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1Mb Broadband Access Becomes Legal Right In Finland
An anonymous reader writes "Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Finland is the world's first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access. The Finnish people are also legally guaranteed a 100Mb broadband connection by the end of 2015."
There are many legal rights that you don't need to survive. One of them (in most western countries) is the right to vote. It is a legal right as soon as someone makes a law stating that it is. Simple as that.
Rights are always an imposition on someone else. The right to free speech obliges others to tolerate offensive speech. The right to a fair trial obliges others to provide you with one. The right to bear arms (a popular one with people who advocate arguments such as yours) increases the risks of death from gunshot wounds for other people. The right to own property denies others the use of that property.
The question is whether the rights are worth the imposition.
They do if enough people get together and agree that they do. Such is called government.
I can understand basic inalienable rights like food, shelter, clothing, and adequate healthcare. But a right to have internet access?
The way I see it is that if you take your list of inalienable rights and classify them as "human rights", you can classify health care, internet access, etc. as "societal rights" (those rights granted by the state for their citizens).
internet access being a right is an example of liberalism gone horribly wrong
Do you mean liberalism as defined by the various political parties and interest groups in the US, or Liberalism, generally? Either way, I don't think that term is useful or productive, especially when the context here is Finland.
In the US, the crowds shout "We insist on being free so don't dare try and give us any stuff", while in Europe, it's "Keep giving us free stuff or we'll bring you down!" Left-wing? Perhaps. But I suspect one side is getting a good deal, while the other ... well, what's the state of broadband in the US? ;-)
Of course. But neither one of them are free.
Pretty much a nanny state.
"Yes you are free, free without a doubt. If you do not have the price of a meal you are free to go without." -- George Sawchuck (It's okay if you've never heard of him)
There's a difference between excessive meddling in a citizens life and providing for your citizens.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Yes, the population in America is generally pretty dense, so we tend to lag behind the rest of the world.
Satellite is a high-latency service up to 500 to 900ms one way.
The result is that it's slow/unusable for many types of applications, which can't handle a 1 second round-trip delay.
In other words, it's not "broadband".
You won't be comfortable trying to use VoIP over satellite, and streaming media won't work at all without a stout amount of pre-buffering.
How about IDN URLs? Example: http://anmälan.museum/
If I paste this into Firefox address bar, it works, but clicking the Slashfungarbulated link from this post's preview doesn't.
Conclusion: Slashcode barfs on IDN. Bad Slashcode.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
640Kb Blah bla blah...
America's Founding Fathers only saw necessary to enumerate the protective rights — they listed the things, the Government is not allowed to do to people. All of them believing in personal responsibility for the famous Pursuit of Happiness, they did not put anything remotely like Right to Shelter — a Government obligation to give citizens something other than freedom to mind their own business — into the Document they crafted.
Nor have they approved of Government's benevolence at taxpayer's expense: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." -- said James Madison in reaction to Congress planning to offer Federal money to French refugees.
Finland may feel different — whatever strikes their fancy... From a Progressive's point of view, Finland is far ahead — while we are still debating "the right" to health care, they've declared the right to speedy Internet access. To the Founding Fathers point, that all rot: "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe," — wrote Thomas Jefferson at about same time...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Way to change the subject there.
// This is not a sig.
There's a difference between excessive meddling in a citizens life and providing for your citizens.
Government doesn't provide for citizens. It forces some citizens to provide for others.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
As an American living in one of the oft talked about rural areas of America with access to only dial up (which gives me a whopping 28.8k connection due to signal quality), or over priced satellite, I am more than ready for something along this line to be adopted here. At a time when more and more information and services are being distributed over the Internet, it gives us rural people a big disadvantage. For example, I work rotating shifts in a factory and would like to go to college to get a degree eventually. Due to my shift work, a physical classroom is out of the question, admissions would laugh me right out if the campus, but an online program through a local and respected school could help me to get to that goal. An online college course is not an option when it takes >30 minutes to load a 10 second video or when you have to split a 50 mb download over 5 nights to get the data. I promise, if the shoe were on the other foot you'd understand where I'm coming from.
But until the libertarian dream is realized (at least as much wishful thinking as marxist socialism) I'll take public welfare over corporate welfare any day :)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Right, just like that self-employed guy who can't afford $2200 a month for $5000 deductible health insurance for his family and his wife gets cancer and loses his home. He's not stuck. He could always rob a liquor store or sell one of his kids.
But he does have options ("sniff").
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's been pretty amazing over the last few months watching Americans demand that the government NOT guarantee them affordable health care.
That's one example. Although I personally think we should get the Government out of the "marriage" business altogether and have civil unions for all couples (hetro and homo). Let the priests dither over what "marriage" is and minimize the governmental involvement in a process which is basically nothing more than an agreement between two consenting adults.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There's a difference between excessive meddling in a citizens life and providing for your citizens. Government doesn't provide for citizens. It forces some citizens to provide for others.
or you could say, government allows all citizens to provide for each other in an efficient and cost effective manner.
You can spin things any way you want, to make whoever you want look bad. The people who demand that the government not guarantee affordable health care understand that someone is going to have to pay for it, and would rather negotiate those payments on their own terms rather than trust the government to do it for them.
Then there are people like me, who believe that healthcare should be made available to people who are poor or have pre-existing conditions, but believe that the current plans will make things worse rather than better. I'm even willing to pay higher taxes to help cover these people, but the current plan doesn't explain how it will be paid for, among other problems.
Qxe4
Not sure why you'd think I was trolling, I genuinely believe what I said.
The reasons for such service obligations are that it's becoming increasingly difficult to take part in normal life and society without that service, perhaps because so many important services and information sources are online. If entire areas are unable to access these, it will have a negative effect on the viability of that segment of society.
However, all of these that can be done with 1Mbps, except for the telecommuting that jhol13 mentions below, which I hadn't thought of.
What bothers me about this isn't the free internet. No, that part is pretty cool. What bothers me is the underlying political philosophy. What is a "right?" When do they start? Who creates them?
According to what Jefferson laid out in the Declaration of Independence, rights are inborn into the nature of each person. They are endowed to everyone by their Creator. The distinction here is critical. Rights are inherent in the nature of the human being and an integral part of human dignity -- they are not given by a government. A government cannot give or abolish rights. A person has rights regardless of what his government says. A government can only protect or infringe them.
(That said, a person can abrogate his own rights through the exercise of criminal activity -- this is why governments can licitly infringe on the rights of criminals by imprisoning them.)
Now, if someone has a right to a broadband connection, that means he has always had this right. All humans in all times and places have always had the right to a broadband connection, because this right is a part of their nature. Now, given the fact that broadband connections have not always existed, it's difficult to see how having a broadband connection is an inherent part of human dignity.
It bothers me that lot of Americans seem a bit fuzzy on the concept of rights and are departing more and more from the Locke-Paine-Jefferson school of thought. Ask any given sample of Americans about the subject, and I'll bet 95% of them would say that rights come from the government. A people who look to their government rather to themselves as a source of their rights is a people cowed by tyranny.
Two things you have to consider though, what defines "the middle of nowhere"? Just outside my town of about 20,000 people, there are many houses that can't get cable, let alone high speed internet. Yeah, 3G internet has made it easier, but every major carrier in the US charges a ton for their service, has terrible latency, has caps and in general provides a crappy way to browse compared to a decent home internet connection.
Secondly, its not that ISPs have done everything on their own and the free market should take its course. We, the taxpayers have (without a direct vote mind you) given them -billions- of dollars to spend on expanding their services, their lines run through public and private ground not owned by the ISP themselves, I think when its -our- money that they spend, we should be able to tell them what to do with it. If they didn't take any of the money directly or indirectly and own the land that their lines pass through, sure, let them do what they want, but no major ISP has done that.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose."
Welfare? Food Stamps? Medicaid? Public housing?
The poor get all of those. We have a safety net. So are you arguing for a safety net, or are you arguing that government should give people a living?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The right to freedom of speech. For one person to have freedom of speech requires that others refrain from violating it. For example, I can say what I wish, when I wish, and the only requirement imposed upon others is to refrain from stopping me and thus violating that right. The same obligations then extend from me to others. This is a negative right as it requires others to refrain from acting in violation of that right.
The right to broadband. For one person to have this right requires that someone else provide it. This is a positive right as it requires one person/group to act to provide for another (same applies to healthcare "rights", education "rights", etc).
