Berners-Lee: Web Access Is a 'Human Right' 480
jbrodkin writes "Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee says humans have become so reliant on it that access to the Web should now be considered a basic right. In a speech at an MIT symposium, Berners-Lee compared access to the Web with access to water. 'Access to the Web is now a human right,' he said. 'It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.'"
Go Tim (Score:3, Insightful)
A free and open internet may disappear if we don't fight for net neutrality. And we need it more now than ever.
Right (Score:4, Insightful)
So not providing web access is in the same category as e.g. imprionment without trial or torture? Will we see stories about how people in Guantanamo Bay are *gasp* deprived of Facebook? This does seem to triviliase human rights just a little.
Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
This is becoming a joke, first people try to claim health care is a right (as if I could just march in a doctor's office and demand my right to a checkup) and now this guy is trying to claim web access is a right? Does that mean he thinks the government should provide computers to all to exercise this right then?
Please people, stop. You trivialize and diminish what real human rights are when you try to expand it to include goods and services and you feel are essential but they just aren't "rights".
"Access to X is a basic human right" (Score:5, Insightful)
fill in the X with your favorite personal privileged that you'd like other people to finance for you.
Me, I'd like fast cars, a big house, and loose women. I mean, those are all things that make me happy and happieness is a basic human right, right?
Moreover, the divide between myself and those who have the sweet cars, fast women, and kickass houses is growing bigger and bigger every year, and I think it's high time that the government stepped in and gave me the crap I'm asking for.
So TV, radio, phone access are human rightst too? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Berners Lee and others are assuming an importance to the web that it doesn't deserve. Sure, without it life can become harder if you do a lot of shopping and banking online , but jesus Tim , get a sense of perspective.
Re:Go Tim (Score:5, Insightful)
And there was me thinking... (Score:4, Insightful)
... that the idea behind human rights was to prevent torture, exploitation and give everyone the right to the fair trial.
Internet access? How pathetic the human race has become.
Re:Right (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. I'm of the mind that a right is something which requires action to deny, but exists without any intervention by others. The right to free speech, for example, exists naturally: you can say whatever you want until someone comes along and coerces you to stop.
This of course means that health care, education, and web access are NOT rights, because they require other people (doctors, teachers, ISPs) to provide services before such a "right" is accessible. I don't see how anything can be a right when the willful participation of others is a requirement.
Does he mean right or entitlement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Go Tim (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go Tim (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes please. Go.
I mean, leave. Go away. With all due respect to many great accomplishments, this is ridiculous.
"Web access should be seen as a right, too, because anyone who lacks Web access will fall behind their more connected peers."
Anyone who lacks $1,000,000 in their bank account will fall behind their more moneyed peers. Is being rich now a right?
And what does this mean, to be a right? Free speech as right means the government doesn't have to subsidize my printing press, but if I have a printing press, the government can't tell me what to print or not print.
Does web access is a right mean the government doesn't have to subsidize my computer, but if I have a computer the government can't prevent my access?
So if I find an insufficiently secured WiFi access point, the government can't stop my access? I can't be arrest for theft of service?
I don't get it.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Some, like freedom of speech, are there to protect our other rights.
The question is, in the modern day and age, can you truly have freedom of speech without Internet access? It's become so vital to communicate, and such a powerful tool, having access the internet is a safeguard against tyranny, just as a soapbox was before it.
Internet access protects your other rights. That is enough to mean maybe we should think of it as a right.
I'm not saying, just as he isn't, that it's as essential as water or whatever to survival, but we should aim for better than that, and do in other instances, so why not here?
Internet access is not a right. Nevertheless... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
We should, by now, be able to meet the rights for food and shelter and protection from harm
How can you have a 'right' to food, shelter and protection without enslaving others to provide those things for you? Don't those people have 'rights'?
When will these nutjobs learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to argue for net neutrality, fine, but arguing that someone must take on the role of Santa Claus is just asinine, and highly destructive if such mandates carry the force of law and the threat of violence from the state which follows.
Depends what you mean by "access" (Score:5, Insightful)
Access doesn't really mean anything more than having the opportunity to swing by your local library to use one of the public computers from time to time. Access does not mean having personal broadband, an iPad, a netbook, or any of the other gadgets and toys that some would like to think it means.
I do believe that basic access should be a guaranteed right -- but that does not absolve the individual from having to pay their bills, do some legwork to get to the library, or otherwise put in an effort to make use of their rights. Think "voting" -- just because you have a "right" to vote does not mean anyone else has to do diddly squat to help you get to the polling station.
Not even close (Score:5, Insightful)
The infrastructure that was mostly paid for by the taxpayers. So we do own it, really.
Sorry buddy but that is utterly false. The modern internet is run over fiber optics that was laid across the country by Quest and Level 3 and other companies. The last mile that runs to your house was wired in by a company. The government has not been a majority spender on the internet for at least a decade, probably longer... what Arpanet gave us was the concept of the internet, which private business has taken and run with.
Re:Go Tim (Score:5, Insightful)
Information and money are not the same thing. The developed world has universally recognized that education is a right. Information fits hand-in-hand with that.
Should wealth be a right? Well, probably, but that's not possible. Let's put that question aside until we invent replicators and infinite energy sources. Today, however, we do have the means to give everyone education and information.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
And the other 100 people sitting on their asses expect those 3 to provide for them as well..
After all it is their "Right."
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
If my housing and food are provided for, I'm telling you right now.
I'll never do anything productive, as I have no need to do so.
I'm not just saying that as a big scary threat. I'm telling you -- I know myself. This is a fact. If I know that I'll be able to live in a warm house and have food on my table, without ever doing anything to earn it, I will never do anything to earn it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case, you don't have the right to an attorney. You don't have the right to a trial by jury. You don't have the right to be free from discrimination in employment or housing.
Hm nah. I'd rather have the rights than conform to your pedantically narrow definition of what a right is.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
But what happens when someone says "Why should I have to work? I just want to sit at home and play guitar/whack off/go fishing/watch youtube all day"? What happens when someone says "I want all of that stuff without having to work for it?"
That's the problem with having all of this stuff just provided to everyone as entitlements/"rights". You wind up counting on people to contribute back, to carry their own weight... in short, to do the "right thing". Problem is, people don't do that. They're lazy and self-interested. If they see they can get all of the benefits without having to work, they won't work.
At that point, either the people who are still working have to work harder to provide the same goods and services with less manpower, or they say "screw it, why should I have to work harder just because that guy doesn't want to?" and quit working themselves. The cycle repeats itself until there's nobody doing any work, and nobody gets free stuff anymore.
Alternatively, you can force the lazy people to go back to work, but this presents its own problem. Forcing someone to work against his/her will sounds a lot like this thing we call "slavery", which just about anyone will agree is a Bad Thing.
So which is it? Do you let the slackers get perpetual free rides and watch as your society crumbles under the burden of millions of freeloaders? Do you stand behind everyone and crack a whip to keep them working? Or do you leave it up to able-bodied individuals to provide for themselves?
Try to get a free ride on rail road (Score:4, Insightful)
The infrastructure that was mostly paid for by the taxpayers. So we do own it, really.
Much like the railroads were given free land and various rights in the 19th century. Have you tried getting a free ride from the rail roads?
:-)
Personally, as a taxpayer, I'd rather have a free in the F/A-18 I've paid for.
Re:Go Tim (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't own it really. Maybe you think we should own it (and to that I agree), but we have no rights to the lines that are already in place.
If we want to own the lines, we need to form a coop, get ourselves access rights, buy the fibre, and build our own network. Interconnect all of our local networks, and help pay for it buy charging the businesses the rights to connect to us.
Last month, I was thinking about doing this very thing, but the financial risk to do it myself was too great, what with a family to be concerned about.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Does the UN identify who, exactly, is supposed to fulfill that right? As someone posted above, how, exactly, does one fulfill a "right" anyway?
Article 25 points out a "right" to housing... what about the 1.3 million homeless in the US?
I think you have a right to not be denied those things, but you do not have a right to have them provided to you magically.
Re:Go Tim (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised at your definition of a right, particularly with that handle.
Right to education would come under a right to free association (as in nobody should be able to prevent you from obtaining an education). Beyond that, there is a societal need to have educated members so they might choose to subsidize education. That's not the same thing as a right.
