Tim Berners-Lee: Web access is a human right | Hacker News Reader

Tim Berners-Lee: Web access is a human right

networkworld.com

33 pointsluigi38 comments

It's a real shame when an expert on one topic starts to talk in public about another area they don't really know about.

"Human Right" is an attribute with a lot of implications. If the web is a human right because otherwise people end up disadvantaged, then surely more basic communications technologies are human rights also? Like pens and paper? Even worse, if your logic is that things become human rights because they're simply beneficial, then you have to create loads of new human rights. Washing machines are human rights. Public transport is a human right. Five pieces of fruit a day is a human right. And then you're starting to loose a lot of the original meaning of the term.

The idea's been applied to more basic information sources for a while, at least by some people. Some of the advocates for public libraries have long argued a version of "access to knowledge" or "access to information" as a right. Extending that to the internet seems to be sort of a modern version (although that could presumably also be fulfilled via libraries; it's not clear that home access to internet is specifically required).

While access to water is a more fundamental right...

Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning.

I firmly believe that computers are becoming integrated with our minds. That means, yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. It's an open issue to figure out exactly when we cross that line where the rules change, but we're getting very close.

But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness.

We face this same problem with the word "war". We have a war on drugs, a war in Afghanistan, a war on poverty, a war on crime. If it's all a "war", then none of it is a war. The word war has no meaning that we can grab onto.

Sorry, I know it sounds pedantic or like splitting hairs, but it matters: Berners-Lee could make a good case for this, if he knew what the argument for rights were based on. Without that, however, he actually hurts the cause. That's not good.

> yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them.

what's a real right?

My criteria is when someone mentions a right, can I meaningfully append the question 'At whose expense'? If I can, it's bogus.

These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech.

These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month.

Real rights prevent someone from doing awful things to you, basically "No one will harm you, or interfere with you doing this" (where this might be living, owning property, speaking, etc). The bogus rights are basically promises of free stuff.

> These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech. > These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month.

This categorization is true within American society. Other societies express different rights.

I'm not sure it's even true with respect to American society, or at least consistently true. A meritocratic-free-market mindset that supports providing education as an equal starting point is fairly common. A slogan sometimes used is "equal opportunities, not equal outcomes". It's used in various contexts, but in one context, the argument is that kids have the right to expect an education that starts them out on a level playing field, but not the right to any particular salary when they grow up. So this view would support free schools, but not support redistributive income taxes.

The negative way of phrasing that same sentiment would be: "if you don't get ahead, you have no one to blame but yourself, because you could've paid more attention in school or gone and read up in the library". It's easier to make that argument if there are in fact free schools and libraries, so that we can claim that everyone had that opportunity, and therefore if they didn't use it, it was their fault.

Wait, just being able to ask the question? There isn't even a dependance on the answer?

Wow.

Then your two sets aren't even correct. None of the things you mention are rights. You can append the question to all of the things you put in the "These are rights" pile, even if you would then think the answer is "nobody".

Heck, sometimes the answer will even be someone besides the "right holder". Person A's hypothetical "right to liberty" can clearly come at the expense of person B, when person B is using person A as trained but unpaid labor.

I think this simple criterion is rather flawed.

"Wait, just being able to ask the question? There isn't even a dependance on the answer?"

You appear to have skipped over the word "meaningfully" in warrenwilkinson's post, or perhaps he edited it in, but either way, it addresses your concern.

(To your later point I'd observe that rights are generally considered symmetrical; in a society where you have "the right to liberty" your example falls through because A's right is being violated for your example, and your argument seems to fundamentally require asymmetry for it to make any sense.)

You are shifting all the work that the criterion was meant to do into the term "meaningfully". Without elaboration on the application of that term, this is of no help as I used a very common standard of "meaningful", "having meaning". A question has meaning, even when the answer is obvious or the answer to a "who" question is "no one". Example: "Who has been to Mars?" is a clearly meaningful sentence.

The issue at play later is: does person A have a right to liberty. Warrenwilkinson's criterion for it not being a right was the ability to append "At whose expense?". I even made that a more reasonable criterion, by implying the further requirement that, in order for a hypothetical right to be considered not a right, it had to come at the expense of someone else (the elaboration used by many other people in better statements of similar criteria, and seemingly the underlying consideration really at play in the two lists warrenwilkinson gave). The objection to even this elaboration was that in the case of a society with slavery, the hypothetical "right to liberty" would obviously come at the expense of slaver owners.

