYWHERE IN THE
WORLD" yet only accessible to "95%" of the world's population? .. either "95%"
have the technology to access it, or 5% live in outer space .. or did I miss
something.

~~~
jodrellblank
Or 5% live on Earth, have the access available, but don't have the cognitive
ability to use it (babies, mentally disabled, physically disabled,
presumably).

------
TGJ
You can't have a basic human right if someone else has to be involved for that
something to happen.

------
psawaya
I think this is a really interesting idea, but this site serves only as a
frustrating introduction to a blog post that explains everything.

<http://www.blog.ahumanright.org/2010/10/buy-that-satellite/>

~~~
trikkia
agree

------
Vivtek
Readability design is apparently _not_ a human right.

------
earl
Apparently they also believe in super fucking annoying websites.

