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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 ca

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 right to an EKG machine? or a drug that was just invented using thousands of man hours of pharma research? Should those people work for free so that a poor persons rights are not violated?

ygra 9y ago
> Should those people work for free so that a poor persons rights are not violated? Just because something is a human right, doesn't mean society (or whoever else) has to provide that for free.
- konschubert 9y ago
  Well, a humane society would.
- gipp 9y ago
  The point is that _rights_ ought to be things that, in the absence of a society, you already _have_. (Life, liberty, right to property, etc) They are things that a just society is obligated to not take _away_ from you. Things that a just and wealthy society should be able to provide _for_ its citizens (health care, economic security, etc), are laudable and highly important goals. They are not rights though -- not because they aren't important enough, but simply because they are a categorically different sort of thing. The whole reason we have the concept of rights is that a social structure in which people do not have rights is an illegitimate one. An impoverished island nation which cannot afford to provide healthcare or internet access to its citizens is not illegitimate because of it.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
    Your comment flies in the face of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which certainly features medical care and education.
    - gipp 9y ago
      Which, in turn, flies in the face of the original, Lockeian definition of "natural rights". I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
      - ska 9y ago
        This stance that there has been some sort of dilution would make more sense in a world where Locke's formulation of rights was a) unique and b) widely accepted as canonical. As neither are true, it begs the question.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - cmurf 9y ago
        The UDHR emerged from WWII, just as did the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. and the Nuremberg war crimes trials. They're not useless. And they diluted nothing. Human beings learned something. But somehow from then to now failed to figure out a way to broaden the consensus, and hold partners accountable. It's hardly any different than a family member who has a gambling problem, or drug addiction. Do you kick them to the curb? Or do you persist in making the best of a crappy situation? In most families it's a back and forth between making the best and punishing them in a persistent passive aggressive struggle. And global politics is no different, no less messy. But having ethical standards is still not useless.
  - Klockan 9y ago
    United Nations disagrees with you, look at article 26 for example: Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
    - gipp 9y ago
      As with your sibling comment: > I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    I'd make it a bit more specific - human rights are things that you have in the absence of society, as they are universally applicable, but they don't encompass all rights. A citizen can have a right to something provided by their society.
    - msla 9y ago
      Rights only make sense in the context of a society, because they can only govern the actions of fellow humans. Animals know nothing about rights. Non-living matter knows nothing at all, and so certainly nothing about rights. Therefore, rights only exist to guide and constrain what humans do, and any group of humans living together is a society.
      - ameister14 9y ago
        I don't agree that rights only make sense in the context of a society, as rights may exist without being codified, it's just significantly more difficult to assert them without societal assistance. I can assert rights to other people without being a member of human society. My right to the apple on the ground is the classic example.
        msla 9y ago
        If you're talking to other people, you're a member of a human society. The only people who aren't members of society live entirely alone 100% of the time. Edited because I can't reply: We've hit a definitional issue, and we're not going to be able to resolve it. You know what definition I used, I know what definition you're using, so continuing is pointless.
        ameister14 9y ago
        No, if you're interacting with other people persistently or associated with people you're a member of society. If you interact with people sporadically, you're not necessarily a member of a human society. If we're talking state of nature here, even persistent interaction doesn't necessarily mean society - that generally requires cooperation.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    There's no such thing as a natural right. You don't have a natural right to life, just head out into the wilderness and see how much nature cares about your natural right to become certain of that. All rights are social covenants provided by fellow humans.
    - flubert 9y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=natural+rights https://duckduckgo.com/?q=natural+rights
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - icebraining 9y ago
        That a concept of natural rights exist does not mean that natural rights exist. A concept of leprechauns exists too, does that mean leprechauns exist?
  - sidlls 9y ago
    In the absence of society there are no such things as "rights" and most especially the ones you identified. In fact, in nature it's quite common for any or all of those things to be taken away.
    - gipp 9y ago
