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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?"
(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..).
Actually not "the internet" but unfiltered internet ACCESS is what is should become a inalienable right. Like the right to read any book I chose...
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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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.
Freedom of speech does not necessarily extend to the methods used for speech. Freedom of speech does not give you an inalienable right to stand in public area speaking my mind into a 200dB sound system. Freedom of speech does not give you the right to call every number in the phone book at 2am. Hell, there's already significant precedent giving the government the right to revoke a citizens right to use a telephone. I'm not saying that the right to internet access shouldn't be be granted, but it is 100% not covered under existing precedent and interpretation of the first amendment.
That's not how it works. Free Speech is a right, but only idiots claim that means one can take over a private conference hall to make ones self heard. The right only means, as the Constitution states, that Congress shall make no law abridging this right. Similarly, an amendment to make Internet access an inalienable right would simply prevent Congress from taking it away. It would not mean that private enterprise or individuals would be forced to provide access.
Like... ahem... slashdotting?
No more than freedom of assembly encourages mobs.
The internet is made up of other people's networks. One uses the internet through access provided, for profit, by other people. Making internet access an inalienable right would mean giving one group of people, those without internet access, a right to the property of other people, ISP owners...
Sorry, your reductionist approach in trying to make this a "property rights trump all" issue fails. Do you realize that ISPs run wire and fiber over other people's property left and right, due to easements granted by law without paying a penny? Those people are forced to accommodate the property of a private business, denying them unlimited use of that portion of their property. The ISPs are given special legal privileges in exchange for providing a service to the public, as well as the opportunity to make money.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
So what happens if the government recognizes "unfiltered Internet access" as an inalienable right?
imamac's point was that recognizing it as a right doesn't get you anywhere. It is like saying food security or access to medical care is an inalienable right: Somebody has to pay to provide it, and it requires the transfer of goods or services from one person to another. That makes it different from the things that we traditionally recognize as inalienable rights.
Too many inalienable rights and you dilute the meaning. Same with people calling everyone in the armed forces a "hero".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
That's great until said private interests and your own interests are in opposition, then you're left with no recourse whatsoever. If we had private roads, and the private company that owned the roads decided you weren't allowed to use them anymore because you were talking crap about them online, or pissed off the wrong person in management, or one of the countless reasons a private company and their lawyers could come up to the justify it, what do you do when you need to use those roads to go to work?
Privatizing everything is just as dangerous to the common man. I know that a lot of people are on this "Government BAD!!! Privatization GOOD!!!!" kick right now, but it bears mentioning that our own government for decades was able to manage and improve our infrastructure just fine. It's not the government that has failed, it is the people in government lately that have failed. Say what you want about all the problems this country had in the past, and how our "golden years" weren't necessarily all sunshine and roses, but there were still a fair number of people in government that came out of World War II with a sense of civic duty. The fact that they've all been forced out by opportunists doesn't mean that government has failed, it means that we need to put better people in government.
Like all this nonsense with Social Security, they take money from it for years and years and then, when they've finally taken enough to put the fund into real danger of not being able to meet it's obligations, now it's being trotted out as an example of why government can't do anything right. Bullshit. S.S. was working just fine until those self-serving assholes started robbing it and playing games with money that didn't belong to them.
Mod up. I served in the military during a time of war. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier. I was never shot at. Am I damn proud of my service? You betcha. Am I a hero, definatley not. I have no idea how I would react to getting shot at. Would I have the courage to run forward to help a wounded man? I would like to *think* that I would...
Intent is an important aspect of law. The Constitution guarantees the right to "peaceably assemble", and the peaceable part includes both intent and action. So if a bunch of people all click on a link because they're interested in it (eg it got posted to slashdot) then even if the server crashes, no crime has been committed. If a bunch of people decide to maliciously take down a website by convincing a large group of people to hit refresh all day on their browser, then their intentions are not peaceful, and their actions would not be protected by the first amendment even if it was decided that the freedom of assembly applied to visiting a webpage. Much like freedom of assembly does not protect a group of people blocking the doorway to a grocery store.
