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Berners-Lee: Web Access Is a 'Human Right'
jbrodkin writes "Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee says humans have become so reliant on it that access to the Web should now be considered a basic right. In a speech at an MIT symposium, Berners-Lee compared access to the Web with access to water. 'Access to the Web is now a human right,' he said. 'It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.'"
A free and open internet may disappear if we don't fight for net neutrality. And we need it more now than ever.
So not providing web access is in the same category as e.g. imprionment without trial or torture? Will we see stories about how people in Guantanamo Bay are *gasp* deprived of Facebook? This does seem to triviliase human rights just a little.
fill in the X with your favorite personal privileged that you'd like other people to finance for you.
Me, I'd like fast cars, a big house, and loose women. I mean, those are all things that make me happy and happieness is a basic human right, right?
Moreover, the divide between myself and those who have the sweet cars, fast women, and kickass houses is growing bigger and bigger every year, and I think it's high time that the government stepped in and gave me the crap I'm asking for.
I think Berners Lee and others are assuming an importance to the web that it doesn't deserve. Sure, without it life can become harder if you do a lot of shopping and banking online , but jesus Tim , get a sense of perspective.
... that the idea behind human rights was to prevent torture, exploitation and give everyone the right to the fair trial.
Internet access? How pathetic the human race has become.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
A lot of people confuse the two. For instance, in the USA, we have the right to print our own newspapers, pamphlets, flyers, etc., collectively known as the freedom of the press (which obviously extends to electronic media as well). In this case, the government can't prevent you from doing it, but they also don't have to supply you with the means to produce those materials. I'm afraid more people will view the "right" to internet access as a government provided product that costs the entire society, in which case it is actually an entitlement. The bad thing about entitlements is that the government can also place restrictions on how you use them, since they're holding the purse strings...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The question is, why do we have our rights? Some, like a right to water, etc... are basic because they are needed for survival.
Some, like freedom of speech, are there to protect our other rights.
The question is, in the modern day and age, can you truly have freedom of speech without Internet access? It's become so vital to communicate, and such a powerful tool, having access the internet is a safeguard against tyranny, just as a soapbox was before it.
Internet access protects your other rights. That is enough to mean maybe we should think of it as a right.
I'm not saying, just as he isn't, that it's as essential as water or whatever to survival, but we should aim for better than that, and do in other instances, so why not here?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Internet access isn't a human right. Nevertheless, the internet is an incredibly important tool used by all modern nations of the world. To that end, internet access should be treated as just another facet of the basic infrastructure of any modern nation. Basically, internet access ought to be treated as a postal system or the highways: it's so important to the survival of any nation, economically and militarily, that the government should regulate it and allow citizens to use it as a public system. As it is, internet access in modern America is what the railroad companies were during 19th century America: they are owned by huge, ultra competitive corporations, whose economic fights are doing more harm than good to the nation.
We should, by now, be able to meet the rights for food and shelter and protection from harm
How can you have a 'right' to food, shelter and protection without enslaving others to provide those things for you? Don't those people have 'rights'?
There are NO positive rights, only negative rights. You have a right not to be stolen from or murdered. You do NOT have a right to have stuff given to you, because that implies that there is a right to take that thing from someone else. Such "rights" lead straight to hell.
If you want to argue for net neutrality, fine, but arguing that someone must take on the role of Santa Claus is just asinine, and highly destructive if such mandates carry the force of law and the threat of violence from the state which follows.
Access doesn't really mean anything more than having the opportunity to swing by your local library to use one of the public computers from time to time. Access does not mean having personal broadband, an iPad, a netbook, or any of the other gadgets and toys that some would like to think it means.
I do believe that basic access should be a guaranteed right -- but that does not absolve the individual from having to pay their bills, do some legwork to get to the library, or otherwise put in an effort to make use of their rights. Think "voting" -- just because you have a "right" to vote does not mean anyone else has to do diddly squat to help you get to the polling station.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The infrastructure that was mostly paid for by the taxpayers. So we do own it, really.
Sorry buddy but that is utterly false. The modern internet is run over fiber optics that was laid across the country by Quest and Level 3 and other companies. The last mile that runs to your house was wired in by a company. The government has not been a majority spender on the internet for at least a decade, probably longer... what Arpanet gave us was the concept of the internet, which private business has taken and run with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And the other 100 people sitting on their asses expect those 3 to provide for them as well..
After all it is their "Right."
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If my housing and food are provided for, I'm telling you right now.
I'll never do anything productive, as I have no need to do so.