Rights are inherent in being a human. They are not granted to you by any outside entity. They can only be infringed upon (or not). Rights to speech, your own thoughts and opinions. To hang out with whomever you choose. To not be assaulted or to be secure in your possessions. These are all things that you have absent any gift from outside. In fact, it takes an outside application of force to remove or prevent the exercise of these rights.
Education? That requires somebody else to do something. Claiming that you have a right to an education means you have a right for someone else to teach you. That is not possible under the definition of a right - because I certainly have a right to not spend my time teaching you, and the same can be said for every other individual on the planet.
Information technology is the same thing - having a right to not be interfered with is not the same thing as having a right for somebody else to give you a computer, modem, network router, and connection to their network. Claiming this as a right doesn't make any sense. If that was a right, then you would be able to claim all of these things for free. Which means you claim a right to violate another person's rights in confiscating their property or time. This cannot be a right.
And wealth? Holy crap, what are you thinking? Do we all have the right to be NBA All-Stars too? Or how about the heavyweight champion of the world?
I think you completely conflated the idea of "it is something that is really important" with "it is a right". These are absolutely not the same thing at all. Food is really, really important. Way more important than education or information. You'll die without it. Food is not a right. Neither is shelter, water, transportation.... all of the necessities of life. These all require work to be done - somebody has to grow the food, or hunt, or gather, whatever. You can't just go grab food from someone who grew it because you are hungry. The same goes for money - you exchange your labor for money... nobody has the right to confiscate your money, any more than they have the right to force you to perform labor.
There's a completely separate question about what a society wants to come together and provide as basic services to all citizens - but that isn't the same thing as a right at all.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
This is becoming a joke, first people try to claim health care is a right (as if I could just march in a doctor's office and demand my right to a checkup)
It's no joke. You can walk into any emergency room in US and demand your right to be seen. I would hate to live in a country where I would be denied care if I had a certain skin color, if I didn't belong to a certain social class, or if I didn't have enough money to pay.
Sure, you have to pay later, but someone has to foot the bill for any public service, just like someone has to foot the bill for a police force and a justice system to enforce your other rights. If you can afford to pay the doctor's bill, you pay. If you can't afford to pay, then the government (AKA your fellow taxpayers) will cover you.
I want to live in a society that ensures everyone will be taken care of when they are sick or injured, especially those most vulnerable like children or the poor. That seems like my idea of a just, fair society. The trick, of course, is finding the most affordable way to do this, and who knows if we are anywhere near that ideal yet.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe you. You mean to tell me there is nothing creative that interests you? You have no motivation, besides putting food on the table, to do anything? If you do, I pity you. And I'm fairly sure you are in a small minority, or at least conditioned to be that way. Most children, before they get through high school, are eager to learn and create, even though their food and housing are provided for. It's human nature.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
That may very well be the case, there are people like that.
However, decades of experience in countries where things like housing and food are provided to those who have none has demonstrated that the vast, vast majority of people are not like that.
The reason why you think you would act that way is probably because, as you imply in your post, you think you'd be living in a house - in other words, that your standard of living would be unchanged. That's not the case at all; you'd be living in high-density housing with relatively poor food. It would be good enough, but it wouldn't be very good.
In reality, it's not very different from your current situation. You could drop out of society and go become a homeless person at any time; why haven't you? Because the quality of life wouldn't be to your satisfaction? Well then, let me assure you that while the quality of life under such a system would be better, it probably still wouldn't be something you would choose over working, when given the option.
Re:Lets Stop Expanding This Rights Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
This is funny because slackers and libertarians are two sides of the same coin - the "fuck you, got mine" types who have only relatively recently been given the opportunity to survive thanks to the same modern societies (again, using "modern" in terms relative to the existence of the human species) that they would destroy to benefit themselves. A primitive tribe of humans (operating like a pack of chimps) would kick out the slacker (who would then be eaten by a predator), and the libertarian would go off on his own to escape the "slavery" of the tribe or be kicked out for not sharing, and be eaten by a predator. But the removal of these selective pressures has allowed these traits to reappear.
Re:Go Tim (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, have you ever actually worked in a corporation?