5 ms·

Tim Berners-Lee: Web access is a human right

33 points by luigi 16y ago

sigzero 16y ago
That's a stretch and one I don't agree with.
jdludlow 16y ago
Of course it's not a human right. Neither are water or food, so his analogy is pointless. This is "you have a right to free speech; you don't have a right to a printing press" for the modern age. You still have the right to free speech, and in the case of the Internet, the right to freely associate. You don't, however, have the right to have someone else pay your ISP bill. True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others.
- calpaterson 16y ago
  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)
  - jdludlow 16y ago
    Yes, thank you. I knew there was a term for what I was trying to say, but I couldn't remember what it was called.
  - gloob 16y ago
    To quote myself from a few months ago: "I am a citizen, you must hold (if you are the government) or fund (if you are a taxpayer) an election for me to vote in." What's your feeling on that positive right? I've encountered people who argue against democracy, and I've encountered people who will re-word the right as stated above and then call it a negative right. I disagree with the former, and the latter only succeed in demonstrating that the difference between positive and negative rights is one of phrasing, and not of the right itself. Do you have a different take on the matter? The idea of "negative" and "positive" rights is one way of looking at the matter, but it has flaws. Edit: I don't mean to imply the parent post is making any argument one way or the other; I'm just commenting on the idea itself. Edit 2: Other things (some completely outlandish, some more plausible) worth thinking about: - I own a square mile of land with a river running through it. You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver of mine. If I, entirely on my own property, divert the river such that it ceases to run through your property, have I aggressed against you? Do you have the right to never have the value of your property decrease? - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in the world. Do I have the right to refuse to sell it? Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing the large majority of them to starve to death? - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members of unpopular minorities. I am a gay black Jew. Am I justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in order to hide and evade capture?
    - calpaterson 16y ago
      This is only a problem if you take an absolutist line, which I don't think anyone really does. Even the toughest libertarians still want a police force and law courts.
      - gaius 16y ago
        That is in fact the key difference between libertarian and anarchist.
      - rauljara 16y ago
        If a philosophy doesn't work in absolutist terms, perhaps it shouldn't be expressed in absolutist terms. The parent comment left no apparent wiggle room.
        calpaterson 16y ago
        Meh, people are lazy with language like this all the time. Many people say "murder is always wrong", but, when you ask them, say "well, self defense is ok". Instead of assuming the worst possible case for your opponent, be charitable with his case. You'll avoid nonsense discussions much more often.
    - jimmyk 16y ago
      Voting cannot be considered a negative right. I have no more of a negative right to tell the individuals in my government what to do than they have to tell me what to do. I do have the negative right to give them the privilege of governing me and my property just the same as they have the negative right to protect me and my property and to give me the privilege of having some say in their decisions. If we come to that agreement, then I have the privilege of voting and they have the privilege of governing me.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      - I own a square mile of land with a river running through it. You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver of mine. If I, entirely on my own property, divert the river such that it ceases to run through your property, have I aggressed against you? Do you have the right to never have the value of your property decrease? If you change the flow of the river on your property such that it affects mine, then yes you have aggressed against me (it is easier to see in the reverse, it is clearly an aggression against me if you flood my land even if you poor the water on your own land). - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in the world. Do I have the right to refuse to sell it? Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing the large majority of them to starve to death? You have the right not to sell it, and no you haven't aggressed against anyone assuming that the food had been payed for (whomever sold you the food must have valued whatever you gave them in return more than the food) - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members of unpopular minorities. I am a gay black Jew. Am I justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in order to hide and evade capture? Strictly speaking no you don't have to right to hide on their property (and if the Nazies kill those suspected of hiding minorities they are in danger too) though I doubt anybody would have a much of an issue with it if you did.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I don't think that there are many people who really believe that access to water isn't a human right, or at least who would be willing to act consistently with that belief. Most people have at least an implicit belief that if lots of people were ending up dying of thirst, it would be a responsibility of society to do something about that.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  > "True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others." Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life.
calpaterson 16y ago
