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Is Mobile Broadband a Luxury Or a Human Right?

Posted by Soulskill on from the thou-shalt-not-be-stuck-with-dial-up dept.

concealment sends this quote from an article at CNN: "Moderating a discussion on the future of broadband, Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff tossed a provocative question to the audience: 'By quick show of hands, how many out there think that broadband is a luxury?' Next question: 'How many out there think it is a human right?' That option easily carried the audience vote. Broadband access is too important to society to be relegated to a small, privileged portion of the world population, Hans Vestberg, president and CEO of Ericsson, said during the discussion. Dr. Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, echoed Vestberg's remarks. 'We need to make sure all the world's inhabitants are connected to the goodies of the online world, which means better health care, better education, more sustainable economic and social development,' Touré said."

21 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. A Luxury by siphonophore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One must be careful about diluting the word "right." Leave it at 3, and protect them fiercely.

    --
    Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
    -Scott Adams
    1. Re:A Luxury by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When living your life often requires internet access, then it becomes a right.

      Living your life more often requires a car than internet access. Is owning a car a right? Do we all get free cars?

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    2. Re:A Luxury by Mephistophocles · · Score: 4, Insightful
      How incredibly naive.

      When living your life often requires internet access, then it becomes a right.

      I don't know whether to feel sorry for you or just be disgusted by the fact that you think one can't live one's life without internet access. What basic function of existence, exactly (and by the way, entertainment - as per your video machine rental analogy - isn't a basic function of existence) becomes impossible without the internet? How exactly do you think mankind lived before the internet existed (and by the way, I'm an old(ish) fart so I've spent more of my life without the internet than with it)?

      The number of examples where email/broadband availability is ASSUMED will increase in the future, because it is cheaper to remove human cost from the equation. Thus, the non-internet minority will become marginalized to an increasingly greater degree.

      And here you've committed a horrible and dangerous logical error, thereby missing the fact that marginalizing a segment of mankind because they a) can't afford a service, or b) choose - for whatever reason - not to spend money on that service, would be a pretty facist action. Whether or not it happens anyway isn't the issue; tacit acceptance of that happening (and thereby mandating that service as a human right) is.

      The internet is a wonderful thing - and access to it is certainly a nice thing to have. It does make some aspects of living in a 1st-world country very convenient (we can argue later about how convenience can and often does destroy skill, but for now we'll assume convenience is a good thing). But the absence of it does not make life unlivable. Anyone who says different probably works for Comcast. :)

      --
      Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
    3. Re:A Luxury by Kaz+Kylheku · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Here is a good way to express it. People have a right not to be ACTIVELY marginalized (i.e. singled out in some way and oppressed). People do not have a right not to be PASSIVELY marginalized (living in some disadvantaged way due to their own inability or inaction).

      Leftist "rights" advocates are not able to see the difference.

    4. Re:A Luxury by kelemvor4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When living your life often requires internet access, then it becomes a right.

      Living your life more often requires a car than internet access. Is owning a car a right? Do we all get free cars?

      Plenty of people live without both, and neither one is a right. This is silliness that's being used to sell electronics.

    5. Re:A Luxury by msauve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, it's a luxury. A "right" doesn't exist where you can demand that someone else buy you something (the child/parent relationship excepted). If the CEO of Ericsson disagrees, I'll need to know his address, so I can send him my Internet bill.

      Of course, what he's really saying is "Governments, through the force of taxation, should get the richer taxpaers to buy Internet connections for the poorer, increasing the market for my company."

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    6. Re:A Luxury by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When living your life often requires internet access, then it becomes a right. If everyone had provided the non-internet equivalent of the daily services, then maybe it would be a luxury

      Seriously???

      I mean, the internet is fantastically convenient...but there's nothing I couldn't do to live (eat, buy stuff, pay bills) without having an internet connection, and doing things the "old fashioned" way of like 8-10 years ago....

      A right? Give me a break.....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    7. Re:A Luxury by gsgriffin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was just in Zimbabwe in small villages...people there couldn't care less about the Internet, and their lives won't be getting better because of it. You provide access, now they need a computer. They have a computer, now they need power. They need power, now they need money to pay for the power. Problem: They don't have money. Who's going to give everyone that?

