[148192] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Whacky Weekend: Is Internet Access a Human Right?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Israel)
Thu Jan 5 11:49:44 2012
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:48:06 -0500
From: Dave Israel <davei@otd.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <20120105162905.GB6914@ussenterprise.ufp.org>
X-otd-MailScanner-From: davei@otd.com
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On 1/5/2012 11:29 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
> In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 11:09:59AM -0500, Jay Ashworth wrote:
>> Didn't *say* broadband. Didn't even say "Internet service". Said "Internet
>> *access*", in the non-techspeak meaning of those words.
> For the purposes of my e-mail and this point in time, they are all
> synonymous.
>
> That is, if "interenet access" is a right, providing someone a
> 9600bps dial up does not, in my mind, qualify. That might qualify
> for e-mail access, but you can not use a reasonable fraction of the
> Internet at that access speed. Similarly, denying someone internet
> service denies them internet access. The only difference between your
> terms and mine, is that mine are fixed to this point in time while
> yours is a general concept that may move in the future. One day 50Mbps
> broadband may not qualify anymore as "internet access" due to where the
> interernet ends up.
I think you're still thinking of service, as opposed to access. Public
terminals, say at libraries, are also access. Free public wifi is also
access.
>
> But let's take a specific (famous) example. Kevin Mitnick. From
> his wikipedia page:
>
> "During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was
> initially forbidden to use any communications technology other than a
> landline telephone."
>
> If Internet access (to use your term) had been a human right than
> his human rights were violated by the government when they banned
> him from using any communications technology. Do we really want to
> suggest that banning him from using the computer is the same level of
> violation as enslaving him, torturing him, or even killing him?
>
Clearly not, at least at this point in history. Internet access is more
like access to transportation; the law implicitly requires you to have
it (in the form of being able to compel a person to appear at a given
place and time), but not only fails to mandate its availability, but
includes provisions for explicitly denying access to it in some cases.
Internet access becomes a human right only when your other, more basic
human rights depend on it. If a person without internet access cannot
obtain food, shelter, or basic transportation, then it is a human right.
As an aside, your example is flawed, because judicial punishment does
involve a loss, or at least a curtailment, of what many people consider
to be basic rights.
-Dave