No, the US constitution was important because it put THE GOVERNMENTS rights in simple English on a sheet of paper. It's supposed to list what the government can do, not what the people can do; I say supposed to because the monstrosity of government we have now is so out of scope of the original purpose of government that it's beyond defining. The Bill of Rights (which is what you're really talking about) was an afterthought introduced by Madison because it was feared that the Constitution wasn't explicit enough, i.e., people would allow the government to grow beyond its purpose and trample certain rights were key to the revolution in the first place.
The Constitution doesn't give you freedom. It gives the government freedom. Freedom isn't given to you by your government - it's something your government is supposed to protect!
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.
Those examples you gave were abuse of those rights, but they still don't necessitate limiting the rights of everyone else because of a few bad actors. Just because 10% of people on the internet are trading warez or pirated movies and music doesn't give them the right to infringe upon my rights to freely travel the internet.
If we allow the government (or any private company, not just the government) the right to censor what web sites we can access, the internet is doomed in the U.S.. Just because the sites they want to censor right now are allegedly IP violators (and the alleged part of this can't be ignored; as it stands there is no recourse whatsoever to prevent erroneous reports from killing perfectly legit, legally-operated web sites), that doesn't mean they won't turn their sites on something else later. First it's child pornographers. Then it's IP thieves. Then it's bomb making instructions, fringe websites like Westboro Baptist Church and "Terrorist Groups". Then it's the Occupy organizing websites because of the conflicts with different police forces all over the country. Then it's sites promoting the overthrow of our government. After all, these actions are all "for the public good", right?
Our access to the internet today is just as much a necessary facet of the public's right to revolution as the Second Amendment and Freedom of Speech and Assembly was in our Forefather's time. We've grown beyond the days when someone can ring the town bell and have all the men come rushing to town with their Brown Bess'. The internet is our town bell, so to speak.
Giving the government the ability to limit our access to the internet is no different than allowing the government to rescind the 2nd Amendment and start collecting our guns. Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, evinced this mindset when he wrote the words:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Without unfettered access to the internet, the government is in effect limiting this human right. We have the right to gather and demonstrate and, yes, even throw off our government if we feel that we are not being properly represented. If any of our sitting reps actually respect our founding fathers and the foundations of our country, they will vote against this ridiculous SOPA shit.
Certainly what these petitions are trying to get is a state where everyone gets Internet access gratis.
Oh, bullshit. This isn't about free internet, this is about open access to it. Neither our government nor private business has the right to tell us where we are allowed to go on the internet. Just because right now this is about IP violators doesn't mean it will stay that way, eventually it will be used as justification to shut it down for reasons of social unrest under the reasoning of "the public good".
I pay for a web connection. What I do with it is my business. If I am infringing upon the rights of others in my actions, than by all means, prosecute me for my actions, that's the way the law works. What you can't do, though, is use the fact that I used my internet connection to break the law as an excuse to block everyone else.
This shit is all based on the premise of guilty before proven innocent. It is totally against the spirit of our legal system in it's entirety.
The Second Amendment is not a right to a gun or a right to own a gun. It prevents one's right to bear an arm being infringed. The Second Amendment doesn't give the right, but rather assumes the right exists and denies the government the right to remove it.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Even if the courts ultimately found SOPA unconstitutional, it wouldn't happen the "day it gets signed". It would take years for a case to get to the Supreme Court level. And in the meantime, there would be quite a chilling effect on speech on the Internet.
And there's always a chance that the powers that be would rely more on intimidation and bluffing rather than risk getting the law overturned. For example, it's remember all those technically illegal t-shirts and other things that have the DeCSS code printed on them? Since they were never prosecuted, the DMCA never got challenged. But there's still a chilling effect on Linux distributors (not to mention DVD player makers) to not distribute that code, just in fear of prosecution, and the costs that would entail.
This is why it's important to stop bad laws BEFORE they become laws.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown