UN Declares Internet Access a Human Right
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 4th Jun 2011 19:52 UTC
Internet & Networking Since it's weekend, let's start with some good news we can all be happy about. The United Nations has declared internet access a human right, and has called upon all nations to not instate any laws that have the power to cut people off the internet, with France and the UK being singled out because they passed three strikes laws.
E-mail Print r 10   · Read More · 66 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/j5h
Thread beginning with comment 476040
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: A human right... Really???
by JAlexoid on Sat 4th Jun 2011 23:14 UTC in reply to "A human right... Really???"
JAlexoid
Member since:
2009-05-19

is not a necessity of life.


So is hot water, clean water, electricity or medical care. Or, come to think of it, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and most other freedoms you come to enjoy.
Human right is not the same as free public service. Neither is it only a necessity of life.

Imagine you'd be barred from all and any libraries for sharing your book with 3 friends and allowed to buy books only 10 years in print(point here is out-of-date material). That would be basically what disconnecting you from the global knowledge banks(today aka internet) be 50 years ago. Knowledge is power.

Human kind advanced so fast only because education is a right and to a certain degree is maintained as a free public service in a lot of countries.

Reply Parent Score: 4

pantheraleo Member since:
2007-03-07

So is hot water, clean water, electricity or medical care.


Well, actually, access to clean water is pretty much a necessity to human life. Without clean water, we tend to get bacterial and/or parasitic infections and die. The same could be argued for medical care. Without at least basic medical care, quality and length of life would be greatly reduced.

When it comes to the Internet however, one could live a long and healthy life without ever using it or ever having access to it. So I really don't think your comparison is valid.

Reply Parent Score: 6

Luminair Member since:
2007-03-30

Lots of people don't have clean water. I think your comparison is invalid

Reply Parent Score: 2

Read more of this thread... >
JAlexoid Member since:
2009-05-19

When it comes to the Internet however, one could live a long and healthy life without ever using it or ever having access to it. So I really don't think your comparison is valid.


"one could live a long and healthy life" without a roof over your head, freedom of expression or freedom of religion. Yet those are somehow part of the human rights convention.

BTW: Which comparison? That human rights are not always necessities of life, but stretch much more than that? Or that internet is like a library?

Reply Parent Score: 2

jack_perry Member since:
2005-07-06

"is not a necessity of life.


So is hot water, clean water, electricity or medical care. Or, come to think of it, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and most other freedoms you come to enjoy. "

Freedom of religion and expression are products or services?

I'm not just picking. There is, in fact, a fundamental difference between things like internet access, water supply, electric supply, and medical care, and things like religion, expression, and so forth. The former are impossible without modern technology; the latter are possible in any day and age, if we merely respect others.

When organizations like the UN elevate nearly every modern convenience to the status of "human rights", they make a mockery of the term.

Imagine you'd be barred from all and any libraries for sharing your book with 3 friends and allowed to buy books only 10 years in print(point here is out-of-date material). That would be basically what disconnecting you from the global knowledge banks(today aka internet) be 50 years ago.


This reason this would be immoral is not because "access to books" is a human right (books are a modern convenience) but because "freedom of expression" is a human right.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Agree. It's not that internet access should be a right per se, but rather that its major role in modern freedom of press and expression should be legally acknowledged.

Reply Parent Score: 1

JAlexoid Member since:
2009-05-19

If freedom of expression(why did you put it in quotes?) is a human right, why shouldn't the medium that is predominant in modern society not be?
50 years ago people wrote books, today people write blogs.

+1 to Neolander

Edited 2011-06-07 01:09 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

marblesbot Member since:
2009-12-25

So everybody is in agreement that many people in this world don't have access to clean water, and are getting sick and dying because of it. Still, we're arguing about internet access instead of doing SOMETHING about the non-access to clean water.

Reply Parent Score: 1