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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."
Lucky them.
Here in NYC, Time Warner just released a 50/5 Mb DOCSIS 3.0 plan... For a whopping cost of $99.95/month.
This allows the government to interact with the population online, without anybody having an excuse of no net access.
Isn't this just an extension of the universal service obligations commonly associated with telephone, electricity etc.?
Having said that, I don't really see the need for 100 Mbps internet access for everyone - it's expensive to provide, and what very important services does it provide that 1 Mbps won't?
Hopefully this also means that those three-strike laws wont be possible, since getting broadband access should be a legal right.
Legal rights and privileges are often conditional on good behavior - and they can be forfeit.
Your "Right to Travel" isn't a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.
In my view, Internet access is more important and powerful than the postal and library services combined. Surely if the government provides those basic services through taxation, a basic Internet communications infrastructure should also.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Also one might keep in mind that what we consider standards of living here in America, such as postal delivery, telephone lines, electricity, etc. were made available in rural places by government mandate. Much like what is happening in Finland with this broadband push.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Don't they always chant population density as to reason why many people are stuck with dial-up?
While there are indeed areas where cable or DSL isn't available, I think you're seriously underestimating the number of people that use dial-up simply because they don't see the need for broadband, nor the point in paying for it. I think you'd be quite surprised at the number of people that would tell you "Look, I don't want cable. I check email and look at the occasional news website.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Well, that's not entirely true. Europeans are voting for more right wing parties, but that's mostly the European population is shifting than anything else. I doubt many Europeans have a problem with the services they receive. What they have a problem with is the services all those foreigners(defined as anyone with a different skin colour) receive.
Europe is having a bit of a difficult time of it at the moment because of a mix of things. For one a few countries let their socialism go a bit too far, beyond reasonable services for everyone and reasonable workers rights into the usual inefficiency and over protection which destroyed most of the US automobile industry a few decades ago. For another, a lot of them suffer from the same problems the US has in that they don't actually make anything that anyone else wants anymore and they're not entirely sure what to do about it. The UK built its entire economy on exporting financial instruments and is currently pretty much screwed.
Whenever things get bad people start getting a bit xenophobic and despite claims about the cosmopolitan nature of Europe, they're as guilty of it as the rest of us.
I live in Australia and we have a fairly reasonable balance between the two(which might be why we've currently got the best performing western economy in the world). There's reasonable protections for workers, but for the most part, employers have rights too(there's a few issues here that need to be fixed, but the previous government instead of trying to fix the problems tried to absolutely dismantle workers rights and got kicked out so it's a bit of a sensitive subject at the moment). We've got excellent public health care, but if you don't want waiting lists or want private rooms or things like that you can pay for private health insurance(in fact if the government feels you should have private health insurance and you don't they'll tax you extra to encourage you to get it). Again it's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
Having the government take care of every aspect of your life doesn't work. It never has and it probably never will. Having the government provide a safety net of basic services so that people who aren't Donald Trump get a second change is a very good thing. Getting basic infrastructure and services provided by an efficient central provider and available equally and fairly to everyone is good as well, not just for individuals, but for businesses small and large. Government infrastructure is the only reason that competing telephone companies and ISPs can exist, and the US is actually better at that at the moment than we are. Sometimes it's best to buy once instead of many times, and since the government is somewhat more beholden to its shareholders(everyone) than most corporations, it's not as bad having them as a single point of service.
Having spent my childhood in communism (brought in with by the soviet tanks), I can tell you that any system that relies on people being good or ethical is utopic.
One of the early communism slogans was "you contribute as much as you can, you gets as much as you require". Everyone was supposed to work for the common good and the state was supposed to divide resources in a sane and logical manner to avoid waste and maximize efficiency. We all know how that turned out - and all because people want to be more equal than the others (as a side-note, Orwell was a genius; you will never appreciate 1984 or Animal Farm the way someone who has lived them will).
Back to libertarianism, it suffers from the same thing: it requires people to have a work ethic and personal responsibility. Some people are like that, but some (many?) are not. They will gladly game the system.
Capitalism (in its broadest sense, let's not get into details) works because it relies on greed. It may be sad, but greed is good motivator...
""Thank god I live in a country where I'm free to lose my home if my wife or kid gets sick, just as our Founding Fathers intended."
You say that in a mocking way, but you're actually right. Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
Ok, either you're trolling or smoking something you shouldn't smoke. Anyway, I'll bite. You apparently claim that someone else paying your medical bill restricts your freedom. Please, explain how. You realise, don't you, that nobody will force medical care upon you, unless you're seriously mentally ill. You're also free to pay the bill yourself, if you want to.
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes. They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare. And they're starting to vote appropriately.
You're making this up as you go, aren't you? Firstly, please explain which "bureaucratic nightmare" you're referring to. You can't, because you just made it up, or you got it from Fox "news". Secondly, it may be true that conservative parties get more votes now than twenty years ago, but guess what! They all agree that American healthcare is a disaster and should be avoided like the plague. Oh and one more thing. Please don't refer to Europe one country. There are tens of countries in Europe, all with their own legislation, bureaucracies and healthcare systems. They have one thing in common though, all have better healthcare systems than the US does.
Lemon curry???
The idea of negative and positive liberty is not universally accepted, and in fact contains very deep flaws.
Firstly, negative liberty requires enforcement, and that enforcement is not free. Everyone pays taxes for a policeman to protect their property, but clearly the millionaire with his mansions gets more out of that arrangement than the minimum wage stiff living in a rented flat. So what appears to be a negative liberty is in fact identical to a positive one. You can do this for literally any 'negative' liberty.
If you want a more detailed look at the failure of 'negative liberty' to live up to its ideals, I can recommend 'The Trap', a series of three documentary films by Adam Curtis. Seeing as AFAIK it has never been released on DVD, you can torrent it with a clear conscience.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?