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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."
Bastards! I still only have 215 kbit internet!
Don't they always chant population density as to reason why many people are stuck with dial-up?
"Reasonable speed access to free porn" has now become a basic human right?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
that our ~75% tax rate is funding the worthwhile entitlement of blazing 1Mb/s connection!!
... but seriously, how is access to a broadband Internet connection a legal right? Somebody please explain this to me, because the article doesn't give any supporting logic.
I need air to breathe, food to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to sleep at night. As much as I enjoy working in I.T. for a living, I do not need Internet access to survive.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I can understand basic inalienable rights like food, shelter, clothing, and adequate healthcare. But a right to have internet access? I can only imagine what this will do to Finland's taxes. While a noble idea, it is utopian. If people want internet access there are forums like libraries which provide the access free of charge. I do not mind paying taxes to support basic inalienable rights, but when it comes to these extras, I have to draw the line. I am also not an advocate of free education above high school as I believe the onus is on the individual to take and bare some responsibility on their own lives. I'll admit, I did not RTFA this time but the mere mention of internet access being a right is an example of liberalism gone horribly wrong.
In the convenience of your own home, or similar to the right to access clean drinking water you find in some places?
The wording is something to the effect of no household being more than 2 kilometres from a high-speed connection. Are we talking about a pipe to the house, or having to line up to use the communal pump and carry your buckets of bits back home with you?
I'll wait to move there until they establish the right to winters that don't drop below zero.
A right is something that cannot be taken from you, not an obligation on someone else to provide something to you.
If your rights are an imposition on someone else you're doing it wrong.
Politicians with too much time and not enough to do.
I'll wait to move there until they establish the right to winters that don't drop below zero.
Trust me, they never have fewer than zero winters per year.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
It's easy to defend the rights to freedom of speech or of assembly. Those can be rationally derived from the fact of one's existence. But the right to broadband? Especially to a specific amount of bandwidth? Complete nonsense. What this really means is that the person getting the bandwidth has the power of government, with its ability to jail those that don't pay the appropriate taxes, to make bandwidth-providing slaves out of one group of people, so that another group can have the "right" to a service used (at that data rate) primarily by personal users for entertainment.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor, and more Nanny Statism. Of course. And when you make getting the use of a dermatologist or an allergist a "right," this is exactly the sort of thing that comes next.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
The summary left out an important word. The right appears to be ACCESS to a 1Mb connection, not a right to the connection itself. In other words, the gov't isn't paying for the broadband, you are. The gov't (and therefore the people) just pay the lawmakers and if you're lucky enough to work in the telecom industry, you're set for life.
If you have the legal right to a broadband connection, do you have the legal right to get a computer to use that connection?
I wonder how are they going to guarantee it to reindeer shepherds in the far north of Finland, living in the taiga good 100km away from nearest electric power...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me
You're so near to Russia
So far from Japan
Quite a long way from Cairo
Lots of miles from Vietnam
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Eating breakfast or dinner
Or snack lunch in the hall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored
A poor second to Belgium
When going abroad
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
Your mountains so lofty
Your treetops so tall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
Your mountains so lofty
Your treetops so tall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
Finland has it all
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
That might be soon enough. Seems global warming is doing it's job, as last winter and a few before that there was maybe couple of weeks with snow - long gone are the >-20c winter days.
No, we usually have just two. The other is called "summer".
You really understand a "right" to "adequate healthcare"? What might be the limit to this "right"? I mean, does a 100 year old person have as much of a "right" to some organ replacement surgery or expensive cancer drugs as a 6 year old? What constitutes "adequate" care? Is there any "right" to quality of life or freedom or recreation, or just a "right" to life itself and working for it's perpetual extension?
I mean, I understand exactly where negative rights end. The right to freedom of speech, to religion, liberty, to self-defense and travel. They all have the same, very reasonable limit. And if by right to "healthcare", you mean the right to ingest whatever poisons you think will enhance or extend your life, great. Go for it. But somehow I don't think that's what you mean. I think you mean you'd like the "right" to force others to provide you with healthcare, the positive "right" to healthcare.