      > in nature it's quite common for any or all of those things to be taken away Not by people, is the point. Rights only apply in terms of humans and human society, obviously.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        I doubt humans that existed pre-civilization were any less likely to violently take property and life from other humans than were the apes they evolved from. Killing and eating your neighbor is one of the most fundamental freedoms you have as an organism. Only in the context of society does exercising that natural freedom become a violation of someone's rights.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    > The point is that _rights_ ought to be things that, in the absence of a society, you already _have_. That's simply just an absurd and frankly silly point. Stop arguing about what words should mean and pay attention to the message people are communicating. Rights are whatever society agrees they are, it's as simple as that, nothing more and nothing less; no rights are inherent. There is not "should", there is only what is.
    - gipp 9y ago
      Sure, words mean whatever the consensus is that they mean. My definition above is just the original one. If we decide it's this new, broader thing, then so be it. But if "rights" encompass things that a perfectly just, well-intentioned society might very well _not be physically capable_ of providing, simply due to lack of resources, then what the hell is the point of calling something a "right" at all? What does that accomplish? What does that mean? All I'm saying is that this new, pretty much meaningless definition we've given it of "stuff we want" is much less useful than the original.
      - gnaritas 9y ago
        > My definition above is just the original one. And outdated and not accepted one. Don't be a prescriptivist, words don't have a single fixed meaning, just because Lock defined right to mean something long long ago doesn't mean that's what people mean when they use the word. > If we decide it's this new, broader thing, then so be it. That was decided by the masses long ago. Language evolves. This is not "new" nor is it meaningless. Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant. Anyone arguing about natural rights vs whatever is having a meaningless semantic argument with no one who matters. There are no natural rights, the concept is frankly silly; rights are inherently social in nature and have always been simply what people agree on.
        gipp 9y ago
        > Don't be a prescriptivist, words don't have a single fixed meaning, just because Lock defined right to mean something long long ago doesn't mean that's what people mean when they use the word. Yes, I know. I agreed with that in the comment you're replying to. > Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant. If "rights" are just "things we want people to have", then why is "internet access" a right, but not a yacht or a penthouse apartment? Wouldn't we be happier if everyone had those? I don't give a shit, really, if people go for a "Locke conception" of rights or whatever. I just don't really have a clue what it means anymore to say something is a "human right," if it includes super expensive stuff that a lot of countries can't afford.
  - kfriede 9y ago
    I believe the way you presented your two arguments shows them as non mutually exclusive. Couldn't healthcare or economic security be something that society is obligated to not take _away_ from you, while also not being something that a society should provide? For the record, I'm not advocating for calling any of those things rights. Simply posing a question regarding the above statements.
  - vilmosi 9y ago
    How would you have a right to property without society? Property, like money and other social constructs, require a society to recognise it. You can't "own" anything of other people don't recognise the fact that you own it. Which means you need society to govern who owns what.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
George Carlin on Rights vs. Privileges. https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261 https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261
- bufbupa 9y ago
  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 be an essential privilege that governments must secure for their people? If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? It would seem to be a fundamental violation of the governmental charter not to provide it, and who would be held accountable for that violation?
  - flubert 9y ago
    >The idea of a right is that governments must work to secure them for its people. >If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? I think a lot of the noise around this issue comes down to not clearly delineating between positive and negative rights: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=positive+vs.+negative+rights https://duckduckgo.com/?q=positive+vs.+negative+rights ...in the American tradition, "internet access as a right" means that that others (government, etc.) can't deprive you of whatever internet access you happen to have. Whereas other traditions interpret "internet access as a right" as something that the community needs to provide to individuals.
  - AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
    >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.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Fair access to the internet, however, feels to me more like a right. If the government shuts down cellular internet access at protest sites, it feels like a violation of rights.
- nemo44x 9y ago
  I disagree. The spectrum is owned by the public which is managed by an elected government of the people. If a protest were to be judged by elected officials, or those appointed by them, to be in danger of harming citizens then taking actions like blocking access to the wireless spectrum for communication and organization purposes would be within the public good. I should think they would explain why this decision was made. Because these are elected officials or appointed by these elected officials, if the public found their judgement to be wrong or unfair, they can elect someone else to judge it.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    No offense, but, I would never want you in any position of power over me.
    - nemo44x 9y ago