It's a real shame when an expert on one topic starts to talk in public about another area they don't really know about. "Human Right" is an attribute with a lot of implications. If the web is a human right because otherwise people end up disadvantaged, then surely more basic communications technologies are human rights also? Like pens and paper? Even worse, if your logic is that things become human rights because they're simply beneficial, then you have to create loads of new human rights. Washing machines are human rights. Public transport is a human right. Five pieces of fruit a day is a human right. And then you're starting to loose a lot of the original meaning of the term.
- _delirium 16y ago
  The idea's been applied to more basic information sources for a while, at least by some people. Some of the advocates for public libraries have long argued a version of "access to knowledge" or "access to information" as a right. Extending that to the internet seems to be sort of a modern version (although that could presumably also be fulfilled via libraries; it's not clear that home access to internet is specifically required).
ck2 16y ago
Let's put it this way. If 99.9% of a society is web enabled and you deny access to the web to a subset by pricing it out of reach or allowing carriers to not install cables because it would not be not profitable for them in the short term, well then you've done a human injustice. But would not say it's a human right just yet. When society demands that you are web enabled or face crippling setbacks and some people still cannot afford it, then you've got a problem. That's not going to happen anytime soon. Instead, let's focus on affordable, accessible, quality health care as a real human right since many 3rd world countries still won't have that for quite some time, as well as the United States.
- teaspoon 16y ago
  I'd venture to claim that it is far more feasible to bring 100% of the world population internet access than to bring them health care at even US Medicaid standards.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
This is already happening in Finland: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rights_1_internet-access-fast-internet-megabit?_s=PM:TECH http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rig... A rising tide floats all boats, so I really don't see why this is such a big deal. If the government was willing to build an ISP or subsidize existing providers, this would be a win-win scenario for everyone-- it would accelerate the spread of information, increase literacy, give people the ability to self-educate. If you think people should have access to public libraries and public education growing up, I don't see why you'd disagree with this.
jcromartie 16y ago
It must be pretty awesome to be a guy who invented a human right.
- jpr 16y ago
  It's easier than you think. Just invent something and declare it human right. Done.
benologist 16y ago
Internet access and especially personal internet connections is a luxury that almost the entire world has very limited or no access to. To call it a basic human right when it's only really accessible to an elite slice of humanity is just silly.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  There are far more connected people than you think. Something like 30% of the people on the planet have web access. 30% is not "an elite slice", especially considering that over the next decade or two the number will climb higher and higher until it's pretty much 100%. The developing countries - especially in Africa - are exploding in web use, especially mobile web. TBL is perhaps a bit early with his words, but not by much I'd say. Edit: Numbers: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
  - benologist 16y ago
    I don't know, I've been in a lot of poor countries and I'm sitting in a really poor one right now - Nicaragua. There's loads of internet cafes and the people do use them but that's like an hour here and there for the small % that actually use the internet at all. I bet that 30% includes them even though they're a long way from our dependency on being connected 24/7 and the deep integration into our lives - we're probably disconnected less than these people are connected.
benihana 16y ago
Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights. Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Yes? Then it's not a human right.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life. Care to rework it a bit?
benihana 16y ago
Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights. Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Then it's not a human right.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
While access to water is a more fundamental right... Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning. I firmly believe that computers are becoming integrated with our minds. That means, yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. It's an open issue to figure out exactly when we cross that line where the rules change, but we're getting very close. But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness. We face this same problem with the word "war". We have a war on drugs, a war in Afghanistan, a war on poverty, a war on crime. If it's all a "war", then none of it is a war. The word war has no meaning that we can grab onto. Sorry, I know it sounds pedantic or like splitting hairs, but it matters: Berners-Lee could make a good case for this, if he knew what the argument for rights were based on. Without that, however, he actually hurts the cause. That's not good.
- bobbin_cygna 16y ago
  > yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. what's a real right?
  - warrenwilkinson 16y ago
    My criteria is when someone mentions a right, can I meaningfully append the question 'At whose expense'? If I can, it's bogus. These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech. These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month. Real rights prevent someone from doing awful things to you, basically "No one will harm you, or interfere with you doing this" (where this might be living, owning property, speaking, etc). The bogus rights are basically promises of free stuff.
    - pbourke 16y ago
      > These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech. > These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month. This categorization is true within American society. Other societies express different rights.
darksaga 16y ago
Some alert congress so we can update the constitution.

33 points by luigi 16y ago

That's a stretch and one I don't agree with.

Of course it's not a human right. Neither are water or food, so his analogy is pointless. This is "you have a right to free speech; you don't have a right to a printing press" for the modern age. You still have the right to free speech, and in the case of the Internet, the right to freely associate. You don't, however, have the right to have someone else pay your ISP bill. True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others.

calpaterson 16y ago
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)
- jdludlow 16y ago
  Yes, thank you. I knew there was a term for what I was trying to say, but I couldn't remember what it was called.
- gloob 16y ago
  To quote myself from a few months ago: "I am a citizen, you must hold (if you are the government) or fund (if you are a taxpayer) an election for me to vote in." What's your feeling on that positive right? I've encountered people who argue against democracy, and I've encountered people who will re-word the right as stated above and then call it a negative right. I disagree with the former, and the latter only succeed in demonstrating that the difference between positive and negative rights is one of phrasing, and not of the right itself. Do you have a different take on the matter? The idea of "negative" and "positive" rights is one way of looking at the matter, but it has flaws. Edit: I don't mean to imply the parent post is making any argument one way or the other; I'm just commenting on the idea itself. Edit 2: Other things (some completely outlandish, some more plausible) worth thinking about: - I own a square mile of land with a river running through it. You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver of mine. If I, entirely on my own property, divert the river such that it ceases to run through your property, have I aggressed against you? Do you have the right to never have the value of your property decrease? - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in the world. Do I have the right to refuse to sell it? Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing the large majority of them to starve to death? - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members of unpopular minorities. I am a gay black Jew. Am I justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in order to hide and evade capture?
  - calpaterson 16y ago
    This is only a problem if you take an absolutist line, which I don't think anyone really does. Even the toughest libertarians still want a police force and law courts.
    - gaius 16y ago
      That is in fact the key difference between libertarian and anarchist.
    - rauljara 16y ago
      If a philosophy doesn't work in absolutist terms, perhaps it shouldn't be expressed in absolutist terms. The parent comment left no apparent wiggle room.
      - calpaterson 16y ago
        Meh, people are lazy with language like this all the time. Many people say "murder is always wrong", but, when you ask them, say "well, self defense is ok". Instead of assuming the worst possible case for your opponent, be charitable with his case. You'll avoid nonsense discussions much more often.
  - jimmyk 16y ago
    Voting cannot be considered a negative right. I have no more of a negative right to tell the individuals in my government what to do than they have to tell me what to do. I do have the negative right to give them the privilege of governing me and my property just the same as they have the negative right to protect me and my property and to give me the privilege of having some say in their decisions. If we come to that agreement, then I have the privilege of voting and they have the privilege of governing me.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    - I own a square mile of land with a river running through it. You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver of mine. If I, entirely on my own property, divert the river such that it ceases to run through your property, have I aggressed against you? Do you have the right to never have the value of your property decrease? If you change the flow of the river on your property such that it affects mine, then yes you have aggressed against me (it is easier to see in the reverse, it is clearly an aggression against me if you flood my land even if you poor the water on your own land). - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in the world. Do I have the right to refuse to sell it? Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing the large majority of them to starve to death? You have the right not to sell it, and no you haven't aggressed against anyone assuming that the food had been payed for (whomever sold you the food must have valued whatever you gave them in return more than the food) - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members of unpopular minorities. I am a gay black Jew. Am I justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in order to hide and evade capture? Strictly speaking no you don't have to right to hide on their property (and if the Nazies kill those suspected of hiding minorities they are in danger too) though I doubt anybody would have a much of an issue with it if you did.
_delirium 16y ago
I don't think that there are many people who really believe that access to water isn't a human right, or at least who would be willing to act consistently with that belief. Most people have at least an implicit belief that if lots of people were ending up dying of thirst, it would be a responsibility of society to do something about that.
nooneelse 16y ago
> "True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others." Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life.

calpaterson 16y ago

It's a real shame when an expert on one topic starts to talk in public about another area they don't really know about. "Human Right" is an attribute with a lot of implications. If the web is a human right because otherwise people end up disadvantaged, then surely more basic communications technologies are human rights also? Like pens and paper? Even worse, if your logic is that things become human rights because they're simply beneficial, then you have to create loads of new human rights. Washing machines are human rights. Public transport is a human right. Five pieces of fruit a day is a human right. And then you're starting to loose a lot of the original meaning of the term.

_delirium 16y ago
The idea's been applied to more basic information sources for a while, at least by some people. Some of the advocates for public libraries have long argued a version of "access to knowledge" or "access to information" as a right. Extending that to the internet seems to be sort of a modern version (although that could presumably also be fulfilled via libraries; it's not clear that home access to internet is specifically required).

ck2 16y ago

Let's put it this way. If 99.9% of a society is web enabled and you deny access to the web to a subset by pricing it out of reach or allowing carriers to not install cables because it would not be not profitable for them in the short term, well then you've done a human injustice. But would not say it's a human right just yet. When society demands that you are web enabled or face crippling setbacks and some people still cannot afford it, then you've got a problem. That's not going to happen anytime soon. Instead, let's focus on affordable, accessible, quality health care as a real human right since many 3rd world countries still won't have that for quite some time, as well as the United States.

teaspoon 16y ago
I'd venture to claim that it is far more feasible to bring 100% of the world population internet access than to bring them health care at even US Medicaid standards.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

This is already happening in Finland: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rights_1_internet-access-fast-internet-megabit?_s=PM:TECH http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rig... A rising tide floats all boats, so I really don't see why this is such a big deal. If the government was willing to build an ISP or subsidize existing providers, this would be a win-win scenario for everyone-- it would accelerate the spread of information, increase literacy, give people the ability to self-educate. If you think people should have access to public libraries and public education growing up, I don't see why you'd disagree with this.

jcromartie 16y ago

It must be pretty awesome to be a guy who invented a human right.

jpr 16y ago
It's easier than you think. Just invent something and declare it human right. Done.

benologist 16y ago

Internet access and especially personal internet connections is a luxury that almost the entire world has very limited or no access to. To call it a basic human right when it's only really accessible to an elite slice of humanity is just silly.

cryptoz 16y ago
There are far more connected people than you think. Something like 30% of the people on the planet have web access. 30% is not "an elite slice", especially considering that over the next decade or two the number will climb higher and higher until it's pretty much 100%. The developing countries - especially in Africa - are exploding in web use, especially mobile web. TBL is perhaps a bit early with his words, but not by much I'd say. Edit: Numbers: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
- benologist 16y ago
  I don't know, I've been in a lot of poor countries and I'm sitting in a really poor one right now - Nicaragua. There's loads of internet cafes and the people do use them but that's like an hour here and there for the small % that actually use the internet at all. I bet that 30% includes them even though they're a long way from our dependency on being connected 24/7 and the deep integration into our lives - we're probably disconnected less than these people are connected.

benihana 16y ago

Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights. Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Yes? Then it's not a human right.

nooneelse 16y ago
Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life. Care to rework it a bit?

benihana 16y ago

Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights. Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Then it's not a human right.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

While access to water is a more fundamental right... Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning. I firmly believe that computers are becoming integrated with our minds. That means, yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. It's an open issue to figure out exactly when we cross that line where the rules change, but we're getting very close. But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness. We face this same problem with the word "war". We have a war on drugs, a war in Afghanistan, a war on poverty, a war on crime. If it's all a "war", then none of it is a war. The word war has no meaning that we can grab onto. Sorry, I know it sounds pedantic or like splitting hairs, but it matters: Berners-Lee could make a good case for this, if he knew what the argument for rights were based on. Without that, however, he actually hurts the cause. That's not good.

bobbin_cygna 16y ago
> yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. what's a real right?
- warrenwilkinson 16y ago
  My criteria is when someone mentions a right, can I meaningfully append the question 'At whose expense'? If I can, it's bogus. These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech. These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month. Real rights prevent someone from doing awful things to you, basically "No one will harm you, or interfere with you doing this" (where this might be living, owning property, speaking, etc). The bogus rights are basically promises of free stuff.
  - pbourke 16y ago
    > These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech. > These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month. This categorization is true within American society. Other societies express different rights.

darksaga 16y ago

Some alert congress so we can update the constitution.