Fast Broadband To Be Classed a Fundamental Right in the UK (bbc.com)

Mark Wilson writes: Every home and business in the UK will have access to "fast broadband" by 2020. This is the latest pledge from Prime Minister David Cameron, who said access to the internet "should be a right." At the moment, 83% of homes and businesses in Britain have access to broadband connections 24Mbps and faster. By 2017, this is expected to rise to 95%. The latest plan is directed at the "last 5 percent" — such as people in remote areas — and will oblige broadband providers to supply at least 10Mbps broadband to anyone who demands it.

Comments

Fundamental right?????

[Nutria]

When everything is a fundamental right, then that completely devalues the definition of "fundamental".

Re:Fundamental right?????

[vux984]

When everything is a fundamental right, then that completely devalues the definition of "fundamental".

Internet access should be enshrined as a right. This extends beyond just remote rural citizens to everyday citizens everyday lives.

I'm sure you recall the scene in the matrix where Neo demands his call and they edit out his mouth. "What good is a phone call if you can't speak..."

In modern society the internet is replacing the post office. We increasingly use it to commuicate with eachother and with our government.

To deny someone the internet in 2020 is akin to denying them the post office in 1920. Not only should access be mandated, but it really should be enshrined as a right -- such that it cannot be easily curtailed by a judge or future legislators at whim.

Re:Fundamental right?????

[Nutria]

What if access to the railroads had been enshrined a fundamental right back in the 1940s? After all, "freedom of movement", right? But that would have stifled the growth of roads, and we're much more mobile now than we were 70 years ago. Same thing with newspapers and freedom of speech.

It's infinitely better that fundamental rights be generically written so as not to tie civilization to any one specific technology.

Re:Fundamental right?????

[onthemightofprinces]

It's a 'right' that nobody in the UK wants. In fact we ourselves petitioned the government to ban handguns and the like because we considered the right to life as more important than the right for gun companies to make a profit.

Re:Fundamental right?????

[davester666]

It's more of a "right not to be killed by a gun-bearing lunatic, right not to be killed by finding sometime lying around the house while you are growing up"

Curiously

[Burz]

No right to privacy, eh? If you're building a police state, it makes for a convenient combination of priorities.

For that matter, why not make free speech a fundamental right? Or has Cameron forgotten he's in the UK?

A right does not obligate anyone to act

[blindseer]

I have a right to free speech, does that mean the government must provide me with time on a radio station? I have the right to travel freely, does that obligate the government to buy me a car?

Let's get even more "fundamental"...

I have the right to eat, does that obligate the government to buy me food? I have the right to shelter, does that obligate the government to buy me a house?

A recent debate is that medical care is a "fundamental right". So I find myself in need of medical care, does that obligate the government to provide it? Who is the "government" anyway? Government is people. Do I have the right to another person's labor? Are other people obligated to provide me with their resources? That is what things like food, shelter, internet access, and medical care are, they are the time, labor, and resources of others.

I don't have a "fundamental right" to another person's stuff. Claiming such sounds a lot like, "to everyone according to their needs, from everyone according to their abilities." I'd bet that a lot of people don't even know where that phrase comes from or what it means. That phrase is what brought us Marxism, communism, and socialism.

Let's assume we have a society that everyone gets what they need, and everyone provides to their ability, who enforces that? Who decides what people need and another can provide? Usually the answer is that the government does. Which means that phrase translates to, "the government takes and the government gives." Another way to put it is the often maligned phrase, "tax and spend".

If we claim that a fundamental right requires a government to provide it is the path to socialism, big government, perhaps "big brother", and certainly a path to poverty. To me a "fundamental right" means the government cannot interfere. A "fundamental right" to healthcare means a person should be able to obtain medical care from whomever that person chooses, at a price both provider and patient agree upon, and the government cannot interfere with the time, place, or manner in which it is provided.

If we declare internet access then what we should do is declare that it cannot be taxed. It also cannot be subsidized, because if it was then there would be inherent favoritism by the government to providers. Subsidizing "internet" means the government defines what the internet is and therefore who is subject to the subsidies. In other words it's a lot on how we treat the right of free speech. When the government starts to subsidize "free" speech then it's not free any more, there is the cost of speaking what the government wants others to hear in order to get the subsidy.

Re:A right does not obligate anyone to act

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and just like Ayn Rand you'll undoubtedly end up on benefits when you grow up, because there's no way anyone so profoundly selfish as you will make it very far in life by yourself. I'm sure you also don't ever travel on roads that other people have built right? I'm sure you're not currently using the very internet that was designed and developed as the result of government funded R&D yes? I'm sure you don't drink water pumped through government subsidised infrastructure right?

We're a social species, our very existence has depended on the fact that we've worked together to survive over the years. There's your fundamental fucking right, it is our evolved way. If you aren't part of that you're an anomaly in the human race, and are not fit to survive.

Going back to fundamentals as you put it, you would be easy fodder for those humans who have decided to work together whilst you isolate yourself and make yourself a trivial threat to dispatch. You shouldn't be here. The only reason you are is because civilisation and it's social aspects protect even idiots like you.

If you don't understand that humans are a social species, and working together is in our DNA, then you have serious problems.

Entitlement

[BradMajors]

Not a right, an entitlement. A right is something the government can not stop you from doing. An entitlement is something the government must provide you. The distinction is important. Governments do not provide anyone with rights. Governments can only take rights away.