      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 should take it. And lastly, they should explain to the public why they took that measure. The people can then judge if it was a good decision or not through the democratic process. Which I have apparently limited my potential vote count by 1 if I ever decided to run.
      - lr4444lr 9y ago
        Because in practice it often doesn't work out that way. Republics and representative government, especially in their modern conception from the 18th century, were not simply a different way of appointing kings and their subsidiary advisors with broadly defined powers of "protection" over people under vassalage at their discretionary interpretation. Elections in most modern states don't confer that kind of supreme rule. It is the primacy of law, which constrains leaders from encroaching like that, and applied objectively to citizens in regards to their own rights and responsibilities that drives most countries you and I would probably say we'd like to live in. What you're describing isn't too tangibly different from the Spartan ephors.
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
Food or shelter are not produced for free either, and they are still widely accepted human rights. Of course it's clear that one cannot just go and label arbitrarily expensive things as human rights, but of course guaranteeing human rights can take a nontrivial amount of work. This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for that work.
- sol_remmy 9y ago
  > This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for that work. What about in a country in crisis like Venezuela with no money to afford human rights? In a time of crisis, do farmers and doctors need to work for free to guarantee the human rights of others? How about Amazon warehouse workers?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    In a time of crisis, do farmers and doctors need to work for free to guarantee the human rights of others? How about Amazon warehouse workers? Yes, as they have always done. It's called paying taxes. In my country, the media even underlines that every year by calculating how many days the average worker does "for free" (ie, to pay the various taxes), and on that day, counting from January 1st, they announce it on TV and such.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      Yet they fail to count when you stop living for free, when society stops paying for your peace and security. That happens in the exact same second.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        I can't decode what you're saying, sorry.
gnaritas 9y ago
You're just being pedantic about what the word right should mean; it's silly. Rights are whatever society agrees them to be, that's it. It's an ever changing mutable list of what people agree to respect, nothing more and nothing less.
- djschnei 9y ago
  Don't say that like it's some long running historical understanding of what the word "right" means. If that is now the definition, it's a new definition much more ambiguous than the old. A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity. A right wasn't something someone else could provide, it was only something we could all defend. Life, liberty, property. Not the work output of another man; that used to be called slavery.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    It's not remotely new. > A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity. No, words don't work that way. The word has always meant both of those things, some people like to use the word that way, and others have always used it in other ways because get this... words have multiple meanings and always have. There was never a time where what you said is true, you're romanticizing and simplify the past as if back then everyone just agree. Guess what, they didn't.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Jeremy Bentham was a defender of legal rights while calling natural rights "nonsense upon stilts". This was in the 1700s.
- RivieraKid 9y ago
  One of the few comments that gets it, gets downvoted... go figure.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    From the HN guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
rayiner 9y ago
You could view it as a form of the right to assemble in the US constitution. The government doesn't have to give you a place to assemble, your rights aren't violated if your meeting venue is double booked, etc. But the government can't categorically preclude you from meeting.
kazinator 9y ago
> a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? Depends; is someone doing it on purpose so that you don't have access, or it is a genuine equipment failure?
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? This is a bad argument, because it ignores the vector of the rights removal, and that matters in this debate. For example, if a tree falls on you in a storm while you are writing an anti-government book and you die are your rights being violated? Obviously not. However if THE GOVERNMENT™ comes in and kills you for speaking against them then yes your rights are being violated. Your example would be better served to say: A simple test, if the government shuts your internet down for [reasons] are your rights being violated? Not as simple of an answer. I disagree that the internet is a basic right, but don't think that's the best argument.
- baddox 9y ago
  > For example, if a tree falls on you in a storm while you are writing an anti-government book and you die are your rights being violated? Obviously not. However if THE GOVERNMENT™ comes in and kills you for speaking against them then yes your rights are being violated. I think you're leaving out the example that highlights most obvious criticism of this formulation of rights. That example would be the government not using public funds to provide access to the internet.
- VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
  Free speech is a negative right, the only kind of right possible to have without forcing someone else to provide for your rights. Should government provide you a book and a pen to write your anti-government book? That is equivalent of internet. If I chose to live on top of some mountain should government spend $$$ to stretch a line to my mountain ?
