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Is Mobile Broadband a Luxury Or a Human Right?
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."
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
Oh spare us the human "rights" that involve other people paying for the stuff you want.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This is the silliest of false dichotomies. It's not a luxury because it's so widely and cheaply available. It's not a human right because it's a proper commodity like everything else. Not everything that is desirable is a human right.
Here is a bunch of "rights" for you, fresh from the 1936 USSR constitution.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I'm glad to hear so many championing common sense. Of course it isn't a right. No one has a right to other people's property or the fruits of other people's labor, and that's what network connectivity of all kinds is.
Only in nutville does a right mean using force to get someone else to give you something they have for free.
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Are we talking about broadband like home internet, or "mobile" broadband like phones and tablets?
In either case, I don't believe they are a "right", they are a luxury. Hell, even electricity isn't a "right", try not paying your bill for a couple months.
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.
there's merely values a society holds dear. the success or failure of that society is based on what those values are and how dearly the society holds those values
if it holds those values so fervently that it calls them natural human rights and fights and dies for such so-called rights, then that society will succeed if those rights indeed help the society thrive better than other societies with a different set of values. the human rights the USA holds dearly i think enriches the happiness and productivity of society enough that the USA succeeds as well as it does
some other societies hold other values to the point of fighting to the death, which i will not name, but a review of current events will reveal what i am talking about. it is my assertion that those values those other societies will fight to the death for doom those societies to less happiness and less productivity and therefore the dustbin of history, eventually, as they are simply out competed
as for mobile broadband, i can see a just society handing out cell phones to homeless and poor people to guarantee a baseline of voting rights and access to health records and financial abilities. but it will take time before cell phones reach that level of indisputable necessity and ubiquity. but we are definitely headed in that direction
in other words: not yet, but someday, when your cell phone is your credit card, id, bank account, patient records, etc., you will need such access to be called a right
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do I have the Right to not have to pay for your perceived rights? I believe that life begins at germination, first cell division, and conception in mammals, just like most trained biologists say. I believe human abortion is human murder. Do I have the right to not pay for abortions even though you think you have the right to an abortion?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I've always been puzzled by the grandiose term "right" when applied to something like healthcare or in this case broadband. I'm taking an ethics class and "right" in this context doesn't mean what we colloquially think it means; it's an academic term. It simply means that a society is making the decision that every citizen will have access to some thing or some service. I have a right to traffic signs and lights on my route to work. I have a right to electrical service so long as I pay for it. If my old school district ever went through with the policy, every high school student would have the right to a laptop.
It has little to do with your inalienable Constitutional rights that are on a higher level. It's a poor choice of words when entering a civic debate when the terminology implies something quite a bit different.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I paid Al Gore to invent the internet, I damn well better have the right to use it!
But seriously . . . I believe access to information is (or should be) a right. By whatever means is the accepted norm for the times. For example, in colonial (US) days that might mean via public assembly, printed pamphlets or newspapers. As technology progressed so did the accepted norms -- from magazines to radio and television broadcasts to the internet and beyond. And I believe the government has some responsibility to ensure that all citizens have access to information.
Am I saying every citizen should be issued a shiny new smartphone with the latest and greatest 4G plan? Of course not. But every single person should have at least some sort of internet access available to them - whether it's at a local library, school, town hall or some other public facility. Or even publicly funded private access for special cases such as a low income person who is an invalid/shut-in.
I'm afraid if we treat access to information as a privilege or luxury rather than a right, we're going to start a slippery slope we'll never get back up. And we may have already started down it . . .
None of those things are necessities for life. To survive, to be alive, I do not need to use on-line vendors.
Here in the Netherlands we increasingly need to... Various government taxes already can only, be handled online. Currently the taxes that can only be handled online are those for all (small and large) businesses. And if those businesses refuse they are put out of business. Individuals can still get a paper form for their income tax but it's already strongly discouraged. More and more parts of the government are going an online-mostly or only route, not only for additional stuff but the essentials.
Many businesses stopped sending bills through 'snail' mail. Most communication businesses (telephone, cable and internet providers) were the first to do so. Banks are decreasing their number of offices throughout the country rapidly. Most of the time only the major cities still have one (1) office where you can do your banking business. (Such an office would have to serve ten of thousands of customers if not a majority was doing his/ber banking online.) For the rest they only offer online services. The least expensive health-insurers (with the basic package) only offer you service if they can send bills electronically and medicine can only be ordered through an internet-apothecary (after you get a prescription by a certified GP or specialist of course).
With other things, not interacting online causes a hefty financial penalty. Getting your receipts through mail is a value-added option, not included in the basic packages for those businesses still offering it that don't have to send you the actual goods by mail (like shops... which are cheaper most of the time, by the way, if you order the goods online). The best deals on contracts for electricity, cooking gas, all insurances, savings accounts, mortgages and other financial products, communication products, etc. are found online.
If you want to access the educational system, you have to be online, if only it was to sign up for an actual school or university (for college education or equivalents or better).
A person in the Netherlands which doesn't have access to the internet has either a very poor standard of living or a very high one (because he can afford to opt-out).
I would say, here in the Netherlands the ability to have an internet connection capable of doing all this described above is a right. Of course that does not imply you should get a connection for free. You should still pay a proper (but also limited) fee for your connection if you decide to use the services of a provider that provides you with said internet connection. The providers however are (and increasingly so) regulated, for example, by means of laws for things like net-neutrality and the anti-telecoms-monopoly agency OPTA. And there are also government subsidies for providers willing to implement connections to places less profitable. Which is all fair, considering you can't really live in the Netherlands without having an internet connection of some sorts.
Vint Cerf gives a very good answer, though that was for the Internet and not Mobile Broadband. "For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/opinion/internet-access-is-not-a-human-right.html?_r=0.
The CEO of Campbells Soup declares access to chicken noodle a "human right".
A "right" is not something the govenments give to you. They are things that you have to prevent the governments from destroying. Repeatedly... Forever.