Petition Calls For Making Net Access Inalienable Right 427
CelticWhisper writes "Targeted at stopping SOPA, a petition has been started at the White House's 'We The People' page calling for a Constitutional amendment that would render internet access an inalienable right. Other countries have already adopted such classification for internet access. An excerpt from petition text reads: 'The United States Government is actively attempting to pass legislation to censor Internet. There are numerous campaigns against this Act, but we need to do more than just prevent SOPA from passing. Otherwise, future Acts of similar nature will oppress our rights.' Is calling for a Constitutional amendment to guarantee this too extreme, or is the Internet sufficiently entrenched in modern life that access to it should be guaranteed by the Constitution?"
It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so fast (Score:4, Insightful)
NOOOOOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't have an inalienable right to someone else's property.
You can't have all the cookies you want without a tummyache either, but WTF does this have to do with the topic?
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider what would be like if someone attempted to pass a law that says people should not talk with loud voices in public spaces. Or, people should not talk in groups bigger than 2. that would basically totally neutralize your right to free speech as you used it through your own, inalienable voice. it would basically alienate your right to speak, with your inalienable throat. this would totally end free speech back in ages where there wasnt technology like newspapers, tv, internet.
Or, consider a law that banned anyone from printing and publishing anything without consent from king's council. that would basically end free speech circa 1774. no pamphlet, or newspaper would be published that king didnt allow. notice, how pamphlets, newspapers had had taken over your sole, single throat as the medium free speech was conducted back at that time.
Fast forward to today. This isnt no different. internet is the medium that free speech is conducted - but actually more - its the best avenue for free speech. you restrict it, and you restrict free speech. It has taken over throat, newspapers/print medium and tv as the vehicle of free speech. Notice that i skipped the radio and tv era. that is because there has never been free speech in that era, due to the license/financial requirements they had.
internet is now our throats. cutting people off from internet, is like cutting their throats so there wont be free speech.
And So If Your Connection Is Down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean the staff of your ISP has to be hauled into The Hague and charged with Crimes Against Humanity, for denying you of your "human rights"?
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Insightful)
A REALLY bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
By making something like internet access an inalienable right, the government would be required to ensure every single person in the United States has not only access to an internet connection, but also a means of connection. The government would be required to buy people computers or smart phones. And, if a person lost, broke, or sold his computer, the government would be required to give him a new one because without a computer, he would not have inalienable right to internet access.
Also, the government would have to either pay for everyone to have internet access, provide some sort of subsidy for those who can't afford internet access, start it's own ISP which would end up directly competing with private companies, or nationalize all ISPs.
Then, there is the small fact that no one could be sentenced to not having internet access, regardless of the crime. Spammers, crackers, sexual predators, child molesters, child pornographers, and even generic criminals. And, being an "inalienable right", internet access would have to be available, on demand, to ever single prisoner in the United States, including email and instant messaging. Gangsters could use texts, email, and facebook to run their crews and order hits on witnesses. On-line grifters could run their scams from prison. Rapists could email and text their victims. Pedophile predators could stalk and groom new victims. And, being inalienable, the prisons would be unable to prevent them.
This is truly a case of not thinking things through. The unintended consequences and costs of this bill would greatly outweigh it's benefits.
And, these people want to make internet access an inalienable right, not food when we have people going hungry in this country? Really? Talk about fucked up priorities.
And, finally, need the internet to have free speech? First world problems.
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Insightful)
You're looking at this backwards.
You don't make an amendment saying, "The people have an inalienable right to access the internet."
You make an amendment that says, "Congress shall make no laws denying the people access to the internet."
Regulate Congress, not the industry.
(It's still a dumb idea when we don't have an inalienable right to oh, say water or power...)
Aleady in First Am, but Constitution already dead (Score:5, Insightful)
First Amendment [usconstitution.net]
The right to assemble applies to cyberspace, not just meatspace. Furthermore, the right to freedom of press is meaningless without the right to assemble to give the person your leaflet. Even though the document is over 200 years old, already it made first-class acknowledgement of technology: the printing press, a major technological leap from the fifteenth century. The Constitution is technology-aware. The Internet is the new press, and to prevent publication on it or to prevent receiving publications from it is unconsitutional.
Of course, this is meaningless with a Constitution that is not just routinely ignored, but at this point completely dead. Although the Constitution has been dying for the past century, the watershed moment for me came last month when a U.S. judge nullified the War Powers Act [wsj.com] and put the capacity for declaration of war completely in the Executive Branch. Worse than the actual court decision, is that no one noticed or cared.
Re:A REALLY bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh Pooh. The right to free speech doesn't make others pay for the pamphlets you print. The right of free speech also doesn't give you the right to solicit prostitutes or send out offers for illegal drugs in the mail. The right to bear arms doesn't give you the right to shoot people.
This is how internet access should be approached.
Congress shall make no law prohibiting the access of any person to the internet.
See?
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Insightful)
"Somebody else's property"?
Who owns the internet, genius?
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how it works. Free Speech is a right, but only idiots claim that means one can take over a private conference hall to make ones self heard. The right only means, as the Constitution states, that Congress shall make no law abridging this right. Similarly, an amendment to make Internet access an inalienable right would simply prevent Congress from taking it away. It would not mean that private enterprise or individuals would be forced to provide access.
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is made up of other people's networks. One uses the internet through access provided, for profit, by other people. Making internet access an inalienable right would mean giving one group of people, those without internet access, a right to the property of other people, ISP owners...
Sorry, your reductionist approach in trying to make this a "property rights trump all" issue fails. Do you realize that ISPs run wire and fiber over other people's property left and right, due to easements granted by law without paying a penny? Those people are forced to accommodate the property of a private business, denying them unlimited use of that portion of their property. The ISPs are given special legal privileges in exchange for providing a service to the public, as well as the opportunity to make money.
Re:Not so fast (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually not "the internet" but unfiltered internet ACCESS is what is should become a inalienable right. Like the right to read any book I chose...
So to continue your analogy, you're saying you have a fundamental human right to access the books on the shelf in my living room. You're saying that you can tell me to go purchase some books for you but I'm not allowed to say "No, I don't want to be involved in purchasing that material".
Hell, we don't even have telephone written into the Constitution, or emergency medical care, or access to clean water. And your primary concern is getting a point-to-point circuit for your junk mail and youtube porn added? How about this instead- fuck off.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many inalienable rights and you dilute the meaning. Same with people calling everyone in the armed forces a "hero".
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great until said private interests and your own interests are in opposition, then you're left with no recourse whatsoever. If we had private roads, and the private company that owned the roads decided you weren't allowed to use them anymore because you were talking crap about them online, or pissed off the wrong person in management, or one of the countless reasons a private company and their lawyers could come up to the justify it, what do you do when you need to use those roads to go to work?
Privatizing everything is just as dangerous to the common man. I know that a lot of people are on this "Government BAD!!! Privatization GOOD!!!!" kick right now, but it bears mentioning that our own government for decades was able to manage and improve our infrastructure just fine. It's not the government that has failed, it is the people in government lately that have failed. Say what you want about all the problems this country had in the past, and how our "golden years" weren't necessarily all sunshine and roses, but there were still a fair number of people in government that came out of World War II with a sense of civic duty. The fact that they've all been forced out by opportunists doesn't mean that government has failed, it means that we need to put better people in government.
Like all this nonsense with Social Security, they take money from it for years and years and then, when they've finally taken enough to put the fund into real danger of not being able to meet it's obligations, now it's being trotted out as an example of why government can't do anything right. Bullshit. S.S. was working just fine until those self-serving assholes started robbing it and playing games with money that didn't belong to them.
Re:It already is... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're an idiot. You represent the faction of limpdick idiots who say "the constitution protects us"... and none of you understand why the US constitution was an important document.
Clue: it wasn't because of the freedoms it grants - all of those freedoms existed in laws in other countries (example: England) - but they were written down in Latin or French and buried in vaults where only legal scholars with the right education could read them. People didn't know that the state wasn't allowed to do that.
The US constitution was important because it put YOUR RIGHTS in simple English on a sheet of paper. You know your rights and therefore you can exercise them and you know when people try to take them away... AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Not sit on your arse and imagine that a piece of paper protects you.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intent is an important aspect of law. The Constitution guarantees the right to "peaceably assemble", and the peaceable part includes both intent and action. So if a bunch of people all click on a link because they're interested in it (eg it got posted to slashdot) then even if the server crashes, no crime has been committed. If a bunch of people decide to maliciously take down a website by convincing a large group of people to hit refresh all day on their browser, then their intentions are not peaceful, and their actions would not be protected by the first amendment even if it was decided that the freedom of assembly applied to visiting a webpage. Much like freedom of assembly does not protect a group of people blocking the doorway to a grocery store.
Re:It already is... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like OWS?
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Constitution doesn't give you freedom. It gives the government freedom. Freedom isn't given to you by your government - it's something your government is supposed to protect!
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely an inalienable right (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand we have a society that is making it increasingly difficult for people to function normally (buy things, pay bills, find government information, etc.) without access to the Internet. On the other we have corporations that 1.) are trying to criminalize whatever we do on the Internet as much as they can in order to increase their profit margins, and 2.) have way too much money and influence on our governments, meaning that they will attempt endlessly to push their agendas until they succeed. A Constitutional amendment would be a good way to put a stop to their attempts once and for all.
Okay, so what about the really bad guys out their, distributing spam, viruses, kiddy-porn -- wouldn't they then also have an inalienable right to Internet access? Well, yes, but those people can also be fined and/or incarcerated.
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those examples you gave were abuse of those rights, but they still don't necessitate limiting the rights of everyone else because of a few bad actors. Just because 10% of people on the internet are trading warez or pirated movies and music doesn't give them the right to infringe upon my rights to freely travel the internet.
