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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.
(Posting AC from work)
Show me a Canadian version of it and I'll sign! Imagine a world in which people would be banned from having access to a telephone. Seems pretty insane, right? Well, the internet is now in the same realm as phone access - it is a vital means of communication. Banning access to it is unacceptable. Sign it.
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..).
how do you tell your robot helicopter which truck to land on if you don't have access to the internet?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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 signing this petition, you are demanding the Obama Administration to add an amendment to the Constitution that limits the power of the Government from being able to censor the Internet.
Even if someone somehow got the impression that the Obama administration did not fully support the pro-copyright laws mentioned in the petition, the president cannot simply "add an amendment" to the constitution. The process by which amendments are added to the constitution is specified in Article V. Here it is so you don't have to bother looking it up:
Note that the president has no official role in the process.
Secondly: sorry folks, Obama is not your guy in this one, even if he could amend the constitution. Frankly, I'd very surprised to see anti-corporate-copyright opinion taken seriously by any presidential administration in my lifetime. You don't get to be in that position by making an enemy of Big Media.
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.
already covered by:
"""
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
"""
And if it's "they ignore that" then why do they think some new amendment wouldn't be ignored in exactly the same way?
The "inalienable right to health care" also is an "inalienable right to someone else's property", so there is ample precedent.
(Note that I think that basic health care should actually be provided to everybody, but that's cheap. The "right to health care" in US and European politics means universal access to expensive, state-of-the-art first world treatments, which is something entirely different.)
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.
Correct, but the point of this is preventing Congress from ever taking them away. Something I wouldn't have thought we needed 10 years ago, but as the years go by they sure seem awfully excited to limit or prevent access.
Unfortunately EU law doesn't seem to actually mean very much. France has been going around and banning people from the internet. That's actually kind of behind what the US does.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/13463316198/france-continues-mass-processing-infringement-accusations-60-people-get-third-strike-notice-650000-get-first-strike.shtml
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.
Except, per your reference, the judge did none of that. He simply stated the lawmakers bringing suit had no standing to do so; they did it as private citizens. The case was not a test of Constitutional powers (which would go to the supremes) but yet another simple case of individuals using the courts to further their agenda.
While the question of what rights does the President have to send troops, in his role of CiC and as a furtherance of his diplomatic powers, and what powers does Congress have to limit such actions is interesting; this was not a test case for that.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm living in one of those "other countries". Finland, to be specific.
And I think the legislators did the right thing. I just think that the expression "Right to Broadband" was a little bit grandiose considering what happened.
The law that gave us the "right to broadband" didn't give us any "inalienable rights". I think it would be absolutely absurd to call Internet access part of citizen's fundamental rights. Definitely a right, but not fundamental. I certainly wouldn't want the legislators to mess with the frigging Constitution to get us that.
Technology comes and goes. You don't want to guarantee the citizens to have an access to something that could be obsolete. If you try to make the legislation to stand the test of time, it will end up too vague to be put in the constitution. No, if you want to give people the right to use specific technologies, that calls for less grandiose and narrower laws.
Besides, you can't force people on the Internet, perhaps against their wishes, perhaps against the wishes of other people. ISPs still need to be able to tell the spammers to fuck off, for example. You can't turn that kind of very necessary exceptions into a broadly applicable part of the constitution, dammit.
So here's what the "right to broadband" actually entailed here: Telecom companies have to get off their asses and build the network to the specs of the day. They must ensure that all customers who want reasonably fast broadband Internet will get it at a reasonable price.
And why did they do this? A lot of services depend on the Internet. You need to be able to do banking and talk to the government bureaus and whatever -- a lot of that is in the Internet these days. On the less essential side we have internet shops - folks who live in the middle of the woods need to order their stuff online.
All this is here to highlight something: You need to ensure that people who need to get online will get online. Even if you're a repeated spam offender and can only use your Internet bank account in presence of an armed guard (a completely hypothetical scenario, yeah), but dammit, still, you can't take it away because that's what you sometimes have to do to get through the day.
But note that all of that is completely separate from freedom of speech. You have to campaign to get your right to access the internet. You don't need to campaign for your right to say pretty much whatever you want on the Internet because you already have that right. Unlike the right to get a reasonably priced Internet access, the right to free speech is something you can put in a constitution, and it bloody well already is there.
A Constitutional amendment might be necessary. Just as the 4th Amendment clear definition of the right to privacy as "secure in their persons, homes, papers and effects" doesn't force the government to protect our privacy instead of invading it, the 1st Amendment doesn't force the government to protect our speech and press freedoms. (In fact it has never protected our religious freedoms, since it's been turned on its head making Congress respect establishments of religion in tax exemptions while requiring them to operate their establishments in ways exempted from free speech and press exemptions.) The Constitution that creates the only powers our government legitimately holds needs amendments clarifying our rights in modern language that lawyers don't find so easy to pervert.
One amendment would simply state that Congress shall protect the right to freedom of religion, making no law that includes distinctions on the basis of religion, and protects the rights to freedom of the press and of speech by making no law that infringes on them without due process. Another amendment would simply state that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, homes, papers and effects is the right to privacy. Might as well go the next step in stating that the right to keep and bear arms necessary to supplying a militia that defends a free state is protected from infringement by law. All these clarifications make the Constitution direct the government to actually protect our freedoms, rather than allow weasel words (and weasel lawyers) to get the government to abuse our freedoms.
We need another amendment that states that a person is only any individual human who can understand these rights. That eliminates the corporate "person", and even the related fetal "person" that some people have used get the government to increasingly deprive real people our rights. In fact, if we passed that amendment first, the others might not be necessary.
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make install -not war
We do not have "[t]he right to assemble...to freedom of press..." etc.
We have a right from "law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble". There is a big difference.
We have rights from the government making laws prohibiting certain things because the Constitution assumes that rights are inherent to the people and the government puts in place laws to limit those rights as needed by civil society. The rights FROM certain laws exist to protect what the founding fathers saw as rights needed to keep the government in check. The clearest example of this is Amendment 10 "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That is because the right isn't to a free press, free speech, and to bear arms. It is a right to Congress not passing a law preventing or abridging those rights. That is why Amendment 1 begins "Congress shall make no law", and why Amendment 2 ends "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights to certain things. It is a list of rights to be free of certain things and laws. The law proposed would be a right to something, not a right to be free of something.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Nope. The constitution doesn't say much directly about your rights. It says what the government can and can not do. An example would be "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." While it does indicate the people have a right, the purpose is to limit what the government can do. AFAIK it is impossible for a citizen or business to violate the constitution - that's why bars can have "ladies night" and not be charges with discrimination. Your right to discriminate is not spelled out in the constitution, only the governments requirement NOT to discriminate.
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. In fact, speech and things should not be taken as literal "speaking", but communication - in that case, the internet is already covered.
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.
Whether or not freedom of speech covers the internet is up to the courts to decide, not congress. And since they've already determined that writing is a form of speech I don't see how writing "on the internet" would be any different.
The word "internet" does not appear even once in the US Constitution. ... As such Congress is perfectly able legislate restrictions on internet use
Ahem... wrong!
Amendment 9 - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
If it's not in the Constitution, Congress cannot make any laws about it. AFAIK, that's why abortion is legal in the USA, because it's not mentioned in the Constitution.