So I'll tell you what the limit is: there is no limit. It's simply retarded, and ill-thought-out. A "right" to healthcare would just ensure that 90% of people are drafted into working to provide each other with infinite lifespans. We all spend our time working to fill the world with the elderly and infirm. It's absolutely not an endeavour in which I will willingly participate. It's a dystopia of weak, short-sighted, selfish fools imposing their stupidity on each other.
So if you truly value your health, don't even think of imposing your vision of health on me. I am already healthier than the vast majority of the proponents of a "right" to healthcare ever will be.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That might be soon enough. Seems global warming is doing it's job, as last winter and a few before that there was maybe couple of weeks with snow - long gone are the >-20c winter days.
It never gets above -20c? Wow, Finland must be another one of those screwy places where global warming causes it to get colder.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Someone in Finland hold up a router and proclaim to the *IAAA alliance and those pushing 3 strikes laws "you can have my internet connection when you can pry it from my cold dead hands"
Is equal access to roads a right? How about waterways? Electricity? Water?
The internet is just the newest form of a utility. It's an information network that has become completely necessary to anyone in the modern world, just as telephones and televisions were before it.
When you guarantee that everyone has access to something, the costs per person go down. Way down. Because on many levels, socialization works very, very well, especially where infrastructure is concerned. Businesses have access to larger markets. Quality of life goes up. Everyone benefits, even after the additional costs of investment.
If you really dislike governments that much, move to somewhere where there isn't a powerful state. You'll also find that there isn't any cheap infrastructure, because there's no entity wealthy enough to provide the initial investment.
The right to vote is a "civil" right, meaning it obtains to those who live in cities, voluntarily. The right to vote derives from the right to leave a city, and deprive it of the benefit of one's residence. It is not a privilege. It is not granted by government. It depends upon no law.
Free citizens may demand their say, or representation, otherwise leave the polity if it is not honored. By leaving, one regains a complete majority vote in one's affairs. Those who live in cities by necessity rather than by choice, who are not residents, have no such recourse, and no such right. They have abrogated it to the whim of the government.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
How do I get Finnish citizenship?
Is this the most tech friendly law passed by any country ever?
This sig has been distributed under the Creative Commons license.
that's BULLSHIT
I want to invoke my right to a free pony!
From what I understand, the coldest year was 1998. It's been getting cooler of late.
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.
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.
And the temperature during those winters is always above zero. Kelvin.
That's the sound of 20 Million Australians crying in unison.
While I hear this one a lot, it is simply not true. Southern Finland had a few months of snow last winter, one month the winter before that, and a few months the winter before that one (07-08). -20c winter days never really happened in southern Finland either.
see www.fmi.fi for the facts.
What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
carry your buckets of bits back home with you
In my experience, but buckets are no good. Everything I've ever heard of that goes into a bit bucket, doesn't come out.
How about environmentally-friendly reuseable bit bags?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This could a good alternative to replace the Second Amendment.
Time to move to Finland.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
what are the costs
It seems like a tremendous waste of resources to provide everyone with a broadband connection and then cap them at a megabit. A lot of people could probably reach the cap within, well, a second. A few intrepid soles might switch back to reading email with Pine to stretch their megabit out. After losing millions of sales because everyone uses text-based web browsers for a day before going internet-dark, IKEA will underwrite a more reasonable broadband solution that provides a megabit PER SECOND.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
When do they pass the law for the right to everything else, I mean I would like a right to a paycheck despite not working, a right to house despite not paying rent, a right to a signifigant other provided to me by the state of the gender of my choosing.
Screw work, it is for suckers, I want to play video games all day and make the state pay for it!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I would like correct some misunderstandings that several readers seem to have after reading the article title. This does NOT mean that every Finn will be getting a government-financed 1Mbit broadband starting next July (doh..) but rather it's something of an obligation to the government imposed by itself on itself, to provide every single address in Finland (including the extremely rural Northern villages in Lapland) with the readiness to start using a moderate broadband connection by next July. The customers will definitely still have to pay their TelCo of choice a monthly fee for providing the actual service (actually, I personaly just renewed my contract with the Telco for 24 months - I guess they would have said if broadband was going to be a free commodity by next year :).