  - Klinky 9y ago
    Free speech is not a "negative right". There are definitely burdens placed on others to maintain it. Who is going to stop the government from telling you to keep your mouth shut, and then threatening you with violence if you open it? That is the reality in many places. Those who speak up often pay a heavy cost without some sort of protection. Even in places where forms of free speech are accepted, the cost to maintain it is high. Perhaps the libertarian concept of free speech is the "ability to talk to oneself in an empty room", which is pathetic.
RivieraKid 9y ago
> I don't think internet access is a human right, a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? It is, in some countries. People are forgetting that human rights is just a law. Human rights are different in different countries and times. It's just a set of (very vague) rules a bunch of people agreed on, nothing more.
baddox 9y ago
I understand your argument about the meaning of the term "human right," but that is obviously just a semantic argument. In modern mainstream political parlance, "human right" means approximately "something that is so important that governments ought to prioritize it and spend public funds on it." The distinction you're making is that of negative and positive rights, which is an important basic topic in traditional rights theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
AckSyn 9y ago
I agree. It's like saying going into a store is a right. It's really not.
VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
You are right. Someone has to work to ensure you have internet. If internet is your right that means should someone always work to provide you internet? (Forced Labor?) I can understand making internet a right as an extension of "free speech". For example no convict should ever be disallowed from using internet and so on.
clarkmoody 9y ago
I completely agree. Most people confuse positive rights and negative rights. The inherent / natural / fundamental rights are the negative rights: life, liberty, and property. These are the rights that nobody else may take away from you unilaterally, hence "negative." These may be further distilled into the basic right of self-ownership over your body. It requires an appreciation of human dignity to acknowledge these rights. The positive rights are more like privileges: things that somebody else must provide for you. These are not really rights at all, since it makes someone else your slave in the extreme case, hence violating their prior right to liberty. These "rights" should be called "privileges" instead, and we'll stop being confused about it. Let's go to the extreme: the desert island. If I'm sick, and you're a doctor, and I have a right to healthcare, then what? If I truly have that right, and you are the only one who may provide it, then I can force you to treat my sickness, and you become my slave. The same goes for clean water, food, shelter, education, police protection, internet access, flying cars, etc. Yes, there are plenty of things that are really nice to have and make living in a modern society a lot better. But these are not rights. Too often we abridge the fundamental rights in order to provide the privileges of citizenship bestowed upon the masses by redistributive governments.
skybrian 9y ago
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.
one-comment 9y ago
I realise I'm a little late to the game, but rights were explained to me once as: An item to which a group has access, that the ruling authority cannot block. Examples of this can be speech, in the US, the government does not grant speech, but rather they do not block access to it (within limits as defined by the SC). Also, the right the bear arms, it's something again that is inherently the citizens but the government does not block access. In the case of Internet, it being a right is different to it being a utility. As a right the government would be obligated to not block people from accessing it (again SC caveat) but has no obligation to provide it. I will caveat by saying that also disallowed are underhanded methods of blocking access to rights or blocked rights as a side effect (whether intentional or not). So the government and citizenry has to ensure that rights are being preserved by evaluating new and existing laws and adjust course as needed (either via redrafting legislation or via the SC) Of course, the above definition assumes the existence of a state, but I think that's fair. In a true anarchy we have all freedoms but of course the risks that go with that. The establishment of a state necessitates the blocking of some "freedoms" but depending on the government we retain some, which are then known as rights.
threatofrain 9y ago
From the perspective that there's some nature-given right inside of you that gives you the "right" to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, then there's no argument to be had. An axiomatic assumption has already been made on the innate dignity and moral quality of all humans. From the perspective that rights are a legal device that people or governments create (and enforce) in order to achieve broad social or government aims in the form of a citizen's baseline, then internet as a right should be on the table for discussion. It should be noted that rights as a legal device and rights as an innate moral assumption are not contradictory. I do believe that internet will become increasingly related to a person's ability to communicate, summon vehicles, find out and talk about government and politics, organize and find human meetings, use maps, utilize business services, or coordinate emergency information. Without internet, a person can still do these things, but I think there's a general drop in quality of reach and capability. I think there's also a discussion to be had about whether a citizen baseline of internet access means a more prosperous or robust nation.