The essential feature here is reciprocity. Negative rights naturally extend to everyone (if person A must refrain from violating the rights of person B, person B must refrain from violating the rights of person A. Otherwise you must assume that one person is "superior", i.e. has more rights, than another), while positive rights are one-sided (one person's "right" to healthcare imposes an obligation on someone else to provide it). The assumption of equality involves assuming that all have the same rights. Presuming that one person has more or different rights than another presupposes that those persons have different worth, and if you start making that assumption, the idea of natural, inalienable rights flies out the window in favor of arbitrary rights determined by an arbitrary group of people based on arbitrary standards. You can't have rights for some at the expense of others. In the case of broadband (or healthcare, or education, etc.), everyone has the same right to work to acquire the resources need to gain access to broadband (or healthcare, or education, etc.). Any other concept imposes positive rights, i.e. rights for some at the expense of others.
Let's analyze this based on what we've learned. You're implying that because he's hungry, this individual has been deprived of his right to food. If he has a right to food, then someone else has a duty to provide it, which means that the provider is a second-class citizen, a slave to anyone who can't provide for themselves. Because he's homeless, someone has violated his right to have a home. Same situation, the provider of the home is reduced to involuntary servitude (slavery), forced to utilize their skills and resources to provide for someone who can't/won't work to provide for themselves. Because he's sick and dying, he has been deprived of his right to medical care. This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
I'm not saying that if a doctor sees a sick or injured person that they shouldn't attempt to help them. I'm saying that he has no moral obligation to help them. I'm not saying that giving to a charity that helps provide shelter or job training to the homeless is immoral. I'm saying that requiring a person or group to provide for the homeless against their will is immoral.
Dear Citizen,
People feeding you are living in the middle of nowhere.
Just starves retards.
Best regards,
The comity of people living in the middle of nowhere.
You're confusing (or are perhaps unaware of) positive and negative "rights"...
No, I'm not the least bit confused. If anything it is you who are confused, or worse... you are deliberately presenting a false argument.
This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
The moment you break out the term "slave" you lose ALL credibility whatsoever. The doctor is not his slave in any rational sense.
The doctor doesn't have to show up for work. The doctor doesn't even have to be a doctor. The doctor is not a slave. If he doesn't feel like caring for patients he can quit any time he likes.
The ONLY actual forced imposition on anyone is the taxation used to fund these programs. And sure, you can wave your arms all you like about how your a "slave" in your own country because they make you participate in funding the maintenance of the military too, and the police, and the fire department, and water/sewage, and public schools, and highways, and so on... but I'm not having any of it.
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
They aren't slavery any more than hiring a contractor to do your kitchen is slavery. The fact that he now has an obligation to you doesn't make him a slave. Participating in a society is a social contract, with obligations to maintain and improve that society. That's not slavery.
Its a hyperbolic misapplication of the word to the point of absurdity.
Most US welfare recipients get off welfare within 1 year.
But according to some, we have a huge "welfare state".
I'm telling you, there's something in the water here that's making 30 percent of Americans complete morons. Or maybe it's something being broadcast over the airwaves.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sorry, but that distinction is more important than to be included as a side note in brackets. Can you point to a mainstream libertarian who advocates having no working government?
Hang around any libertarian forums, you'll find plenty. NationStates is a good place to start, as libertarian community is fairly strong there.
Libertarians propose "limited" government, not no government.
Libertarianism is a very broad movement, and there are all kinds of people there, including anarcho-capitalists, which make a fairly significant chunk of it. You may dismiss them as "not true libertarians" (and they would similarly dismiss you and other minarchists as not being "free enough"), but it would be just another example of a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
Oh, by the way - are you, by chance, an Objectivist?
limited safety net (for disabled etc) ... is the mainstream libertarian position
I'm sorry, but I think you're very wrong about it being a mainstream libertarian position. So far, I haven't met a single individual who had self-identified as a libertarian, and considered any - even "limited" - kind of safety net, even just for disabled (I wonder what "etc" would be, by the way?). You're the first. Others always claim that it should be properly handled by private charity.
Heck, let's have a mini-poll here for all Slashdot-reading libertarians who would come by this thread: do you consider a "minimal safety net for disabled" a legitimate government activity?