The assumed logic behind this is, that as more and more of government functions and media are moving from physical media to the Internet, the technical readiness to access the Internet from one's home should be a civil right, just like running water, a telephone line and snail mail delivery. After this, the government can start moving more of its stuff to the Internet (e.g. some tax-money financed television content produced by the national broadcaster is already available only on-line), and they can rest easy that no one will file a complaint that a broadband Internet access is something of a luxury product (like it was in the early 90's), or that the government is giving priority to the South where broadband access was a few years back more abundant.
Of course, in practice 1Mb connections have been available in all urbanized and even less-urbanized areas for several years. I think this law will simply mean that the government will pay the TelCos some subsidies to build the last-mile cable even in the far, rural North, and in the very few Southern villages that are still without 1Mb broadband cables.
by 2015 if the telcos have their way broadband in the US will be defined as 256kbs, and ill be hitching a ride across the puddle
I'm writing to my local politician. I want them to legislate the right to a flying car at a reasonable price.
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.
Finland is a little slow to the gate.
The government of Saskatchewan mandated that SaskTel has to provide high speed access to the population of the province within another year or two, whether it be via DSL, wireless, or satellite. The key point is not that it will be free, but available.
Pricing is actually pretty reasonable, too, though if you're stuck with a satellite link you'll never get around the "lag" for anything like gaming.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
""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.
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.
So, yes sir, I agree with you. God Bless America.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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
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 :)
When did the work ethic and plain, simple personal responsibility become libertarian utopianism?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Lets hope you stay living in the US of A then.
Second that. People who come from disadvantaged families who want post-highschool education should have the opportunity to get it and not just be told "no, you've got to take and bare some responsibility on your own life".
Please point out how anyone in the US, no matter how poor, has been cut off from post-high school education? What rock have you been hiding under?
Everyone is being pushed to go to college now, whether they're cut out for it or need it. The government is about to essentially nationalize all student loans. The government has very generous grant programs for college and vocational schools. You can be in the middle class and still qualify for them. You don't even neccessarily need good grades to get into college now, just a pulse and a way to pay tuition, whether it comes from Mom and Dad or Uncle Sugar. If you serve in the military, they'll also not only pay generous amounts for tuition (I know, I had the GI Bill from my service), but they'll also pay previous tuition debts, and, if you become a career solider, they'll pay for advanced degrees, no matter where you get into. Harvard? They'll pay it. Stanford? Yep, they've got that too.
There are zero barriers to getting an advanced education in this country. If you want to do it, the opportunities are boundless for even the most poor.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Which is why human values-based education, participation, respect of politicans, and politicians that can be respected and trusted, is the only silver bullet to a free democracy with sustainable development.
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It's called development. Look it up. Shocks, it actually pays off to make sure everyone has access to infrastructure like water, electricity, drainage, roads, and oh noes, the government *forces* companies to provide minimal infrastructure to everybody. Usually, you just pay for the last hundred meters to your door.
It's a way of making sure people move out of cities, and that some people does not get left behind.
Certain people get together and agree that the majority of people don't have rights. This is called Daibiao Dahui.
America is the only 1st World country where filing for bankruptcies for unpaid medical expenses exists.
Canada, they of the Great-White-Northern single payer system, has a substantial medical bankruptcy rate. It's less prevalent in Europe (though it still exists there too) but only because they have an even bigger social welfare state.
The majority of medical bankruptcies come not from lack of insurance, but from long illnesses that result in lack of income.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"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
Don't you oppress me!
The filter isn't mandatory and as such not all ISPs use it(not that it makes it much better). For example my ISP(Saunalahti) doesn't use it. Though they often operate in Elisas network which does use the list so if your connection makes use of Elisas name servers you'll be on an filtered connection. To the credit of Saunalahti, all it took was one e-mail to them and I had instructions to use their name servers to avoid the filtering.
If summer and antisummer come together, does it create spring, or death?
Table-ized A.I.
So long as services like I2P and Tor are not illegal, people can access and provide otherwise filtered content.
http://www.i2p2.de/
https://www.torproject.org/
Is equal access to roads a right?
No. That's why there are taxes on the fuel you burn when you use those roads. That's why there are toll roads. That's why some roads are paid for by the business that needs it to be paved into their warehouse area or housing development. That's why there are substantial fees in some places to get a license to drive or to renew the registration on the vehicle you'll use on those roads. Don't want to pay those costs? You don't have to. And you don't get to use the roads.
How about waterways? See above. Electricity? Water?
No. You have to pay for those. And if you build a new house or put up a new business, you have to pay a lot to have those utilities extended to your doorstep, if you want them.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If you see anything faster than 512K, it is NOT available in your area (I live right between the head office of MS India and NIIT - a very large software company) and have exactly ONE provider able to give me a connection - and it's a government run "I-would-give-you-service-if-I-understood-this-darn-technology-thing" provider that charges me $20/month (they reduced the charges from $24/month yesterday) and works almost 25 days a month!
Has anyone found a reliable source for this information? I searched around the Finnish Government web site and found nothing about it at all! I'd like to see some confirmation from, say, a Government office before I really trust that this will be law!
.sig
Yup, and Finland doesn't have just one winter per year, either. You have Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Summer up there.
What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html
Oh, fortunately the ISP:s have to opt-in to that. I think that there's one big ISP left who's using the list, maybe not even that..
Greetings from Finland. :)
I demand to know the city you live in and your ISP. Is that some student housing or such? I live in the capital area (East-Vantaa) and am a lot worse off than that. :P
My 110/5 Mb/s connection from Welho costs 55 euros a month. The best alternative here, Sonera, is 36 euros a month for 24/2 Mb/s.
Addition from another Coward;
The filter is indeed opt-in from the ISP's. The ISP's in turn made it opt-out, but recently the tide has been turning. Of the three big ISP's TeliaSonera has it as opt-in (you have to set the proxies yourself), Elisa doesn't censor (they stopped, and therefore the parent has old information). DNA does use the list, but it's smaller than the Big Two, and unlikely to grow with gimics like that.
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-sensuuri_Suomessa#Palveluntarjoajien_sensurointik.C3.A4yt.C3.A4nt.C3.B6
The uk are trying to roll out 2Mb broad band for everybody. This sounds like a good thing until you try using the internet on 512kb which almost every building in the uk can receive even those right at the end of a line. It is also perfectly useable for youtube etc. I think this is purely a subsidising scheme for the telecoms company ( cough bt cough ) to upgrade all it's lines. Effectively the users pay for the service and give the company that supply the service the funds to create the service that allows them to charge them at a higher rate whether they need it or not. (Just try getting 512kb broadband in a built up area theses days...possible but I bet you'll end up on a 2Mb package anyway). All a bit useless really if the house owners don't have a laptop / desktop that will work in the next 5 years ( due to vista and xp no doubt not being supported and unable to display the latest .Net advertising schemes that most websites are covered in). So the next great idea? Free laptops for everybody! Paid for by the tax payer!
If I want a laptop and broadband I'll buy one. If somebody is on the dole and can't get a laptop. Help them get a job dont keep giving them free handouts so they can buy a massive telly an xbox a wii and play online so they can sit on thier bum not looking for jobs whilst still getting job seekers allowance.
Sorry just realised I was ranting.
Other countries have had such legislation for a while now. For example, Switzerland: http://www.heise.de/netze/meldung/Breitbandzugang-fuer-alle-Schweizer-162094.html . I'm sure there are more.
The statistics disagree with you Here. As you see, there used to be some warm decades in the early 20th century and there are some cold decades now (1930s and 1990s were both about as cold) but the average temperature is clearly increasing
I just tried all the links myself and they work just fine and peachy. As said, the filter is not mandatory and I am personally not aware of a single ISP who did actually use it.
Second.
Errr... You know what I mean.
Just use some other DNS servers.
a modern method of insuring the right to information. Information of course being important in a free-market democracy.
Actually, Elisa dropped the filtering some time ago. Now it's available as opt in service.
If I recall correctly, only the smaller ISPs have the filtering in place.
