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I get extremely frustrated when writers try to decide whether something is a human right or not. The whole concept vexes me: 1. Statements like this: the autho
by kevinalexbrown 15y ago
I get extremely frustrated when writers try to decide whether something is a human right or not. The whole concept vexes me:
1. Statements like this: the author comes up with a criterion for what a human right should be, and gives examples of things she thinks are human rights, but doesn't notice that they violate the criterion.
"The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information..."
These are fundamentally NOT rights that can be identified by their outcomes. This point is almost trivial. The freedom of speech is not "an end in itself" any more than the Internet is. Free speech is "an enabler of rights, not a right itself" which is his criterion for not-a-human-right. We want free speech so we can influence civil rights, protect our freedom or <insert whatever right we think we have> not just so for the sake of spouting things into the public or private sphere.
2. Rights conflict, so asking whether something is, or is not, a right becomes irrelevant. Let's say we've decided I have a right to not be murdered. Great. That might conflict with your right to, say, freedom. Obviously that's restricted so that you don't do things. Or maybe everyone has a right to their property, but also an equal chance at getting to water, and I own the only watering hole. The question is what we do when they conflict (i.e. we say that my right to not be killed trumps your right to do whatever you want, or access to water trumps the right to property).
3. They never seem to make a broader point about how to make the world a better place, other than "now that you know the Internet isn't a human right, you can, er, um, work to make it better?" Blah.
- cgs1019 15y agoI think I agree with you, but what do you mean by "I own the only watering hole" in this hypothetical context outside the zone of commonly prescribed rights of freedom, ownership, etc.? You own what? The land? How much of it? And why? Because I can't take it from you? Watch me (and my army). You own the well? To what depth? Watch me (and my army) dig deeper and take the water from underneath "your" watering hole. It seems you're conflating somewhat the concepts of personal freedom and interpersonal contracts. For example, your right not to be murdered and my right to "freedom" are not in contradiction if my right to freedom is constrained to apply only to those actions of mine which have nil or negligible impact on others. I think Cerf's point is that we should not take something which is complex and takes extraordinary human effort to produce, maintain, protect and secure as a granted right. It intermingles motivations undesirably.
- kevinalexbrown 15y agoFor example, your right not to be murdered and my right to "freedom" are not in contradiction if my right to freedom is constrained to apply only to those actions of mine which have nil or negligible impact on others. This is what I mean by conflicting rights: when they conflict, we constrain them. There are situations where it's murkier. Instead of "negative" rights and corresponding obligations (I have a right not to be murdered, so you have an obligation not to murder me) into "positive" ones (I have a right to life, you have an obligation to feed me if I'm starving and you have food). Suddenly you're constrained in a fundamental sense if I have a right to life: your doing anything other than feeding me has a horrible impact on me. Where do we draw the line at how much I can expect from you? To the point at which your not sacrificing other rights (this is Peter Singer's argument[1]), or do we just ignore positive rights/obligations altogether? Gets murky. And when it gets that murky, it's silly to try to divide things we want/need into categories of "IsAHumanRight" and "IsNotAHumanRight". ----- Cerf writes: Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue: the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights. If then said "so it doesn't matter if the internet's a human right, let's just help people use it for the betterment of the world, etc." then I'd be all on board. Instead he makes a big deal about not putting the internet into the sacred but ill-defined category of "IsAHumanRight", all the way up to making that his title, when it should be (IMHO) "Stop worrying about rights, help the Internet help people." [1] http://www.amazon.com/World-Globalization-Professor-Peter-Singer/dp/0300096860 http://www.amazon.com/World-Globalization-Professor-Peter-Si...
- philwelch 15y agoOwning the only watering hole, historically, is actually a pretty decent source of power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire
- AndrewDucker 15y agoActually, I want freedom of speech so that I can speak freely. I view it as a good in and of itself.