I'm not just saying that as a big scary threat. I'm telling you -- I know myself. This is a fact. If I know that I'll be able to live in a warm house and have food on my table, without ever doing anything to earn it, I will never do anything to earn it.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Positive rights are "more fun" than negative rights, which is why I think most people gravitate to them. This is how we get arguments about how great Cuban healthcare is, while completely ignoring the fact that if you own an unlicensed cell phone in Cuba you will quite literally be facing "reeducation through hard labor" or worse. The left has almost completely abandoned negative rights except when someone does something to a protected group that is bad enough to make a liberal say "there ought to be a law..." (and by coincidence, there was, in the Constitution).
Instead of focusing on rights to this or that material thing, how about getting hot and bothered about the poor not having these rights in most of the world:
1. The right to freedom of speech.
2. The right to worship freely.
3. The right to protection from abusive searches and seizures.
4. The right to keep and bear arms for personal defense.
5. The right to a public, honest and open trial with legal defense.
6. The right to not be tortured.
7. Habeus corpus as a human right.
But what happens when someone says "Why should I have to work? I just want to sit at home and play guitar/whack off/go fishing/watch youtube all day"? What happens when someone says "I want all of that stuff without having to work for it?"
That's the problem with having all of this stuff just provided to everyone as entitlements/"rights". You wind up counting on people to contribute back, to carry their own weight... in short, to do the "right thing". Problem is, people don't do that. They're lazy and self-interested. If they see they can get all of the benefits without having to work, they won't work.
At that point, either the people who are still working have to work harder to provide the same goods and services with less manpower, or they say "screw it, why should I have to work harder just because that guy doesn't want to?" and quit working themselves. The cycle repeats itself until there's nobody doing any work, and nobody gets free stuff anymore.
Alternatively, you can force the lazy people to go back to work, but this presents its own problem. Forcing someone to work against his/her will sounds a lot like this thing we call "slavery", which just about anyone will agree is a Bad Thing.
So which is it? Do you let the slackers get perpetual free rides and watch as your society crumbles under the burden of millions of freeloaders? Do you stand behind everyone and crack a whip to keep them working? Or do you leave it up to able-bodied individuals to provide for themselves?
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
The infrastructure that was mostly paid for by the taxpayers. So we do own it, really.
Much like the railroads were given free land and various rights in the 19th century. Have you tried getting a free ride from the rail roads?
:-)
Personally, as a taxpayer, I'd rather have a free in the F/A-18 I've paid for.
Even in the most comfortable welfare states, the vast majority of people get up and go to work every day without complaint. This claim that no one would work in a welfare state doesn't square with decades of real-world practice.
This is becoming a joke, first people try to claim health care is a right (as if I could just march in a doctor's office and demand my right to a checkup)
It's no joke. You can walk into any emergency room in US and demand your right to be seen. I would hate to live in a country where I would be denied care if I had a certain skin color, if I didn't belong to a certain social class, or if I didn't have enough money to pay.
Sure, you have to pay later, but someone has to foot the bill for any public service, just like someone has to foot the bill for a police force and a justice system to enforce your other rights. If you can afford to pay the doctor's bill, you pay. If you can't afford to pay, then the government (AKA your fellow taxpayers) will cover you.
I want to live in a society that ensures everyone will be taken care of when they are sick or injured, especially those most vulnerable like children or the poor. That seems like my idea of a just, fair society. The trick, of course, is finding the most affordable way to do this, and who knows if we are anywhere near that ideal yet.
I don't believe you. You mean to tell me there is nothing creative that interests you? You have no motivation, besides putting food on the table, to do anything? If you do, I pity you. And I'm fairly sure you are in a small minority, or at least conditioned to be that way. Most children, before they get through high school, are eager to learn and create, even though their food and housing are provided for. It's human nature.
Nathan's blog
That may very well be the case, there are people like that.
However, decades of experience in countries where things like housing and food are provided to those who have none has demonstrated that the vast, vast majority of people are not like that.
The reason why you think you would act that way is probably because, as you imply in your post, you think you'd be living in a house - in other words, that your standard of living would be unchanged. That's not the case at all; you'd be living in high-density housing with relatively poor food. It would be good enough, but it wouldn't be very good.
In reality, it's not very different from your current situation. You could drop out of society and go become a homeless person at any time; why haven't you? Because the quality of life wouldn't be to your satisfaction? Well then, let me assure you that while the quality of life under such a system would be better, it probably still wouldn't be something you would choose over working, when given the option.