At long last, I can download porn of my fellow niggers quickly and cheaply! To Finland!
What good is the internet if they don't have the right to a private connection? blah blah blah Echelon
Look, I've run into that filter exactly once, which caused me to shrug and move on. It blocks child porn, some regular porn that looks like it might be child porn, and some guy's blog that contains a list of everything that is blocked. Yes, there is an ideological problem there, and yes, Finland isn't perfect. But are you seriously raising the question over whether having a broadband connection is any good if you can't access, what, a few hundred non-free porn sites and a single whiny blog?
It seems Switzerland beat Finland to it: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/10/14/finland-becomes-the-first-country-to-make-broadband-a-legal-right.html (scroll down to the update).
There's a national TV license fee in Finland which everyone who owns a TV has to pay. It has been customary that large part of the population does not pay the fee despite owning a TV. It's a national sport to tell the license inspectors to fuck off because they have no right to enter your home to find he TV unless you give them permission.
However, nowadays, increasingly large part of the population, including me, does not own a TV and welcome the impotent and frustrated inspectors to peek behind the curtains and sample your laundry basket in search of the elusive television.
SO!
Now there's plans to impose a "Media license", mandatory to every house hold no matter what. Sounds unfair? Have to pay some kind of license for nothing you have control over? No way to avoid? Which provides you with nothing you want? So thinks majority of the population. No-one wants this shit but everyone assumes it will be strong armed through the legislation by YLE, the national state owned "public service" TV and radio network, who is presumed to get all the benefits of this new fee.
Pretext!
This legislation seems to be pretexting to provide a mandatory service for the mandatory fee. What if I don't need or want the shitty 1MB mandatory tube? No matter, it is provided, so pay up or we'll break your legs.
Well, shit.
Bot Assisted Blogging
As someone living in Finland, I feel this is a good step forward. 1mb here is considered bottom-tier broadband, but that doesn't mean it's useless, far from it. We have a solid infrastructure where I live (Helsinki), and 100mb has been available for close to a year. I have had a 24mb connection at home through one of the major ISP's for more than a year now. We don't have bandwidth caps, I can use all I want or need. I achieve download speeds pretty close to rated speeds most of the time. And it costs less than 50 bucks/month. The only reason I haven't upgraded to 100mb is it would mean a new ADSL modem (my current one tops out at 24mb) and I honestly can't see a need for something faster. I don't torrent music/movies, just normal usage. Occasionally I download a new Linux distro, but that's about it for my high-bandwidth usage. But even we are behind Sweden in this area, they had 24mb at least 5 years ago, and due to government subsidy they paid only about 1/4th of what I pay today for the same speed.
Please check the date on that article. All of the sites that were claimed to be blocked, are no longer blocked (I know, I checked them all just now, and I live in Finland). Yes, there were some problems in the beginning when they implemented the filtering. And I absolutely do not agree that filtering should be allowed on the net. But I can say truthfully, I have never seen a site actually blocked by this filtering.
We actually have those. We just use Kelvins to measure them :)
I am not sure what you count as Southern Finland, but I live 100km north from Helsinki and we have had plenty of -20C winter days and -30C is not that unusual.
- Raynet --> .
the right to enjoy the freedoms of society. with your stupid, stupid, 200 year old gop logic, we should as well let go of human rights for all, and make them so that only the ones who can pay for something can enjoy them.
get a few brain cells. we arent living in 1800s. the definition of 'basic' conditions for life in 2009 are much different from 1809. and, corporations are invented to benefit mankind. not mankind to benefit corporations.