      They live on a barter system and off the land they live on. This is a LOT OF THE WORLD. Make it available, sure, but most of them don't give a rip about it other than a curiosity. Teach their kids how to use it, and there aren't any jobs that will use it there.

      As a privileged person who lives much of their lives on the Internet, you can't imagine life without it. Meet a person in sustenance living conditions, and they don't see it as a right or a need...just a toy.

      --
      jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
    8. Re:A Luxury by Elbereth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is that Slashdot is full of technocrats who think that we live in post-scarcity world. Arguing over whether broadband internet access is a human right or not just shows how out of touch we are with the rest of the world, which is struggling just to survive.

    9. Re:A Luxury by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And everything you can or would do on a desert island all by yourself is exactly the same as you can or would do in a modern city.

      In your world, it's your right to walk about naked and shoot at anything that catches your eye; to drive as fast as your vehicle and available roads allow; to go where you like when you like, without worrying about anyone else's privacy or property; to make as much noise as you humanly can at 3:00 a.m. or whenever else appeals to you.

      It's a simple and easy to describe definition that has no relation or relevance to reality.

    10. Re:A Luxury by CapOblivious2010 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can you really not see the difference between the right to own a car (or use the internet) vs the right to have someone else (typically "the gov't", which really means "the taxpayers") pay for it so you can have it for free?

    11. Re:A Luxury by Dare+nMc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A right doesn't equal funding or even government sponsored. IE the right to free speech, or bear arms doesn't equal no cost access to both, it does say undue restriction by government, ether by rule or cost is wrong. I would apply this to mobile internet. IE call it a right, so if the government, or provider ever bans a device because say the device didn't have a security back door for snooping, we have standing to say that is illegal, and mobile internet must not be overly restricted.

  2. You have the right to pay for your own stuff. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh spare us the human "rights" that involve other people paying for the stuff you want.

  3. Binary question by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A luxury or a human right. What there isn't a middle ground here?

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Right vs Good Idea by BenSchuarmer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not a right, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea. I think societies will find that the benefits of setting it up are worth more than the cost.

  5. Rights versus someone else's property by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rights are only appropriately applied to liberties. You never have the right to someone else's property or labor. Goods and services are not something you can have a "right" to.

    Access may be a compelling social good but it is absurd to call it a right.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    1. Re:Rights versus someone else's property by vanyel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A right is something you can do, not something someone else does for you.

  6. Telephone by Zeromous · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's a luxury stupid.

    50 years from now people will reminisce about cablemodem "party lines" and such, but just because a luxury is cheap, does not make it a human right.

    You have a inalienable human right to speak and to listen, but not to be heard (by whatever means of conveyance is completely irrelevant).

    Conveyance beyond your own two feet, larynx and lungs, is a luxury. Plain and simple.

    --
    ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
  7. There is a pretty wide disparity between... by jpstanle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a pretty wide disparity between "Luxury" and "Basic human right."

    I'd hardly call indoor plumbing, 99.9% uptime electricity, or interstate highways to be "basic human rights," but they're pretty much essential for an modern, industrial society/economy.

  8. Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness by Revotron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Life: Can you survive without it? Yes.
    2. Liberty: Does not having it limit your freedom of speech, right to bear arms, right to a fair and speedy trial, or other consitutional rights? No.
    3. Pursuit of Happiness: Could you live a happy life without it? Yes.

    It is not a right to be bestowed upon you, it is an opportunity afforded to you by others. As such, others may request compensation for it.

    I'm getting sick of this new generation of entitlement.

  9. Re:Have a bunch of "rights" for you, from 1936. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Communism is not theoretically sound because it fails to account for the basics of human nature.

    I never said it was theoretically sound; my exact words were

    communism is just as theoretically sound as any other socioeconomic principle.

    The "basics of human nature" that you claim is the antithesis of communism also invalidate the thesis of capitalism, fascism, et. al.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese