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Petition Calls For Making Net Access Inalienable Right
CelticWhisper writes "Targeted at stopping SOPA, a petition has been started at the White House's 'We The People' page calling for a Constitutional amendment that would render internet access an inalienable right. Other countries have already adopted such classification for internet access. An excerpt from petition text reads: 'The United States Government is actively attempting to pass legislation to censor Internet. There are numerous campaigns against this Act, but we need to do more than just prevent SOPA from passing. Otherwise, future Acts of similar nature will oppress our rights.' Is calling for a Constitutional amendment to guarantee this too extreme, or is the Internet sufficiently entrenched in modern life that access to it should be guaranteed by the Constitution?"
it's called Free Speech. That's not to say that the Government won't try to take it away, as they have with other rights, but there it is. The Internet isn't a thing which can be (properly) regulated, it's just a bunch of people/organizations voluntarily communicating.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You can't have an inalienable right to someone else's property.
No more rights!!! This is a dangerous precedent!!! We already have the right to internet access, don't you people understand???? We have the right to EVERYTHING that is not illegal. The only power the govt has is to REMOVE certain rights (which i agree with). If we run down this road of "We, the GOVERNMENT" did not "grant" the right to internet access, the whole thing falls down. Things like this scare the shit out of me. Every single law that is passed has one thing in common, it limits your rights (which, again, is a good thing, felons with guns, etc..).
It is an inalienable right.
Consider what would be like if someone attempted to pass a law that says people should not talk with loud voices in public spaces. Or, people should not talk in groups bigger than 2. that would basically totally neutralize your right to free speech as you used it through your own, inalienable voice. it would basically alienate your right to speak, with your inalienable throat. this would totally end free speech back in ages where there wasnt technology like newspapers, tv, internet.
Or, consider a law that banned anyone from printing and publishing anything without consent from king's council. that would basically end free speech circa 1774. no pamphlet, or newspaper would be published that king didnt allow. notice, how pamphlets, newspapers had had taken over your sole, single throat as the medium free speech was conducted back at that time.
Fast forward to today. This isnt no different. internet is the medium that free speech is conducted - but actually more - its the best avenue for free speech. you restrict it, and you restrict free speech. It has taken over throat, newspapers/print medium and tv as the vehicle of free speech. Notice that i skipped the radio and tv era. that is because there has never been free speech in that era, due to the license/financial requirements they had.
internet is now our throats. cutting people off from internet, is like cutting their throats so there wont be free speech.
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Does that mean the staff of your ISP has to be hauled into The Hague and charged with Crimes Against Humanity, for denying you of your "human rights"?
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
By making something like internet access an inalienable right, the government would be required to ensure every single person in the United States has not only access to an internet connection, but also a means of connection. The government would be required to buy people computers or smart phones. And, if a person lost, broke, or sold his computer, the government would be required to give him a new one because without a computer, he would not have inalienable right to internet access.
Also, the government would have to either pay for everyone to have internet access, provide some sort of subsidy for those who can't afford internet access, start it's own ISP which would end up directly competing with private companies, or nationalize all ISPs.
Then, there is the small fact that no one could be sentenced to not having internet access, regardless of the crime. Spammers, crackers, sexual predators, child molesters, child pornographers, and even generic criminals. And, being an "inalienable right", internet access would have to be available, on demand, to ever single prisoner in the United States, including email and instant messaging. Gangsters could use texts, email, and facebook to run their crews and order hits on witnesses. On-line grifters could run their scams from prison. Rapists could email and text their victims. Pedophile predators could stalk and groom new victims. And, being inalienable, the prisons would be unable to prevent them.
This is truly a case of not thinking things through. The unintended consequences and costs of this bill would greatly outweigh it's benefits.
And, these people want to make internet access an inalienable right, not food when we have people going hungry in this country? Really? Talk about fucked up priorities.
And, finally, need the internet to have free speech? First world problems.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
First Amendment
The right to assemble applies to cyberspace, not just meatspace. Furthermore, the right to freedom of press is meaningless without the right to assemble to give the person your leaflet. Even though the document is over 200 years old, already it made first-class acknowledgement of technology: the printing press, a major technological leap from the fifteenth century. The Constitution is technology-aware. The Internet is the new press, and to prevent publication on it or to prevent receiving publications from it is unconsitutional.
Of course, this is meaningless with a Constitution that is not just routinely ignored, but at this point completely dead. Although the Constitution has been dying for the past century, the watershed moment for me came last month when a U.S. judge nullified the War Powers Act and put the capacity for declaration of war completely in the Executive Branch. Worse than the actual court decision, is that no one noticed or cared.
On the one hand we have a society that is making it increasingly difficult for people to function normally (buy things, pay bills, find government information, etc.) without access to the Internet. On the other we have corporations that 1.) are trying to criminalize whatever we do on the Internet as much as they can in order to increase their profit margins, and 2.) have way too much money and influence on our governments, meaning that they will attempt endlessly to push their agendas until they succeed. A Constitutional amendment would be a good way to put a stop to their attempts once and for all.
Okay, so what about the really bad guys out their, distributing spam, viruses, kiddy-porn -- wouldn't they then also have an inalienable right to Internet access? Well, yes, but those people can also be fined and/or incarcerated.
IMHO the internet should not be mentioned explicitly. At most, the first amendment might be extended to include electronic communications. Plain and simple language is important, and specifics should be avoided.
Yes, and one of the specifics to be avoided is the term "electronic". This would, for instance, tell the lawyers (and the Supreme Court) that optical fiber isn't covered, since it used photons rather than electrons.
More generally, we should probably tackle the growing problem that, whenever a computer gets involved in any activity, all legal precedent is discarded, and all legal rights must be re-established from scratch. Thus, we see all sorts of limitations of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, etc., because we're doing those activities online rather than in the "real world", and the online world exists primarily inside computers (and their comm links). So people don't see the communications as "speech" or publishing or assembling together, or whatever; they see the communications as electronic and computerized. The US Constitution doesn't mention computers (or electronics or photonics or tachyonics or whatever follows), so the people in power don't think that the US Constitution applies.
What we need is an Amendment that specifically states that our "free" activities can't be limited by the government regardless of the equipment that we use to carry them out. We need to find a way to prevent them from cancelling all the freedoms whenever a new technology comes along that improves our ability to carry out the protected activities. And we need a phrasing that covers new technologies in such a way that the more authoritarian members of the Supreme Court will understand that the freedoms still apply.
(And I refuse to call them "conservatives". An actual conservative would want to preserve our historic freedoms, regardless of whatever newfangled gadgetry we're using to exercise them. These people are "authoritarians", because they support those in positions of authority who want to limit our rights whenever they can think up a new excuse to do so.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.