Read radical news here
despite not being 'an american', you are so 'american' in your viewpoint that you cant see anything from out of the box. therefore, i will take you as 'an american' and i will approach this from 'an american's' viewpoint so it will pass valid for you and all those 1800 AD & mccarthian fools out there :
I also wonder how "Europeans" are going to act when their federal government decides to take over all of it's member states health care and forms an all encompassing, all powerful, cross border police force, constantly expands into it's member states sovereignty and neighbouring countries lives and all the other lovely goodies that inevitably come with a huge central government..
in contrast with you 'americans's stupid, stupid, outdated, brain dead phobia of 'government' that is reminiscent of 300 years ago, european people arent afraid of government, and know how to use the government to better their society.
all of the member states of eu have to implement standards mandated by eu already. thats why healthcare and everything else in eu countries are top notch in the world. because the standards are mandated by an independent, almost impossible to bribe higher organization, no company in no country can bribe the local government and prepare grounds for sucking the blood dry of its citizens for its profit, in contrast with america and its healthcare (and other) lobbies.
we have all that schizophrenia coming from americans because their founding fathers have incorporated a lot of central government phobia into their constitution and their culture, and the following centuries of 'conservative' administrations has brainwashed entire nation even more to the point of paranoia.
however the government their founding fathers were afraid of was the king's government, or the possibility of any form of king establishing itself in a democratic government (much like caesar, napoleon or other petty dictators), so they tried to minimize the power of government as much as possible to avert that possibility.
but one thing they missed - corporations sufficiently large are little different than feudal kings in that when their reach of products and market share gets larger, they practically dictate the lives of the people. and that's totally leaving out bribery of government officials, or granted monopolies.
they missed this, because at that time no such thing was even conceivable. the corporations that existed and were big enough belonged to kings, and were seen as part of king's government, and all the other corporations and private initiatives were the size of mid sized shipping companies, small manufactories and whatnot. monopolizing the life of an entire nation by companies not belonging to a king's government was inconceivable.
today it is not the case. the corporations have more power than countries. in the list of world's 10 biggest economies, there are as many corporations as there are countries.
a corporation, no matter how big its shareholder base is, is a MINORITY private interest. NO different than feudal nobility, no matter how large it is. it will seek and protect its OWN interests, at the expense of EVERYONE else, IF let be. case in point - the unbelievable wall street SCAM, and alan greenspan's clueless excuse in the form of 'i cant understand why corporations didnt regulate themselves'.
so, 'letting corporations be' is little different than letting nobility be, in today's terms. priviledged minority who have been able to get to the top dictating the lives of everyone else through various means.
the only tool that can regulate the country so that no minority group (nomatter how large they are, they are still minority compared to all nation, and then the world) can claim partial sovereignity, is GOVERNMENT. that is so, because it is an overseeing power that is above every other organization, every citizen has equal share in it, and it has all the resources a country can muster.
even governments can be c
Read radical news here
if, you buy a fucking monopoly license that encompasses the lives of ALL people in an area, you are fucking obliged to fulfill the needs of people anywhere. it is the public that is selling that monopoly right to the company. therefore, company's obligation is to public. if it cant come up with a profitable yet acceptable scheme to cover everyone in its monopoly area, it shouldnt have fucking bid for the license in the first place.
Read radical news here
Too much porn in the winter months can do that.
But Finland does other things well:
* Beherit
* Demigod
* Belial
* Demilich
* Amorphis
* Sentenced
* Adramelech
Futurist Traditionalism
That's why there are toll roads.
The only large European country I can think of that has toll roads is France, the usual example of American right wing idiots claiming socialism is evil based upon 'facts' coming from /dev/random or worse (Fox News).
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A right is a legal protection from the power of the government. So, if you have a "right" to a broadband internet connection, that just means the government can't take your broadband away from you. Which is, I've got to say, something I've not heard about being a problem in the USA neither.
By analogy, the "right to keep and bear arms" doesn't mean the government is required to start issuing rifles and ammo to the populace. It just means if you've got one, they can't take it from you.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is something that somebody is obligated to give you. In this case, it seems that the government of Finland is going to pay for stringing cables all over the country -- except for "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country", as per the article. Actually, the article is sort of vague about exactly who pays for what. . .
My roommate said to me the other day he thought that broadband should be provided by the government in the US. This made my blood boil as he is completely against any kind of governmental health care.
Before moving in with him I was under the impression he was also into home security as he owned a few handguns, taken many defensive courses, goes out to the obstacle course 6-12 times a year, etc. The first weekend he lets in a door to door security system sales person and procedes to show them around the place to point out all entrances to the home, what times we are at work, etc...
