Well I consider internet basic infrastructure like roads or water pipes. It enables business of all kind of sorts to grow and we are well past phase where internet is some kind of "weird academical geeky thing".
Well maybe it is not basic human right, just like having access to a road is not but maybe we should have more internet infra paid with taxes.
>maybe we should have more internet infra paid with taxes
We already do, taxpayers are just not getting much value for their money.
>ISPs that take billions in government subsidies (from programs like the FCC’s Connect America fund) traditionally focus their efforts on more competitive, urban markets, leaving less-affluent cities and rural markets with sluggish DSL that fails to even meet the FCC’s base definition of broadband
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywkn4b/study-throwing-taxpay...
>Well I consider internet basic infrastructure like roads or water pipes.
Exactly.
>Well maybe it is not basic human right
In Switzerland you have the basic right to gain information, the discussion ATM, is a TV/Radio/Newspaper enough or does it needs a Internet-Device (important for prisons, pledging, bankruptcy etc)
"Since 2013, every private household in Germany has been required to pay these fees, regardless of whether the household actually has the capability to receive the broadcasts themselves."
So this is a universal tax anyway, whether or not you have a TV-enabled device.
They already charge you anyway. They just assume you have an Internet or TV/radio enabled device. Again, having internet is enough as they say you may watch the public media on the broadcaster's website...
Some years ago they would send people to sniff around your home to find a media device, like taking photos of your car radio in front of your home to prove you can access public media. But if you let them in your home, they'd write a report of you having a TV etc.
But as I said this isn't happening any more, they just assume every household has a device capable of accessing public media so everyone must pay.
There was a big movement against this but ultimately the Constitutional Court decided all this is A-OK.
Yeah, it really irritates me when renting or purchasing a house/apartment that they often won't say (sometimes don't even know) if it has fibre coverage or not.
I lived in a flat that only had ADSL a few years ago and I never intend on going back to that.
Don’t know what it’s like where you live, but in this side of the world, once I have the address of the flat (which I can get before I even view), I can lookup what broadband options are available to me. Any property that only has ADSL at best doesn’t get a viewing.
Even FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) ends up at the bottom of the short list. FTTP is pretty vital now for me, and very much features as one of the deciding factors.
> It enables business of all kind of sorts to grow
It also just enables people to communicate and access information. Kinda weird that we need to make a business pitch to show that something is essential. Then again, we're living under capitalism.
How is capitalism part of this conversation? Socialism also has to debate the merits of making something essential. It’s not like the USSR had sparkling water running to every home. As much as some people would have liked it.
> > > It enables business of all kind of sorts to grow
> > It also just enables people to communicate and access information. Kinda weird that we need to make a business pitch to show that something is essential.
> How is capitalism part of this conversation? Socialism also has to debate the merits of making something essential
Indeed, and the social and societal merits are that it enables equal access to education (per the letter in the article) for all, especially in times of a pandemic.
Meanwhile the capitalist merits are that it also enables greater amounts of commerce to occur.
The parent commenter is lamenting that the gains to society outside that exclude increase in capital flows aren’t sufficient to justify something, and that a capitalist gain needs to also be present to provide that justification. While also noting that we do live in a capitalist society.
> It’s not like the USSR had sparkling water running to every home. As much as some people would have liked it.
I’m not sure that the USSR is relevant here. I’m not sure sparkling water adds value to society in the same way as access to electricity, clean running potable water, or the Internet does. One is is a non-essential luxury item. It’s increasingly difficult to argue with a straight face that Internet access is a non-essential luxury.
EDIT: that’s not to say there isn’t an argument to be made that access to the Internet today is a non-essential luxury, and if someone actually has a good faith case to make, by all means please do!
>It’s not like the USSR had sparkling water running to every home
The USSR was NOT Socialism nor was it Communism, that was just a motto to establish absolute power lead from a small elite circle (the withered core of the communist party). It's kind of the opposite of communism and especially socialism.
BTW it would have been extremely interesting if Israel went that route (maybe the first real, and humane communist state?)
BTW2 Sparkling water in russia? Maybe Woda but then without sparkles.
No it was the continuation of the tsars under a different flag, and putin again is a continuation of the tsars under a different flag. It never had anything todo with communism.
I think access to the Internet + an E-Mail account should be basic human rights. It's infrastructure too important to leave in the hands of private corporations.
[update]
I'm totally okay with this being downvoted, but I'd like the input as to why, if I'm somehow wrong, then tell me ? :)
Ah, but that's the same territory as "electricity should be a basic human right".
There's actual legal debate about this. This articles summarizes that debate. [1]
> This article considers three answers to the question whether electricity access should be a universal human right. A first position is that there is no human right to electricity but perhaps contractual rights related to various societies. A second position is that electricity is a derived human right, a right based on other rights, grounded on rights such as the right to adequate housing. A third position is that there is a universal human right to electricity. It is argued that the second position is the strongest since it supports the idea that humans often need access to electricity but avoids the stronger claim that all humans must have this access. The latter claim faces the challenge that rights language should focus on the needs of humans and not be extended too far to include everything that could be beneficial for humans. Such an extension might diminish the attention on the actual aim of human rights: That all humans should have a good enough life.
I agree with those assertions and it's why I think that neither electricity nor the internet are universal human rights.
Contrary to such universal human rights as the right to a family, liberty, recognition as a person before the law,... which should be read as first principles that ought to be applied in human interactions, rather then claims to specific commodities. [2]
That doesn't mean those things aren't important. Access to the Internet has gained in importance. Instead, human rights are a moral framework that ought to underpin the governance of that access. And that's what makes all the difference.
I can see how it it a difficult problem, I don't think right needs to equal "free in any circumstance", I mean the right to be able to access it for a reasonable price.
Like, here in DK, I have a RIGHT to electricity, not for free, but no matter where I live geographically in this country, I have a right to be able to buy a home, and a right to a electricity subscription, the electrics company cannot just say "nah, we don't wish you as a customer" unless I really do something wrong.
For E-Mail addresses, it's not so, if nobody wants to provide me with one, then that's just too bad.
Electricity is somewhat easier then email, because "the power I got yesterday" has no connection to the power I get today.. We also have a right to phone numbers, meaning that if I switch to a new provider, my phone number follows to my new subscription with no additional fee.
But if I switch e-mail provider from gmail to proton, I've no right to have my email address, no less the actual inbox transferred to my new provider.
Yeah, I heard Estonians even get a state-sponsored E-Mail address, which I'd take any day over "hoping that google won't randomly delete me for reasons beyond my control".
Yeah, I run my own, but thing is, I don't have a RIGHT to do so, I am just lucky that my ISP most mercifully lets me bounce my outgoing mail through their SMTP server, and they blocked outgoing port 25, so that's the only way for me out.
I have some right to the domain on which I host my mail, but I don't have a right to a fixed static IP, and I don't have a right to be able to make outgoing connections on port 25 (or any port, I guess?), and I also don't have a right to a bouncer, so in practice, I don't have a right to host my own mail, there's no law giving me the right to demand any of those things, it's up to me to be a combination of lucky and wealthy enough to make it happen.
Those ports are not important, they are for my client to connect to my server, which happens entirely within my LAN, but how do I go about SENDING mail if outgoing connections on ports 25, 587, and 465 are blocked ?
Basically, I want to send a mail to you, your server is listening on those ports because you're a normal person, and didn't rediret port 80 to be your SNMP incoming.
So, I try to make a connection to your domain:25, my packets won't even leave my ISP, my outgoing connection is simply dropped.
Try it, are you lucky enough that you can ? If you speak a bit of SMTP you can send email from telnet like that.
Due to those concerns I've settled for a privacy focused private company set up in a country with strong information- and privacy regulation. Protonmail.
I think protonmail is a great thing, but you don't have a right to your account there, if they turn bad and decide to shut you down, what law back you up in your demand to have your account reinstated ?
All of your communications, sure probably not, but for all the ones that are already for government purposes, with government entities, and other basic purposes it's a good place to start.
At least some uniquely identified email address is better than hoping things like court documents with legal implications get paper mailed to some previously known physical address you may or may not still have any access or relationship with.
we actually have something like this, but it's a too-specialized system, so it's not possible to send "mail" to people unless you're a big enough company to register for that privilege, and users can't reply via the system, so it's a receive-only solution that's also incompatible with standard technologies.
For sure they are a kind of black box and have more information than needed. But I met a lot of people who trust blindly on them and it is crazy for someone who came from Brazil - the place where no one trust on government about anything.
There are several problems with this idea. As you say this infrastructure is important, but it's too important to centralise it and put into government's hands. If there is a government monopoly you will not be able to shop around, choose best service and will have to deal with
* poor service, since there will be no competition and little to no incentives to improve it
* lack of privacy, since law enforcements and random officials will absolutely want to have full access (and sure, Google has access to my emails, but I can use Protonmail instead and trust them way more not to abuse this access than I would trust "DMV for email")
* even further centralisation of power - it would be much easier to apply pressure to people doing anything "anti-government" (I believe there are already examples of this with people being cut from all-encompassing WeChat in China, but I don't have references at hand)
There is also an argument against frivolous expansion of human rights with anything not absolutely necessary or too specific.
Making something a utility doesn't require it be centralized. You simply put it in municipal/local/state hands, as we do with all other utilities, and just set federal minimum standards. The federal government doesn't fill your potholes.
As it stands, internet access and services are incredibly centralized in the marketplace within just a handful of enormous companies.
I agree centralisation is bad - the model of “government ensures everybody has a certain minimum level of service (eg set themselves up as a free 4G ISP offering just enough speed to fill in HTML forms etc); anybody who wants good service can pay a private company for it” seems like it would be the best of both?
Political parties attract to their tops sophists who can manipulate and form personal alliances - it does not select for who can provide the greatest value at the lowest price.
Does not have to be actually run by govt. it could be that govt. buys services from providers, but in the end, it enforces your right to the service, so that private companies cannot just decide you don't exist anymore.
This approach (legislation) to resource distribution is often the wrong one. It’s better to simply make the item in question become a commodity, so much so that it’s universally accessible to even the poorest members of society.
Think of something like paper. Originally it was exceptionally expensive and only available to the wealthy or particular tradesmen. Scraps of already-used paper were reused because the material was so valuable.
Today, paper is basically free. In fact, we’ve gone to far in the opposite direction: people waste paper constantly and it’s an environmental problem.
If, in the early stages of paper, we had said “We need to mandate paper for everyone,” I’m skeptical that it would have been commodified. It seems to me that whatever method we use to make internet access easier and cheaper, it probably isn’t going to come from ISPs.
Utilities including household internet are natural monopolies. Early paper isn't a natural monopoly.
As such, the arguments for legislation is about as different as they can get. Paper as an industry will likely have a healthy competitive market without significant intervention; household internet not likely.
Nobody is proposing to legislate that paper should be provided free to everyone, it's not at all comparable.
It’s hard to commodify resolution of the last-mile issues which create a large portion of the cost of providing universal Internet access. E.g. there’s no technology for mass-producing local roadworks.
There are multiple ways to achieve the same effective outcome.
In Finland person living alone gets 502.21 EUR per month of "basic income support" (rent is paid using different support system). The sum is calculated using imputed costs where phone, internet and daily newspaper are 20% of the monthly expenses (100 EUR per month)
If person can't manage his income (alcoholic, drug addict, mental problems) social services might pay some of those directly.
Or at the very least force ISPs to separate their TV service from their internet service. And have some actual competition on the market. Providing internet shouldn't be as expensive as it is in many countries.
That already is the case in the UK, you can get internet without TV service. It's a reasonably competitive market although most of the infrastructure is handled by one company (Openreach).
Here in New Zealand we separated network owners from retailers. The network owners are required to wholesale services to all retail ISPs on the same terms. As most network owners have a monopoly in their service areas wholesale pricing is capped by the competition watchdog.
I demand to have a free ip! just let us have an ip to share anything we [ as persons ] want to share! actually its free, there is almost no cost at all to make this happen but they won't let it. I don't know who they are of course.
That's a very bad idea. If there was to be a super cheap/free tier it also had to be rather limited in bandwidth, barely enough for e.g. remote school to remove these barriers. But if it was too good you'd essentially kill off private providers giving the government even more control over people's communication. Right now they at least need to pass laws and face backlash to force ISPs to censor stuff. If your government was your ISP they could just censor whatever they want without much oversight since there'd be little competition left to challenge them. Private companies have at least some incentive not to do so (they'll loose customers).
I get where you are coming from, but I think many would agree that ISPs are a natural monopoly. Censorship wise, use strict IPS rules on major IXs/cables and you are there. The Internet is not too censored only because we do not want it to be, whether it is controlled by a company or the government, things change little.
I do not understand why censorship operated by individuals and companies is so underestimated, in some respects it's even worse.
Well maybe it is not basic human right, just like having access to a road is not but maybe we should have more internet infra paid with taxes.