Almost 4 in 5 people believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right. | Hacker News Reader

Almost 4 in 5 people believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right.

news.bbc.co.uk

16 pointsjamesbritt22 comments

Illustrates the common confusion between negative and positive rights. You have the right to have access to the internet, but you don't have the right to force others to provide you with internet access; just as you have the right to free speech, but don't have the right to force others to print you pamphlets.

I've reached the conclusion over the last few years that very, very few people have any idea what a right is. To them, it's something they want and can feel morally outraged if they don't get.

This lack of education is wreaking havoc with western democracies.

Having said that, technology is quickly becoming part of our brains, our souls, and not part of the external reality. The ability to communicate over the net is getting closer and closer and even beginning to overlap the ability to assemble, the ability to protest, or the ability to speak freely.

It's not a right -- I don't think it can ever be a right -- but it's going to become a critical part of the social contract between governments and citizens. That's because it overlaps "natural" rights, not because it's morally right, it's the advanced thing to do, or any of that other feel-good nonsense.

Agree. I fear that "fundamental" is becoming debased in the same way as "evil" seems to be.

While true, nowhere in the article is there a hint to link the study to your assertion (no, not in "Rural Retreat" either).

I have the right to have access to the internet, which implies the obligation of others to, quoting, "a 'fair and impartial procedure' before any measures can be taken to limit their net access.", at the very least.

That doesn't make any sense. I'm still trying to figure what in your positive and negative rights mean. Rights are what you can't take away, not what you can force on others. No one is required to pay for anyone elses internet or print anyones pamphlets.

I have the right to speak freely or remain silent. I can't be forced to speak nor can I be forced into silence. 4 out of 5 people agree no one should be denied access to the internet. If I paid for it, it's mine to use. If I use the free airport wifi it's mine to use. Gov'ts or individuals shouldn't be able to say I can't use the internet at all.

"Rights are what you can't take away, not what you can force on others. No one is required to pay for anyone elses internet or print anyones pamphlets."

There are people who claim that their right to the Internet means that if they cannot afford t then someone else is obligated to pay for it, else they are being denied their right to the 'Net. (And, presumably, if there is no Internet then someone has to go make one.)

This is a 'positive right'. It obligates other people to take action to provide something.

By extension, could we say that people have a right to equal, quality health care, but shouldn't expect taxpayers to foot the bill?

I'll preface by stating that I do believe in "positive" rights - more specifically, I believe that "negative" and "positive" rights sit on a continuum rather than in separate domains.

However, it just doesn't make sense to claim that access to the internet is a fundamental right, any more than it makes sense to say that access to a radio frequency band or a newspaper is a fundamental right (though I'll note in passing that "freedom of the press" strays into this territory insofar as the operational definition of a "journalist" for the purpose of press freedom is someone who writes for a publication - hence the kvetching over whether bloggers qualify as journalists).

Having written that, we are getting to the point at which the rights to expression, association, secession and so on are effectively tied to internet access - for the simple reason that huge swaths of human activities predicated on such rights happen over the internet.

As such, it makes sense to regard internet access in parallel to access to education and health care - necessary prerequisites to the widespread exercise of fundamental rights.

To be precise, almost 4 in 5 people in the 26 countries surveyed answered that they agreed to some extent with the statement "Access to the Internet should be a fundamental right of all people."

The statement is agreeable because it doesn't specify whether this should be a positive or a negative right. Is the questioner asking whether taxpayers must pay for the Internet access of the less fortunate, or whether governments have the right to restrict that access?

The fact that the USA and Canada had almost identical survey results despite vast political differences highlights the ambiguity of the question.

Government loves when we declare something a right. It gives them the power to regulate it.

So now the government gets to make laws about isp records retention, anonymous usage, etc. I mean it's a right after all.

Also since it's a right, it must also be fair. No one person can have faster internet speeds than another; with the exception of government bodies of course.

If my upload speed is 128k and your upload speed is 5MB, well that's not fair as you can upload you political videos quicker and to more websites than I can in a given day, etc.

Interesting definition of a fundamental right. All the usual suspects (speech, movement, association, due process, etc) don't depend on technology (and, incidentally infrastructure). I just can't come around to the idea that access to telecommunications is "fundamental".

I think it is - it also depends on how the question is phrased.

I don't think anyone owes anyone free broadband internet access - we have the right to free speech, that doesn't mean you get to use the postal service for free. It does mean, however, that we recognize the overwhelming good for society that a system that carries free and open speech can provide, and make efforts to ensure it is accessible to all.

Similarly, for the internet I think our stance ought to be that it is something that provides an overwhelming good for not only this country, but for the globe in general. For this reason we should be ensuring that it is affordable and reliable to all.

Likewise, I think it is a right in the sense that no one should be denied access to it. Nowadays so many critical, vital functions to a normal life is online (searching/applying to jobs, basic information retrieval, etc) that short of some grave, enormous threat, no one should be barred from using the internet.

That's how it is seen here in Finland. The idea is that all residents will have the services they need, regardless of financial or social status. They have simply added internet access to the same list as public transport, wheelchair ramps, etc. Makes sense to me.

I think it's similar the right to food. _Human Rights, A Very Short Introduction_ mentions that the right to food is shorthand for a complex set of obligations concerning "food security":

* Obligation to respect: Immediate, basic obligations include that a government can't undermine food security (like unjustified crop destruction and land evictions), must plan for the population's needs, and can't allow discrimination regarding access to food.

* Obligation to protect: A further level of obligation is protecting people's food security from interference by others. (This may include regulating food safety, ensuring that indigenous people with a close cultural link to land have a title to it, etc.)

* Obligation to facilitate: A further one is to facilitate food security. Like stimulating employment so people can afford it, land reform, and developing distribution and storage facilities. Or providing food or social security to those who can't work, such as the infirm.

Almost all of this could be applied to internet access.

I disagree with this analogy. Without food, you _die_.

It depends. I can see it for "being allowed to access the internet is a fundamental right" but not "having access to the internet is a human right."

The "right to health care" and the "right to education" both depend heavily on infrastructure and technology.

Yes, but they aren't meaningless without it.

The article never lists which twenty-six nations were surveyed. Of the fifteen or so mentioned, only a few aren't safely within the modern "first world."

The actual list list seems to have a fair mix of high, middle, and low-income countries, though not really proportional to the income distribution of the world's population: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UK, USA.

See http://globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2010_internet/

...which reads, with a couple of exceptions, like a list of countries where the BBC World Service has the bulk of its audience.

The article does give a link to the findings in detail, which includes the nation list: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08_03_10_BBC_inte...

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