I surely hope other republicans aren't this stupid.
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.
Well, sure, the morons are.
The intelligent ones, the ones that understand the concept and consequences of the First Law of Thermodynamics (a.k.a. you can't get something for nothing, you fucking tool ) don't have a problem with taxes.
WHAT A BUNCH OF LIBERAL DEMOCRAT GARBAGE!!!
WITH THAT MODEL, THEY'LL SURELY BE INCREASING TAXES ACCROSS THE BOARD!!!
THE CITIZENS SHOULD BE UP IN ARMS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT CONTINUING TO TAKE MORE AND MORE OF THEIR EARNED INCOME!!!!!!
THIS NET NEUTRALITY GARBAGE IS TOO COSTLY!!!
Impeach all democrats.
Remove the czars.
repeal all bills passed into law since the innaguration.
no amnesty for illegal aliens, there already criminals - they entered illegally.
no taxpayer funded healthcare plan - i dont want to pay for all the idiot, moron democrats.
no more bailouts and no more stimulus - they don't work.
stop printing money and monitizing our currency.
start paying down the deficit. use every bit of every salary of every democrat to pay down the debt.
tax only democrats - let them pay for the idiotic programs only the democrats want.
The only large European country I can think of that has toll roads is France, the usual example of American right wing idiots claiming socialism is evil based upon 'facts' coming from /dev/random or worse (Fox News).
I must say, you've produced some lovely irony, there. Thanks! It's fun to hear someone who actually doesn't know the facts put the word facts in quotes as you derisively complain about someone else's ignorance.
Having spent about $100 in tolls while driving for only a few days in Italy just recently, I can assure you that they certainly don't consider the use of their roads to be a "right." There are also toll roads in Greece. And Austria. And Croatia. And Hungary. And Ireland. And Norway. And Portugal. And Spain. And Sweden. And Switzerland. And the UK. And more, of course - shall I go on?
Let me guess: you get all of your ignorance served up by The Huffington Post or the Daily KOS? You obviously don't have any personal experience in Europe, and certainly can't be bothered to lift a finger and use Google when stamping your feet and spouting fact-ish sounding nonsense that you hope nobody else will bother to correct. Classic lefty debating technique: sound offended, use an ad hominem attack, and then completely mis-state reality in hopes that by sounding eliter-than-thou, you'll score some points with a few people in the audience that react more to your drama than to causality, rationality, and actual information.
Thanks for playing, though! Sorry you're so new at it, and it didn't work out. Maybe you could ask for some legislation that makes the government responsible for making sure that everyone gets to win every argument - no matter how wrong they are - just so that it feels more fair, even for the people who don't know what they're talking about. We wouldn't want anyone's feelings to get hurt.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Mod up, for the following item:
As far as I can see, the problems in the US are not really with population density or sparsity of population distribution. They would seem to be caused by local/state governments not balancing the interests of their citizens with the interests of ISPs. As a result, some ISPs are granted local monopolies without compensating conditions on quality of service. This allows them to avoid competition and maximize the squeeze on captive customers while providing a shoddy service by minimizing their investment in infrastructure. There are apparently some areas of the US with decent service, but in far too many places, it seems that the customers are being brutalized by the ISPs, while the authorities egg them on.
A lot of people have some funny ideas about rights are. Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and 1MB Broadband access? Oh, Finland, you're doing it wrong.
I'm saying the guarantee of a broadband connection for all is meaningless if you don't also have guaranteed access to all legal content on the Internet. When police are able to block perfectly legitimate websites, and do so without even the due process of law, the guarantee itself becomes meaningless. That doesn't mean the connection is worthless in practice -- only that the guarantee is worthless.
Having said that, I'm happy to find out the filter has been nearly abandoned by Finnish ISPs.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
So it is just DNS filtering(effi link in GP post confirms this)? There are tons of DNS servers that you could configure your connection to use, such as OpenDNS. I'd like to know how much they spent on this filter to "save the children", when it does nothing to stop child pornographers, and can be easily worked around by the perverts who view cp sites. Also, even if many ISPs offer an opt-out, depending on Finnish laws, it could be used to persecute those who opt-out even if they are doing so with the intent to access legal content.
