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I began this piece raring to disagree, but I find it hard to fault his logic. A human right to unimpeded use of carriages would seem hilarious today, and a righ

• nextparadigms 15y ago
  Would you agree that electricity would probably always be necessary? If so, then what about the Internet? It's still early days for the Internet, but I think it's already becoming as important as electricity for many people. I'm not convinced that the Internet is just like the landlines, but we might need a more abstract description of the Internet, just in case say a new "Internet" of mesh networks builds momentum and starts replacing this Internet. But even then, it would be pretty close to what we have today. I don't see the Internet as just one thing that gets used for a couple of decades and then discarded, but more like something that will continually evolve. I see the Internet closer to the abstractness of "communication" than to the physicality of the "landline", which also implies only certain technologies.
• drewcrawford 15y ago
  > A human right to unimpeded use of carriages would seem hilarious today, In an alternate universe, the author could have used "freedom of the press" as the anecdote. In 2012, where are you going to keep your printing press? But for the fact that the Constitution mentions a free "press", the word would seem hilariously backwards to us today. It is a fine thing to be paralyzed about writing legislation that restricts freedom that could have unintended consequences a hundred years hence. But I do not think that we face the same problem when recognizing a right.
  • alex_stoddard 15y ago
    But what right is being recognized? I think there is a distinction to be made between the internet as material infrastructure and the internet as a medium of civil discourse. The former is only relevant in as much as totalitarian control of infrastructure can be used as a means of denying the latter - that is civil discourse critical of a regime. Vint Cerf is arguing for a higher, abstract, freedom of uncensored communication which should not be confused with a civil obligation to provide a certain infrastructure. The idea of "a right to internet access" is dangerous if it is understood too narrowly, focusing on a current means rather than a properly recognized timeless end. Internet access is a public good, as is the physical existence of material printing presses. But that doesn't oblige a government to build a certain communications infrastructure (although a wise government might well chose to encourage such). A "higher" right to uncensored communication does oblige a just government to never censor the internet or deny access to it. A right in this sense might be better understood as a restriction on government: "Congress shall make no law ..." rather than "Congress shall ensure the provision of ..."
• eternalban 15y ago
  How about the right to own a printing press? A bit of not so distant nostalgia to consider: in some totalitarian states in 20th century (up to late 70's in one case I am aware of first hand), access to mimeograph machines were restricted. Of course, he is correct that the actual right is the right to free speech, but practically considered in context of modern life, the two are arguably effectively equivalent as simply denying access effectively curtails the inherent right. And what to make of the speakers' corner in Hyde Park? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers_corner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers_corner
  • andrewfelix 15y ago
    >"How about the right to own a printing press?" Wouldn't the equivalent be owning an ISP in that case? I think a better analogy might be the right to own and read a book. Which is pretty a pretty fucking important right.
    • VMG 15y ago
      Both are bad analogies, because owning a book or a printing press is not dependent on third parties after an initial transaction. Having an internet connection is per definition dependent on somebody providing the connection.
      • eternalban 15y ago
        > owning .. a printing press is not dependent on third parties after an initial transaction. Consider: - You have the right to "bear arms" but "you do not have a right to purchase bullets". - You have the right to "free press" but "you do not have a right to purchase ink".
  • paganel 15y ago
    > How about the right to own a printing press? A bit of not so distant nostalgia to consider: in some totalitarian states in 20th century (up to late 70's in one case I am aware of first hand), access to mimeograph machines were restricted. In Ceausescu's Romania in the 1980s if you had a typewriter you had to declare it to the local police, so in order to avoid all the hassle of dealing with the police, or even the Securitate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate), you'd just forget about it and carry on with living your daily life, freedom of expression be damned. Also, Romanians were very frustrated by lack of TV air-time, by the end of the 1980s the Romanian national television was only airing 2 hours per day, mostly filled with bullshit propaganda. During the 1989 December revolt lots of people actually complained about that out loud. It would be interesting to see what happens if SOPA (or any related law) actually has a similar effect on Americans' access to the web, will they complain on the streets?
• fleitz 15y ago
  It's not about internet freedom it's about freedom. If you live in a free country, free and unimpeded access to the internet will come naturally as the populace is set free.
• knowtheory 15y ago
  (Apologies to non-US hackers, the following reply is couched entirely in the context of the Constitution, however I think the thrust is relevant in general) So, all the other replies so far note the explicit mention of "the press". I'll first note that we certainly no longer talk about "the press" in reference to physical presses, and I'd naïvely hazard that the framers of the constitution didn't mean it that way either. In that regard I think it's a bit of a red-herring to talk about. The critical point really is whether we as free people have the freedom to communicate and associate. The reason why the internet is interesting is because it's the confluence of two of our existing rights. Sure the internet can be used for the purpose of mass media publishing, in a manner that would be analogous/familiar to the framers. But i would argue that the internet's facility for real time communications has done something unique. The internet as a communications technology has enabled communities to form that, while not without precedent[1], would not otherwise exist. So, to me, access to the internet is relevant both to the freedom of the press and the freedom to associate mentioned in the constitution. It becomes problematic to say that government or corporations can stand in the way of my intent or desire to communicate with whom i wish. I'd like to flip this on it's head. The United States Postal Service is explicitly established in the Constitution (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause and note particularly that infrastructure was an important point of discussion/controversy that is essentially a footnote/non-issue now). So, Why isn't internet access guaranteed by the US government in a similar fashion? [1] Organizations which communicate primarily on the basis of correspondance have existed for centuries, but i'd argue the majority of them have been niche and primarily affluent, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society or more recently science fiction fan zines.
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    • knowtheory 15y ago
      [Edit just to make this comment sensible w/o it's predecesor: Its author asked whether discussing the Constitution was relevant in the context of general human rights (rather than a matter of US law), and observed that there are a number of abridgements we tolerate with respect to our rights in the US.] My point is that the Constitution is an instance/attempt to enshrine what people viewed as natural rights of man into law. In that context, i think the Constitution is relevant, in looking at what it was that they were attempting to guarantee. I'm not materially concerned with the abridgment of rights in extreme cases. In order to guarantee a orderly/functioning society, we submit to some limits on our inalienable rights. The important thing is that they are inalienable. The material point is whether access to communities that only exists on the internet is something that shouldn't be interfered with or denied at the whims of others with whom our interests may diverge. I.e. can your internet service provider disconnect you because they don't like you? :P
• ThomPete 15y ago
  Well. No human rights are fundamental. They are all agreed upon rights that some nation states choose to respect and others don't. Even in states where these rights are respected, violation is common. So the question is not whether it is a human right, but whether it should be. And that is a decision only humans can make.
  • wisty 15y ago
    It's all about game theory. Nothing is really absolute - freedom of speech will always have limits. But it's important to tell the people that they do have absolute freedom of speech, otherwise what they have will be gradually eroded by seemingly reasonable steps. For example - you can't speak in favor of terrorist attacks, then a violent protest becomes classed as a terrorist attack, then a protest in which some participants are violent is a violent protest, then any protest might turn violent, then any public meeting which disparages the government becomes classed as a protest. Suddenly, you can't criticize the government, or you're a terrorist. It's far better to say you have absolute freedom of speech, and hope everyone turns a bit of a blind eye when the really crazy stuff gets silenced. That way, if too much stuff is getting banned, people will push back.
  • 27182818284 15y ago
    The amount of time on this planet where there has been no agreement to the "fundamental" rights that people in the US now speak of vastly dwarfs the age of the US. There is nothing historically fundamental about them. They are "fundamental" only in the sense that in the last few centuries they grew in popularity
• zerostar07 15y ago
  Some technologies are too big to be abstracted away, such as Press. The internet is one of these things. Shutting down twitter for example does not violate the "freedom of the press" or expression or any of the other fundamental human rights, yet the recent examples from Arab countries make it clear that it does. Hence it's not right to dismiss the access to the internet human right as premature optimization.
• DanBC 15y ago
  > We need to protect something. So what is it? Due process? Checks and balances? Oversight, probably judicial?
• pnathan 15y ago
  I think that the appropriate context for internet-in-historical terms is to use the now-obselete category of pamphleteer. People who put out sheets of information ranting about the subject du jour, or perhaps cute cats. It doesn't matter. The freedom to distribute ideas remains the same. The internet as such is another instance of the ability to communicate. In a US perspective, I consider that a "right" to Internet is quite a bit silly. A "right" to communicate is much more profound. If the only communications media we have are Internet-mediated or face-to-face, is the right to communicate - the freedom of speech - entail a right to access the Internet? In that reductio ad absurdum, I think it would. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer