2 ms·

Is Internet Access a Human Right?

4 points by solipsist 16y ago

atgm 16y ago
The author boils the "right" to internet access to a "right" to communication... but there is no such right, internet or otherwise. If you go to jail, you're isolated from the world. If you're bad in jail, you're isolated from the jail. Humans don't have a right to communicate, for better or for worse... and I don't see why the internet should be an exception (as much as I'd like it to be, given my own addiction) when telephones, letters, telegraphs, roads, and person-to-person communication weren't/aren't.
- sixtofour 16y ago
  jdp23 cites Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why is that declaration wrong, and your declaration right? Humans are social animals, and communication is so much a part of us that many of us get sad, or depressed, or destructive if we can't communicate with others. As a human, do you have the right to breath or eat? Do you have the right to defend yourself? Do humans have any rights at all? Why not? And if we do have rights, then why not the right to communicate, and by that communication the right to self determination and to oversight of government? Are none of these rights? In the United States, do we not have the rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
jdp23 16y ago
Yes. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
sixtofour 16y ago
> If I were one of eighty million people living in a country in the midst of a nascent political upheaval whose access to the rest of the world was being antagonistically removed, ... And whose access to each other was being removed too. When I read this morning of Egypt turning off the internet I went a little cold, because our own (US) government could just as easily do the same thing here.

4 points by solipsist 16y ago

atgm 16y ago

The author boils the "right" to internet access to a "right" to communication... but there is no such right, internet or otherwise. If you go to jail, you're isolated from the world. If you're bad in jail, you're isolated from the jail. Humans don't have a right to communicate, for better or for worse... and I don't see why the internet should be an exception (as much as I'd like it to be, given my own addiction) when telephones, letters, telegraphs, roads, and person-to-person communication weren't/aren't.

sixtofour 16y ago
jdp23 cites Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why is that declaration wrong, and your declaration right? Humans are social animals, and communication is so much a part of us that many of us get sad, or depressed, or destructive if we can't communicate with others. As a human, do you have the right to breath or eat? Do you have the right to defend yourself? Do humans have any rights at all? Why not? And if we do have rights, then why not the right to communicate, and by that communication the right to self determination and to oversight of government? Are none of these rights? In the United States, do we not have the rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution?

jdp23 16y ago

Yes. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

sixtofour 16y ago

> If I were one of eighty million people living in a country in the midst of a nascent political upheaval whose access to the rest of the world was being antagonistically removed, ... And whose access to each other was being removed too. When I read this morning of Egypt turning off the internet I went a little cold, because our own (US) government could just as easily do the same thing here.