This is why any government censorship of content needs to be opt-in only. That way those that want to "protect" their children from seeing any naughty content, they can do so, while protecting freedoms of the rest of the country. Please note that this post is from a US perspective, and I do realize that many countries do not have protected freedom of speech. Then again, our government doesn't seem to even play lip-service to freedom of speech anymore, but that is another issue.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
...ISP's have zero incentive to offer anything better. The bandwidth that I have available to me right now is actually less than what I was getting ten years ago in a different metropolitan market. If an ISP has a local/regional monopoly, and there is no competing option for 100Mbps synchronous rates, then they will continue to gouge us for the equivalent of a shared cocktail straw.
The last mile network is key. Separate the ISP services from the network connectivity. Make the last mile network fast, and encourage an environment where many ISP's can peer with the last mile network & compete for customers on level ground. Then you'll see real change.
Was it a right, or just a law passed to mandate people get this? If they consider it a fundamental human right, they have some real issues.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It has long been accepted by all, that it is legitimate for the government to deter monopolies (see anti-trust laws). Unfortunately, in several cases, the government chose to create monopolies under a foolish assumption, that it will be able to mitigate the drawbacks of monopolization by regulation. AT&T Corp. was the most infamous example of the spectacular failure of that illogic...
Yes, it does seem stupid and wasteful to have multiple ISPs run their own cables to each house. However, it is better in the long run, than to allow only one company (such as Verizon) run one cable and then "lease" access to competitors...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This law is not really about providing each citizen with broadband access, it's more about guaranteeing that the access is not TAKEN AWAY from people who already have it.. The thing is, maintaining physical phone lines in rural areas is expensive, and phone companies want to get rid of them. This law guarantees at least a reasonable wireless broadband option in that scenario. As it is now, DSL is available almost everywhere, including many rural areas. Cities of course have even more options like cable and fibre.
Almost anyplace a little further south has access to satellite (which sucks).
Saskatchewan is so far north I'm betting covering your northern most town via satellite will be a challenge.
Too lazy to do the trig GSO vs max latitude vs Northernmost hellhole in Sask.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This will guarantee internet will suck in Finland.
They aren't greater than -20C..... They must make peesicles all the time.
Social Security is not welfare, it's insurance.
Disability is not welfare, it's insurance.
Medicare/Medicaid is not welfare, it's insurance.
Only in the sense that you have changed the definition of insurance.
Social Security is not insurance. In insurance, you pay a premium to manage the financial risk of an exceptional event occurring. If the event happens, you get some big payment commensurate with the premium that you paid and level of risk. There is no "risk factor" to social security, so you get old.
Medicare/Medicaid are not insurance. In the case of Medicare, again, there is no risk management. You get old, you sign up for Medicare. It's not insurance.
Disability is not insurance in the SSI sense because the people who are on disability tend to be permanently disabled. Again, what's the "risk" that someone who is blind will need continued federal support. It's not insurance, it's welfare.
If you're going to peddle right-wing bullshit, try to make it plausible right-wing bullshit, OK?
How about, the left wing tells the truth about something, anything, please. For the life of me I do not understand why you self-styled lefties have to pathologically lie about everything you promote? It's so obvious that entitlements are welfare, and yet, you can't even be bothered to call them for what they are.
Even now, you call "health insurance reform" "insurance", when its not. You say insurers should "cover" pre-existing conditions, or buy prescription drugs, or mammograms, when none of those are -risk- factors. If you want to have a national welfare program for mammograms and doctors visits, call it that, and then, have insurance be just what it is - a financial vehicle for risk management. But stop going around and telling people that "insurance" is just another way to get something for free, when all that free stuff really is, is welfare.
This is my sig.
made internet access a legal right but forgets to mention the three strikess bill which has alledgedly been broken twice alreaedy at least by N. Sarkozy himself ... ? bit of a contradiction in there ... Good news for the finnish tho. GO FINLAND
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Finland: 338,424 square kilometers
United States: 9,826,675 square kilometers
29 times the area to cover, and that includes wiring Alaska and Hawaii.