Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 167 posts

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#111

Post by gnaritas »

lliamander wrote: post #101
gnaritas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then what is absurd about trying to negotiate the terms of that contract? Nothing, that's rather the point I'm making, rights are not inherent, they are social agreements and are thus always up for renegotiation. You are agreeing with me. That's not what the OP is doing, the OP is trying to claim something isn't a right because it doesn't fit his definition of the word, he's pulling a no true Scottsman on a thing s…

I mean no disrespect, but I don't agree with you. My claim is that the OP, by haggling about definitions, is trying to negotiate the meaning of the word. edit: and by that, I mean that it doesn't make sense to call the OP's argument absurd. I don't believe that the OP is pulling a No True Scottsman. A No True Scottsman is really all about shifting your definition of a category in unprincipled ways in response to coun…

> My claim is that the OP, by haggling about definitions, is trying to negotiate the meaning of the word.

Oh, ok, yes he is and that's the problem, he's wrong. It's a stupid semantic debate where he's arguing over a word and everyone else is discussing what things we should guarantee everyone has. We call those things rights, whether the OP likes it or not, the issue at hand is what those rights should be, not what the word rights means.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#112

Post by nemo44x »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #109
nemo44x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense taken but I'm not sure why my statement provoked a response like yours. I stated that the people delegate these types of decision to elected officials. Their job is to protect the people. If, in some instance, they judged that a protest was in danger of harming the people and cutting cellular spectrum to that protest was the most effective method which could immediately relieve that danger, they could and…

"Their job is to protect the people" is a recent and paternalistic innovation. Better, IMO, is to write and uphold a set of laws that provide the best framework for human flourishing. This means deliberately not protecting people from certain risks, where the costs in terms of other values outweighs the benefits of risk reduction. Like, the US would be safer if we confiscated every gun and made gun ownership illegal.…

I mean that in an immediate threat sort of way. For instance, if someone robbing a bank it's the governments job to protect the citizens by apprehending the suspect. It's not the citizens job to protect themselves from immediate danger.

Flooding in Houston - it is the governments job to help people to safety. It isn't their job to buy them a new home if they didn't purchase insurance.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#114

Post by dogruck »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #109
nemo44x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense taken but I'm not sure why my statement provoked a response like yours. I stated that the people delegate these types of decision to elected officials. Their job is to protect the people. If, in some instance, they judged that a protest was in danger of harming the people and cutting cellular spectrum to that protest was the most effective method which could immediately relieve that danger, they could and…

"Their job is to protect the people" is a recent and paternalistic innovation. Better, IMO, is to write and uphold a set of laws that provide the best framework for human flourishing. This means deliberately not protecting people from certain risks, where the costs in terms of other values outweighs the benefits of risk reduction. Like, the US would be safer if we confiscated every gun and made gun ownership illegal.…

I disagree that "the US would be safer" if we had no guns.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#115

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

nemo44x wrote: post #91
lr4444lr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but, I would never want you in any position of power over me.

No offense taken but I'm not sure why my statement provoked a response like yours. I stated that the people delegate these types of decision to elected officials. Their job is to protect the people. If, in some instance, they judged that a protest was in danger of harming the people and cutting cellular spectrum to that protest was the most effective method which could immediately relieve that danger, they could and…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/25/non-english-speak...

http://www.inquisitr.com/3428608/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-to-...

That's what effective method rational has resulted into. I would rather have them go by the book, than what they imagine to be effective.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#116

Post by burkaman »

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #78
burkaman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you imagine you're talking to?

A UN diplomat who is negotiating laws. Am I wrong?

I don't know, but negotiating laws and charging corporations are very different things.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#117

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #109
nemo44x wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense taken but I'm not sure why my statement provoked a response like yours. I stated that the people delegate these types of decision to elected officials. Their job is to protect the people. If, in some instance, they judged that a protest was in danger of harming the people and cutting cellular spectrum to that protest was the most effective method which could immediately relieve that danger, they could and…

"Their job is to protect the people" is a recent and paternalistic innovation. Better, IMO, is to write and uphold a set of laws that provide the best framework for human flourishing. This means deliberately not protecting people from certain risks, where the costs in terms of other values outweighs the benefits of risk reduction. Like, the US would be safer if we confiscated every gun and made gun ownership illegal.…

Coming from a place where public ownership of firearms is banned, I can tell you that criminals can do what they want with just the might of their clinched fists.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#118

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

bufbupa wrote: post #52
AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Carlin on Rights vs. Privileges. https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261

This dialog is tangential at best. Sure, if you want to call them privileges instead of rights because they are inherently violable, go ahead, but everyone else will refer to them as rights because its the common nomenclature. The idea of a right is that governments must work to secure them for its people. To redirect back to the parent post: if you don't want to call them rights, do you think internet access should…

>If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access?

By not letting monopolistic ISPs stop municipal networks.

Nationalizing everything is not going to work. Most water, electric boards are not national/state government responsibilities. Venezuela model does not work, can't work for USA for sure.

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#119

Post by [deleted] »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #110
dragonwriter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually is; freedom of the press is the exact same thing as freedom of speech applied to printed matter (it is called out distinctly because historical unwelcome written material, especially when mass distributed as the printing press enabled, was frequently considered more problematic by government and so printing was often tightly regulated even where speech, per se, was less so.) It is not, despite a fairly po…

I agree that the idea of the "freedom the of the press" is derived from the right to free speech. But "press" as in a printing press is a machine, while "press" as in "freedom of the press" refers to people who work for news media or news media collectively. Those are not the same thing, regardless of what wu-ikkyu thinks.

[deleted]

Re: Internet access is now a basic human right (2016)

#120

Post by skybrian »

bischofs wrote: post #2

I don't think internet access is a human right, a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? Can you really put this in the same category as the right to pursue happiness or health? or the right to defend yourself? Classifying everything as a right is super fun and feels important but it actually takes away from the actual human rights. Health care is another example - do you have the righ…

I would guess that placing a town under siege (disallowing all food shipments) would be considered a human rights violation. It's arguable that cutting off a town's communication lines should be considered the same way.
Post reply on HN