You introduce the interesting symmetry constraint, as charitably as I can gather, intending to use the symmetry between the slaves and owners. No help really, as the owners might as easily conclude that they don't have a right to liberty, they simply have liberty itself. If you landed on an island with slavery on-going, does the criteria proposed have any teeth?

There is, I think, a sharper edged point than this merely amusing slavery objection, but I've mentioned it in other threads already.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think this is the wrong forum.

I'd start the conversation with Hobbes, Locke, and Mill. I wouldn't start the conversation with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which is where we seem to be starting.

Apologies, not trying to blow you off. I think the key to the discussion is twofold: creation criteria for rights and acceptance criteria for rights. There's a lot in both of those branches of thought. For purposes of my comment, however, I think it's just a matter of whether you generally feel I'm bringing up something serious or just pointlessly posturing. There are a lot of ways to argue what's a "real" right, and even if I screwed up the defense of my position it wouldn't matter. The point is whether you feel the generalization is mostly true or not, ie, is there more foundational material required to make the case. Some folks are perfectly happy with any plea for something desperately-needed that comes out of an emotionally upset person's mouth as being a right. I am not one of them. To each his own.

Links for those interested in further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

> Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning.

Rights are simply those things that a society values and there are tradeoffs inherent in any articulated set of rights. You may believe that internet access or water is "fluffy" compared to some other rights, but is that not just your own cultural and/or cognitive bias at work?

> But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness.

No, it's a set of choices and an expression of values. Let's be clear - these kinds of things are about the relationship of the rich portion of the world to the poor portion of the world. In particular, this type of language indicates that the rich portion should value access to {water, internet, health care} for everyone regardless of geographic or economic circumstance. Your values determine what goes in the set, and you call the members of the set rights.

OK but even in the West we don't really believe that water is a fundamental human right and that's easy to prove: you get a water bill. So it's a vital service, sure, but it's not a right, a water supply is a service you pay for. Same with food, we don't really believe there is a basic right to food; if you want to eat you buy it from the supermarket.

Of course it's not a human right. Neither are water or food, so his analogy is pointless.

This is "you have a right to free speech; you don't have a right to a printing press" for the modern age. You still have the right to free speech, and in the case of the Internet, the right to freely associate. You don't, however, have the right to have someone else pay your ISP bill.

True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

Yes, thank you. I knew there was a term for what I was trying to say, but I couldn't remember what it was called.

To quote myself from a few months ago:

"I am a citizen, you must hold (if you are the government) or fund (if you are a taxpayer) an election for me to vote in."

What's your feeling on that positive right? I've encountered people who argue against democracy, and I've encountered people who will re-word the right as stated above and then call it a negative right. I disagree with the former, and the latter only succeed in demonstrating that the difference between positive and negative rights is one of phrasing, and not of the right itself. Do you have a different take on the matter?

The idea of "negative" and "positive" rights is one way of looking at the matter, but it has flaws.

Edit: I don't mean to imply the parent post is making any argument one way or the other; I'm just commenting on the idea itself.

Edit 2: Other things (some completely outlandish, some more plausible) worth thinking about:

  - I own a square mile of land with a river running through
    it.  You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver
    of mine.  If I, entirely on my own property, divert the
    river such that it ceases to run through your property,
    have I aggressed against you?  Do you have the right to
    never have the value of your property decrease?
  - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in
    the world.  Do I have the right to refuse to sell it?
    Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing
    the large majority of them to starve to death?
  - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members
    of unpopular minorities.  I am a gay black Jew.  Am I
    justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in
    order to hide and evade capture?

This is only a problem if you take an absolutist line, which I don't think anyone really does. Even the toughest libertarians still want a police force and law courts.

That is in fact the key difference between libertarian and anarchist.

If a philosophy doesn't work in absolutist terms, perhaps it shouldn't be expressed in absolutist terms. The parent comment left no apparent wiggle room.

Meh, people are lazy with language like this all the time. Many people say "murder is always wrong", but, when you ask them, say "well, self defense is ok". Instead of assuming the worst possible case for your opponent, be charitable with his case. You'll avoid nonsense discussions much more often.

Voting cannot be considered a negative right. I have no more of a negative right to tell the individuals in my government what to do than they have to tell me what to do. I do have the negative right to give them the privilege of governing me and my property just the same as they have the negative right to protect me and my property and to give me the privilege of having some say in their decisions. If we come to that agreement, then I have the privilege of voting and they have the privilege of governing me.

- I own a square mile of land with a river running through it. You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver of mine. If I, entirely on my own property, divert the river such that it ceases to run through your property, have I aggressed against you? Do you have the right to never have the value of your property decrease?

If you change the flow of the river on your property such that it affects mine, then yes you have aggressed against me (it is easier to see in the reverse, it is clearly an aggression against me if you flood my land even if you poor the water on your own land).

  - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in
    the world.  Do I have the right to refuse to sell it?
    Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing
    the large majority of them to starve to death?

You have the right not to sell it, and no you haven't aggressed against anyone assuming that the food had been payed for (whomever sold you the food must have valued whatever you gave them in return more than the food)

  - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members
    of unpopular minorities.  I am a gay black Jew.  Am I
    justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in
    order to hide and evade capture?

Strictly speaking no you don't have to right to hide on their property (and if the Nazies kill those suspected of hiding minorities they are in danger too) though I doubt anybody would have a much of an issue with it if you did.

"If you change the flow of the river on your property such that it affects mine, then yes you have aggressed against me (it is easier to see in the reverse, it is clearly an aggression against me if you flood my land even if you poor the water on your own land)."

Once you accept this, things start getting very complicated. For example, if your factory spews carcinogens into air I breath, it follows that your factor is an act of aggression a la the flooding of the river. Now substitute carcinogens with any pollutant, (perhaps even noise pollution, or visual pollution (eg. I had a nice view before you built that ugly building there) ) and it can quickly get out of hand. The line must be drawn somewhere, and the place that the somewhere is drawn is kind of arbitrary. Very intelligent people can disagree whether or not the line ought to include greenhouse gases.

Btw. I fully agree with the river example.

I completely disagree with your second example though. Off in the real world, its very easy to leverage your wealth to extract unfair agreements from people. The 'all the food in the whole world example is silly', but history is full of examples of people hoarding commodities that are necessary for survival and then exploiting that hoard for ridiculous enrichment. I think at some point, people a right to do something about those sorts of hoarders.

I don't think that there are many people who really believe that access to water isn't a human right, or at least who would be willing to act consistently with that belief. Most people have at least an implicit belief that if lots of people were ending up dying of thirst, it would be a responsibility of society to do something about that.

> "True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others."

Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life.

Let's put it this way.

If 99.9% of a society is web enabled and you deny access to the web to a subset by pricing it out of reach or allowing carriers to not install cables because it would not be not profitable for them in the short term, well then you've done a human injustice.

But would not say it's a human right just yet. When society demands that you are web enabled or face crippling setbacks and some people still cannot afford it, then you've got a problem. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

Instead, let's focus on affordable, accessible, quality health care as a real human right since many 3rd world countries still won't have that for quite some time, as well as the United States.

I'd venture to claim that it is far more feasible to bring 100% of the world population internet access than to bring them health care at even US Medicaid standards.

Internet access and especially personal internet connections is a luxury that almost the entire world has very limited or no access to.

To call it a basic human right when it's only really accessible to an elite slice of humanity is just silly.

There are far more connected people than you think. Something like 30% of the people on the planet have web access. 30% is not "an elite slice", especially considering that over the next decade or two the number will climb higher and higher until it's pretty much 100%. The developing countries - especially in Africa - are exploding in web use, especially mobile web.

TBL is perhaps a bit early with his words, but not by much I'd say.

Edit: Numbers: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

I don't know, I've been in a lot of poor countries and I'm sitting in a really poor one right now - Nicaragua. There's loads of internet cafes and the people do use them but that's like an hour here and there for the small % that actually use the internet at all.

I bet that 30% includes them even though they're a long way from our dependency on being connected 24/7 and the deep integration into our lives - we're probably disconnected less than these people are connected.

It must be pretty awesome to be a guy who invented a human right.

It's easier than you think. Just invent something and declare it human right. Done.

Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights.

Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Yes? Then it's not a human right.

Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life. Care to rework it a bit?

That's a stretch and one I don't agree with.

Some alert congress so we can update the constitution.

This is already happening in Finland: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rig...

A rising tide floats all boats, so I really don't see why this is such a big deal. If the government was willing to build an ISP or subsidize existing providers, this would be a win-win scenario for everyone-- it would accelerate the spread of information, increase literacy, give people the ability to self-educate.

If you think people should have access to public libraries and public education growing up, I don't see why you'd disagree with this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com