Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#41

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:26 AM UTC

Riesling wrote: post #29

mthreat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point - people in prison still deserve "human rights", even though they've lost their right to freedom. This implies that even freedom isn't a human right. Of course, you could argue that this leads to a contradiction about taking away one's freedom, but that's another discussion.

I studied law in germany for a couple of semesters and I learned that human rights are never absolute. They are more like bubbles. Basically your right ends where it collides with someones else right or to paraphrase it "one man's freedom is another man's limitation". The purpose of the law is to make sure, that those bubbles are about equally sized for everyone.

The classic idiom (at least in America) is "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zechariah_Chafee

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#42

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:31 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #36

kkowalczyk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, this is a set not a list so it's nonsensical to rank those in importance. More to the point, I don't read that proclamation as "everyone is entitled to internet access". I read it as: no-one (specifically government) should be able to take away your access to internet. The difference is not that subtle. It's important because it counters a growing world-wide tendency to take away your access after some minor i…

[deleted]

They're called negative rights.

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#43

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:37 AM UTC

mthreat wrote: post #13

mthreat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was once banned from the Internet by the US gov't[1], I actually agree with you. People throw around terms like "human right" without knowing what it means. If access to the Internet is a human right, that means every human in the world should be able to demand access to the Internet? I think the Internet absolutely should receive First Amendment protection in the US (and the US Supreme Court agrees),…

Another point - people in prison still deserve "human rights", even though they've lost their right to freedom. This implies that even freedom isn't a human right. Of course, you could argue that this leads to a contradiction about taking away one's freedom, but that's another discussion.

First, a rights violation does not indicate the non-existence of a right.

Second, "freedom" is not a right and never has been. It is not a useful term on its own. You can be free to do something, or free from something, but you can't just be generically free.

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#44

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:38 AM UTC

gsmaverick wrote: post #35

baddox wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example is "the right to health care." People don't use that to mean that you have the right to pay thousands of dollars for an MRI. They generally mean the government should provide health care.

Well then they are using the word `right` incorrectly.

Yeah the word to use is 'entitlement' which is very different from a 'right'

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#45

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:45 AM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #11

tikhonj wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. The point isn't that you should get free internet--the point is that a government should not prevent you from freely using the internet. This is no different from a right to, say, travel. The internet is particularly important because it is very good for getting a message out to the world at large. Other existing channels tend to be more difficult to use or more limited. The internet lets people document…

> The point isn't that you should get free internet--the point is that a government should not prevent you from freely using the internet. Isn't that already covered under freedom of speech?

One of the problems of "freedom of speech" is that many people have bundled a lot of concepts into "speech". There are a great many Internet activities that would be difficult to capture as speech.

Reading a political screed, for instance, is not speech. It is probably protected in some other way, but I'm actually unaware of how. (Actually, considering workplace laws, I begin to suspect it's not protected.) Differently, is clicking a Like button considered speech? What about Unliking? How about transferring a file, or maintaining a personal wiki that no one else has access to?

These aren't questions I want answered anytime soon. I'd rather leave them alone and simply say that people should have the opportunity to engage in these activities, full stop, without having to figure out whether or not they're speech.

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#46

Post by scarmig » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:51 AM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #12

presidentender wrote: post #2

The concept of "rights" is growing less useful, I fear.

This is actually an area for a long-lasting philosophical debate. Here's is a paper by Isaiah Berlin [1] on the debate over positive and negative liberty. >The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the ‘negative’ sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What is the area within which the subject – a person…

Some other philosophers question whether there's even a meaningful difference between positive and negative rights. Those critiques go beyond a mere, "well, it's meaningless for the rich and the poor to have equal rights to use any printing presses they own."

What is one of the main arguments against that distinction? Well, consider: many people here are arguing that the Internet isn't a right because someone has to provide or pay for it. In some sense, it's not a "natural" right in the same way that they perceive, say, property rights to be.

But when you say you have property rights, you're not just saying that the government won't come and take your stuff. You're saying that the government has a positive obligation to send violent thugs in uniform to protect a monopoly, of use and transfer, over a physical object that it has recognized for you. (After all, otherwise a right to private property would be meaningless.)

That leads the people making the initial positive/negative distinction into an intellectual trap: all of a sudden, their negative liberty has shown its true colors. It requires as much government involvement as, say, the universal provision of healthcare service. Or the Internet! Even freedom of speech requires government action to uphold: it's pretty meaningless to have freedom of speech if the government won't back up its guarantee of force on individuals who would harm you for saying something.

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#47

Post by barrkel » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 1:58 AM UTC

mthreat wrote: post #9

presidentender wrote: post #2

The concept of "rights" is growing less useful, I fear.

As someone who was once banned from the Internet by the US gov't[1], I actually agree with you. People throw around terms like "human right" without knowing what it means. If access to the Internet is a human right, that means every human in the world should be able to demand access to the Internet? I think the Internet absolutely should receive First Amendment protection in the US (and the US Supreme Court agrees),…

"If access to the Internet is a human right, that means every human in the world should be able to demand access to the Internet?"

Does freedom of speech mean everyone should be able to demand access to a printing press?

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#48

Post by aioprisan » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 2:06 AM UTC

I hope that we won't be forced to sign up for Internet service or pay additional taxes to allow for this human right to be spread and given to everyone as part of a government mandate- I mean tax- by buying the service from private companies.. All kidding aside, how much do you want to bet that in the next 10 years, we'll all be mandated to purchase or pay for Internet access?

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#49

Post by noblethrasher » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 2:35 AM UTC

zcid wrote: post #20

mthreat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point - people in prison still deserve "human rights", even though they've lost their right to freedom. This implies that even freedom isn't a human right. Of course, you could argue that this leads to a contradiction about taking away one's freedom, but that's another discussion.

Via the social contract, by infringing on the rights of another, one volunteers to temporarily suspend the right to freedom. A right cannot be taken away or lost as they are inherent to the human condition.

Actually, a problem with Social Contract theory is that it can't deal with free-riders. If you never agreed to the contract then you can't be obligated to its terms. So you can infringe on the rights of people who did ascent to the terms of the contract without being obligated to submit to any punishment.

Re: Internet Access Is a Human Right, Says United Nations

#50

Post by ctdonath » Sat, Jul 07, 2012, 2:35 AM UTC

The USA Constitution was way ahead - by some 225 years - with its "1st Amendment" protection of freedom of speech, of press (publishing), and of association. Gorvernmental interference of what someone says, how someone says it, and who they work with to say it, has long been prohibited. Nice to see the UN catch up. Notice, however, the difference between not interfering vs. forcing others to facilitate : negative vs. positive rights.