If we allow the government (or any private company, not just the government) the right to censor what web sites we can access, the internet is doomed in the U.S.. Just because the sites they want to censor right now are allegedly IP violators (and the alleged part of this can't be ignored; as it stands there is no recourse whatsoever to prevent erroneous reports from killing perfectly legit, legally-operated web sites), that doesn't mean they won't turn their sites on something else later. First it's child pornographers. Then it's IP thieves. Then it's bomb making instructions, fringe websites like Westboro Baptist Church and "Terrorist Groups". Then it's the Occupy organizing websites because of the conflicts with different police forces all over the country. Then it's sites promoting the overthrow of our government. After all, these actions are all "for the public good", right?
Our access to the internet today is just as much a necessary facet of the public's right to revolution as the Second Amendment and Freedom of Speech and Assembly was in our Forefather's time. We've grown beyond the days when someone can ring the town bell and have all the men come rushing to town with their Brown Bess'. The internet is our town bell, so to speak.
Giving the government the ability to limit our access to the internet is no different than allowing the government to rescind the 2nd Amendment and start collecting our guns. Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, evinced this mindset when he wrote the words:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Without unfettered access to the internet, the government is in effect limiting this human right. We have the right to gather and demonstrate and, yes, even throw off our government if we feel that we are not being properly represented. If any of our sitting reps actually respect our founding fathers and the foundations of our country, they will vote against this ridiculous SOPA shit.
Re:It already is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that as long as it isn't explicitly stated in the constitution you'll find people like Thomas and Scalia that pretend that it doesn't exist. Despite quite a few references to privacy in the bill of rights, there's plenty of folks that like to claim that there is no right to privacy. Well, if that's the case then why did they amend the constitution so that people would be secure in their persons, paper, houses and effects against unreasonable search and seizure?
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly what these petitions are trying to get is a state where everyone gets Internet access gratis.
Oh, bullshit. This isn't about free internet, this is about open access to it. Neither our government nor private business has the right to tell us where we are allowed to go on the internet. Just because right now this is about IP violators doesn't mean it will stay that way, eventually it will be used as justification to shut it down for reasons of social unrest under the reasoning of "the public good".
I pay for a web connection. What I do with it is my business. If I am infringing upon the rights of others in my actions, than by all means, prosecute me for my actions, that's the way the law works. What you can't do, though, is use the fact that I used my internet connection to break the law as an excuse to block everyone else.
This shit is all based on the premise of guilty before proven innocent. It is totally against the spirit of our legal system in it's entirety.
Re:It already is... (Score:3, Insightful)
So we will need permits to come to /. in the future else we will be called a mob?
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
While fine in intent, restricting freedom of speech to exclude hate speech only leads to restricting other types of speech. That's how we get into this whole mess of political correctness. If left unchecked, anything different/new could be considered harmful to people [society] and banned/restricted. Books, newspapers, etc. Some people would even go as far to say that we need to make Fox News illegal because it disagrees with their world view.
It's not nice to spout obscenities, but I don't think it's the place of the government to monitor/regulate speech. We need to learn how to tune these people out.
Re:Not (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO the internet should not be mentioned explicitly. At most, the first amendment might be extended to include electronic communications. Plain and simple language is important, and specifics should be avoided.
Yes, and one of the specifics to be avoided is the term "electronic". This would, for instance, tell the lawyers (and the Supreme Court) that optical fiber isn't covered, since it used photons rather than electrons.
More generally, we should probably tackle the growing problem that, whenever a computer gets involved in any activity, all legal precedent is discarded, and all legal rights must be re-established from scratch. Thus, we see all sorts of limitations of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, etc., because we're doing those activities online rather than in the "real world", and the online world exists primarily inside computers (and their comm links). So people don't see the communications as "speech" or publishing or assembling together, or whatever; they see the communications as electronic and computerized. The US Constitution doesn't mention computers (or electronics or photonics or tachyonics or whatever follows), so the people in power don't think that the US Constitution applies.
What we need is an Amendment that specifically states that our "free" activities can't be limited by the government regardless of the equipment that we use to carry them out. We need to find a way to prevent them from cancelling all the freedoms whenever a new technology comes along that improves our ability to carry out the protected activities. And we need a phrasing that covers new technologies in such a way that the more authoritarian members of the Supreme Court will understand that the freedoms still apply.
(And I refuse to call them "conservatives". An actual conservative would want to preserve our historic freedoms, regardless of whatever newfangled gadgetry we're using to exercise them. These people are "authoritarians", because they support those in positions of authority who want to limit our rights whenever they can think up a new excuse to do so.)
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
The first amendment includes freedom of the press, which obviously includes peoples access to the press. I've never heard of it meaning you get free newspapers, just that the government can't stop you from acquiring a newspaper of your choice. This would just be the same for the internet.
Re:It already is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the courts ultimately found SOPA unconstitutional, it wouldn't happen the "day it gets signed". It would take years for a case to get to the Supreme Court level. And in the meantime, there would be quite a chilling effect on speech on the Internet.
And there's always a chance that the powers that be would rely more on intimidation and bluffing rather than risk getting the law overturned. For example, it's remember all those technically illegal t-shirts and other things that have the DeCSS code printed on them? Since they were never prosecuted, the DMCA never got challenged. But there's still a chilling effect on Linux distributors (not to mention DVD player makers) to not distribute that code, just in fear of prosecution, and the costs that would entail.
This is why it's important to stop bad laws BEFORE they become laws.