ygra 9y ago

> Should those people work for free so that a poor persons rights are not violated? Just because something is a human right, doesn't mean society (or whoever else) has to provide that for free.

konschubert 9y ago
Well, a humane society would.
gipp 9y ago
The point is that _rights_ ought to be things that, in the absence of a society, you already _have_. (Life, liberty, right to property, etc) They are things that a just society is obligated to not take _away_ from you. Things that a just and wealthy society should be able to provide _for_ its citizens (health care, economic security, etc), are laudable and highly important goals. They are not rights though -- not because they aren't important enough, but simply because they are a categorically different sort of thing. The whole reason we have the concept of rights is that a social structure in which people do not have rights is an illegitimate one. An impoverished island nation which cannot afford to provide healthcare or internet access to its citizens is not illegitimate because of it.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  Your comment flies in the face of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which certainly features medical care and education.
  - gipp 9y ago
    Which, in turn, flies in the face of the original, Lockeian definition of "natural rights". I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
    - ska 9y ago
      This stance that there has been some sort of dilution would make more sense in a world where Locke's formulation of rights was a) unique and b) widely accepted as canonical. As neither are true, it begs the question.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - cmurf 9y ago
      The UDHR emerged from WWII, just as did the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. and the Nuremberg war crimes trials. They're not useless. And they diluted nothing. Human beings learned something. But somehow from then to now failed to figure out a way to broaden the consensus, and hold partners accountable. It's hardly any different than a family member who has a gambling problem, or drug addiction. Do you kick them to the curb? Or do you persist in making the best of a crappy situation? In most families it's a back and forth between making the best and punishing them in a persistent passive aggressive struggle. And global politics is no different, no less messy. But having ethical standards is still not useless.
- Klockan 9y ago
  United Nations disagrees with you, look at article 26 for example: Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
  - gipp 9y ago
    As with your sibling comment: > I'm not saying this article is alone in diluting the meaning of a "right", it's been going on for years all around the world. That dilution, though, has made it basically useless as a concept.
- ameister14 9y ago
  I'd make it a bit more specific - human rights are things that you have in the absence of society, as they are universally applicable, but they don't encompass all rights. A citizen can have a right to something provided by their society.
  - msla 9y ago
    Rights only make sense in the context of a society, because they can only govern the actions of fellow humans. Animals know nothing about rights. Non-living matter knows nothing at all, and so certainly nothing about rights. Therefore, rights only exist to guide and constrain what humans do, and any group of humans living together is a society.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      I don't agree that rights only make sense in the context of a society, as rights may exist without being codified, it's just significantly more difficult to assert them without societal assistance. I can assert rights to other people without being a member of human society. My right to the apple on the ground is the classic example.
      - msla 9y ago
        If you're talking to other people, you're a member of a human society. The only people who aren't members of society live entirely alone 100% of the time. Edited because I can't reply: We've hit a definitional issue, and we're not going to be able to resolve it. You know what definition I used, I know what definition you're using, so continuing is pointless.
        ameister14 9y ago
        No, if you're interacting with other people persistently or associated with people you're a member of society. If you interact with people sporadically, you're not necessarily a member of a human society. If we're talking state of nature here, even persistent interaction doesn't necessarily mean society - that generally requires cooperation.
- Joeri 9y ago
  There's no such thing as a natural right. You don't have a natural right to life, just head out into the wilderness and see how much nature cares about your natural right to become certain of that. All rights are social covenants provided by fellow humans.
  - flubert 9y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=natural+rights https://duckduckgo.com/?q=natural+rights
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - icebraining 9y ago
      That a concept of natural rights exist does not mean that natural rights exist. A concept of leprechauns exists too, does that mean leprechauns exist?
- sidlls 9y ago
  In the absence of society there are no such things as "rights" and most especially the ones you identified. In fact, in nature it's quite common for any or all of those things to be taken away.
  - gipp 9y ago
    > in nature it's quite common for any or all of those things to be taken away Not by people, is the point. Rights only apply in terms of humans and human society, obviously.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      I doubt humans that existed pre-civilization were any less likely to violently take property and life from other humans than were the apes they evolved from. Killing and eating your neighbor is one of the most fundamental freedoms you have as an organism. Only in the context of society does exercising that natural freedom become a violation of someone's rights.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  > The point is that _rights_ ought to be things that, in the absence of a society, you already _have_. That's simply just an absurd and frankly silly point. Stop arguing about what words should mean and pay attention to the message people are communicating. Rights are whatever society agrees they are, it's as simple as that, nothing more and nothing less; no rights are inherent. There is not "should", there is only what is.
  - gipp 9y ago
    Sure, words mean whatever the consensus is that they mean. My definition above is just the original one. If we decide it's this new, broader thing, then so be it. But if "rights" encompass things that a perfectly just, well-intentioned society might very well _not be physically capable_ of providing, simply due to lack of resources, then what the hell is the point of calling something a "right" at all? What does that accomplish? What does that mean? All I'm saying is that this new, pretty much meaningless definition we've given it of "stuff we want" is much less useful than the original.
    - gnaritas 9y ago
      > My definition above is just the original one. And outdated and not accepted one. Don't be a prescriptivist, words don't have a single fixed meaning, just because Lock defined right to mean something long long ago doesn't mean that's what people mean when they use the word. > If we decide it's this new, broader thing, then so be it. That was decided by the masses long ago. Language evolves. This is not "new" nor is it meaningless. Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant. Anyone arguing about natural rights vs whatever is having a meaningless semantic argument with no one who matters. There are no natural rights, the concept is frankly silly; rights are inherently social in nature and have always been simply what people agree on.
      - gipp 9y ago
        > Don't be a prescriptivist, words don't have a single fixed meaning, just because Lock defined right to mean something long long ago doesn't mean that's what people mean when they use the word. Yes, I know. I agreed with that in the comment you're replying to. > Rights means stuff we as a majority agree everyone should have, it's not less useful, and it's what rights have always actually meant. If "rights" are just "things we want people to have", then why is "internet access" a right, but not a yacht or a penthouse apartment? Wouldn't we be happier if everyone had those? I don't give a shit, really, if people go for a "Locke conception" of rights or whatever. I just don't really have a clue what it means anymore to say something is a "human right," if it includes super expensive stuff that a lot of countries can't afford.
- kfriede 9y ago
  I believe the way you presented your two arguments shows them as non mutually exclusive. Couldn't healthcare or economic security be something that society is obligated to not take _away_ from you, while also not being something that a society should provide? For the record, I'm not advocating for calling any of those things rights. Simply posing a question regarding the above statements.
- vilmosi 9y ago
  How would you have a right to property without society? Property, like money and other social constructs, require a society to recognise it. You can't "own" anything of other people don't recognise the fact that you own it. Which means you need society to govern who owns what.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

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

bufbupa 9y ago
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 be an essential privilege that governments must secure for their people? If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? It would seem to be a fundamental violation of the governmental charter not to provide it, and who would be held accountable for that violation?
- flubert 9y ago
  >The idea of a right is that governments must work to secure them for its people. >If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? I think a lot of the noise around this issue comes down to not clearly delineating between positive and negative rights: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=positive+vs.+negative+rights https://duckduckgo.com/?q=positive+vs.+negative+rights ...in the American tradition, "internet access as a right" means that that others (government, etc.) can't deprive you of whatever internet access you happen to have. Whereas other traditions interpret "internet access as a right" as something that the community needs to provide to individuals.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
  >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.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Fair access to the internet, however, feels to me more like a right. If the government shuts down cellular internet access at protest sites, it feels like a violation of rights.

nemo44x 9y ago
I disagree. The spectrum is owned by the public which is managed by an elected government of the people. If a protest were to be judged by elected officials, or those appointed by them, to be in danger of harming citizens then taking actions like blocking access to the wireless spectrum for communication and organization purposes would be within the public good. I should think they would explain why this decision was made. Because these are elected officials or appointed by these elected officials, if the public found their judgement to be wrong or unfair, they can elect someone else to judge it.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  No offense, but, I would never want you in any position of power over me.
  - nemo44x 9y ago
    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 should take it. And lastly, they should explain to the public why they took that measure. The people can then judge if it was a good decision or not through the democratic process. Which I have apparently limited my potential vote count by 1 if I ever decided to run.
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      Because in practice it often doesn't work out that way. Republics and representative government, especially in their modern conception from the 18th century, were not simply a different way of appointing kings and their subsidiary advisors with broadly defined powers of "protection" over people under vassalage at their discretionary interpretation. Elections in most modern states don't confer that kind of supreme rule. It is the primacy of law, which constrains leaders from encroaching like that, and applied objectively to citizens in regards to their own rights and responsibilities that drives most countries you and I would probably say we'd like to live in. What you're describing isn't too tangibly different from the Spartan ephors.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago

Food or shelter are not produced for free either, and they are still widely accepted human rights. Of course it's clear that one cannot just go and label arbitrarily expensive things as human rights, but of course guaranteeing human rights can take a nontrivial amount of work. This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for that work.

sol_remmy 9y ago
> This does not mean anyone should "work for free", states and other administrations are supposed to guarantee human rights and they can pay for that work. What about in a country in crisis like Venezuela with no money to afford human rights? In a time of crisis, do farmers and doctors need to work for free to guarantee the human rights of others? How about Amazon warehouse workers?
- icebraining 9y ago
  In a time of crisis, do farmers and doctors need to work for free to guarantee the human rights of others? How about Amazon warehouse workers? Yes, as they have always done. It's called paying taxes. In my country, the media even underlines that every year by calculating how many days the average worker does "for free" (ie, to pay the various taxes), and on that day, counting from January 1st, they announce it on TV and such.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Yet they fail to count when you stop living for free, when society stops paying for your peace and security. That happens in the exact same second.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      I can't decode what you're saying, sorry.

gnaritas 9y ago

You're just being pedantic about what the word right should mean; it's silly. Rights are whatever society agrees them to be, that's it. It's an ever changing mutable list of what people agree to respect, nothing more and nothing less.

djschnei 9y ago
Don't say that like it's some long running historical understanding of what the word "right" means. If that is now the definition, it's a new definition much more ambiguous than the old. A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity. A right wasn't something someone else could provide, it was only something we could all defend. Life, liberty, property. Not the work output of another man; that used to be called slavery.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  It's not remotely new. > A right used to mean something that was passed to you by 'your creator' because of your humanity. No, words don't work that way. The word has always meant both of those things, some people like to use the word that way, and others have always used it in other ways because get this... words have multiple meanings and always have. There was never a time where what you said is true, you're romanticizing and simplify the past as if back then everyone just agree. Guess what, they didn't.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Jeremy Bentham was a defender of legal rights while calling natural rights "nonsense upon stilts". This was in the 1700s.
RivieraKid 9y ago
One of the few comments that gets it, gets downvoted... go figure.
- jwilk 9y ago
  From the HN guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

rayiner 9y ago

You could view it as a form of the right to assemble in the US constitution. The government doesn't have to give you a place to assemble, your rights aren't violated if your meeting venue is double booked, etc. But the government can't categorically preclude you from meeting.

kazinator 9y ago

> a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? Depends; is someone doing it on purpose so that you don't have access, or it is a genuine equipment failure?

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? This is a bad argument, because it ignores the vector of the rights removal, and that matters in this debate. For example, if a tree falls on you in a storm while you are writing an anti-government book and you die are your rights being violated? Obviously not. However if THE GOVERNMENT™ comes in and kills you for speaking against them then yes your rights are being violated. Your example would be better served to say: A simple test, if the government shuts your internet down for [reasons] are your rights being violated? Not as simple of an answer. I disagree that the internet is a basic right, but don't think that's the best argument.

baddox 9y ago
> For example, if a tree falls on you in a storm while you are writing an anti-government book and you die are your rights being violated? Obviously not. However if THE GOVERNMENT™ comes in and kills you for speaking against them then yes your rights are being violated. I think you're leaving out the example that highlights most obvious criticism of this formulation of rights. That example would be the government not using public funds to provide access to the internet.
VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
Free speech is a negative right, the only kind of right possible to have without forcing someone else to provide for your rights. Should government provide you a book and a pen to write your anti-government book? That is equivalent of internet. If I chose to live on top of some mountain should government spend $$$ to stretch a line to my mountain ?
- Klinky 9y ago
  Free speech is not a "negative right". There are definitely burdens placed on others to maintain it. Who is going to stop the government from telling you to keep your mouth shut, and then threatening you with violence if you open it? That is the reality in many places. Those who speak up often pay a heavy cost without some sort of protection. Even in places where forms of free speech are accepted, the cost to maintain it is high. Perhaps the libertarian concept of free speech is the "ability to talk to oneself in an empty room", which is pathetic.

RivieraKid 9y ago

> I don't think internet access is a human right, a simple test is if the internet goes down are my rights being violated? It is, in some countries. People are forgetting that human rights is just a law. Human rights are different in different countries and times. It's just a set of (very vague) rules a bunch of people agreed on, nothing more.

baddox 9y ago

I understand your argument about the meaning of the term "human right," but that is obviously just a semantic argument. In modern mainstream political parlance, "human right" means approximately "something that is so important that governments ought to prioritize it and spend public funds on it." The distinction you're making is that of negative and positive rights, which is an important basic topic in traditional rights theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

AckSyn 9y ago

I agree. It's like saying going into a store is a right. It's really not.

VeronicaJJ123 9y ago

You are right. Someone has to work to ensure you have internet. If internet is your right that means should someone always work to provide you internet? (Forced Labor?) I can understand making internet a right as an extension of "free speech". For example no convict should ever be disallowed from using internet and so on.

clarkmoody 9y ago

I completely agree. Most people confuse positive rights and negative rights. The inherent / natural / fundamental rights are the negative rights: life, liberty, and property. These are the rights that nobody else may take away from you unilaterally, hence "negative." These may be further distilled into the basic right of self-ownership over your body. It requires an appreciation of human dignity to acknowledge these rights. The positive rights are more like privileges: things that somebody else must provide for you. These are not really rights at all, since it makes someone else your slave in the extreme case, hence violating their prior right to liberty. These "rights" should be called "privileges" instead, and we'll stop being confused about it. Let's go to the extreme: the desert island. If I'm sick, and you're a doctor, and I have a right to healthcare, then what? If I truly have that right, and you are the only one who may provide it, then I can force you to treat my sickness, and you become my slave. The same goes for clean water, food, shelter, education, police protection, internet access, flying cars, etc. Yes, there are plenty of things that are really nice to have and make living in a modern society a lot better. But these are not rights. Too often we abridge the fundamental rights in order to provide the privileges of citizenship bestowed upon the masses by redistributive governments.

skybrian 9y ago

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.

one-comment 9y ago

I realise I'm a little late to the game, but rights were explained to me once as: An item to which a group has access, that the ruling authority cannot block. Examples of this can be speech, in the US, the government does not grant speech, but rather they do not block access to it (within limits as defined by the SC). Also, the right the bear arms, it's something again that is inherently the citizens but the government does not block access. In the case of Internet, it being a right is different to it being a utility. As a right the government would be obligated to not block people from accessing it (again SC caveat) but has no obligation to provide it. I will caveat by saying that also disallowed are underhanded methods of blocking access to rights or blocked rights as a side effect (whether intentional or not). So the government and citizenry has to ensure that rights are being preserved by evaluating new and existing laws and adjust course as needed (either via redrafting legislation or via the SC) Of course, the above definition assumes the existence of a state, but I think that's fair. In a true anarchy we have all freedoms but of course the risks that go with that. The establishment of a state necessitates the blocking of some "freedoms" but depending on the government we retain some, which are then known as rights.

threatofrain 9y ago

From the perspective that there's some nature-given right inside of you that gives you the "right" to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, then there's no argument to be had. An axiomatic assumption has already been made on the innate dignity and moral quality of all humans. From the perspective that rights are a legal device that people or governments create (and enforce) in order to achieve broad social or government aims in the form of a citizen's baseline, then internet as a right should be on the table for discussion. It should be noted that rights as a legal device and rights as an innate moral assumption are not contradictory. I do believe that internet will become increasingly related to a person's ability to communicate, summon vehicles, find out and talk about government and politics, organize and find human meetings, use maps, utilize business services, or coordinate emergency information. Without internet, a person can still do these things, but I think there's a general drop in quality of reach and capability. I think there's also a discussion to be had about whether a citizen baseline of internet access means a more prosperous or robust nation.