Is Internet access a 'fundamental right'?
We live in a world that demands entitlements for just about everything. While the framers of the U.S. Constitution talked about the rights of assembly, speech, and religion, our modern world has crowned new rights. Universal health care is a hot one. But now the European Commission's Viviane Reding has suggested Internet access as a fundamental human right.
Who knew?
The statement comes as the European Commission grapples with proposed three-strikes legislation, an effort sponsored by France to deny file-sharers Internet access after three warnings of copyright infringement. Opponents of the legislation have responded by suggesting that Internet access is fundamental to liberty, an argument that suffered a setback on Wednesday as the European Parliament voted against codifying Internet access as a basic human right.
It's gratifying to see that someone recognizes that Internet access doesn't rank alongside free speech, even if it can help to publish that speech. Speech is fundamental, but how you express it need not be.
Ms. Reding apparently disagrees, however, as she explains in a statement to the European Parliament (NB: Microsoft Word document, which is really very ironic):
The fourth element I would like to underline is the recognition of the right to Internet access. The new rules recognise explicitly that Internet access is a fundamental right such as the freedom of expression and the freedom to access information. The rules therefore provide that any measures taken regarding access to, or use of, services and applications must respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, including the right to privacy, freedom of expression and access to information and education as well as due process.
Wow. We live in such an entitlement culture that we expect to be handed everything, Internet access now included. Does that mean I'm guaranteed fast access, or will dial-up do?
Sun's Simon Phipps explained to me over Twitter that "if the stated direction of government is eGovernment then citizen access to the Internet is a right not a privilege," which makes sense, but provides a very slippery slope. Following this line of reasoning, shouldn't I have a right to cable TV, since that's where I watch C-SPAN and other government-related activity? If that's how the government chooses to communicate with me, the citizen, I darn well better get full access!
Or how about a right to get The Wall Street Journal? It provides useful commentary on my government's actions and how they affect my wallet. But then, I'd also need The New York Times so that I could develop a balanced view on important political matters.
None of which will matter if the government doesn't force upon me the right to education! And not just any education, but an education that makes me fully capable of making intelligent voting decisions and filling out endless forms.
See the problem?
Glyn Moody suggests "framing this in terms of "rights" is pretty silly, but it's significant politically that (Reding) chose to put it this way," and he's absolutely right. It's also very dangerous.
The Western world is big on rights these days, and seems to forget its responsibilities. Indeed, the interesting thing about the fundamental rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is that they mostly involve keeping government out of the lives of citizens, whereas these new government-granted rights do the opposite: they beg government to get deeply involved with citizens' lives through taxes and regulation.
I'd therefore turn this discussion on its head, and suggest to Reding and the European Commission: we may choose to shoulder the responsibility for delivering Internet access to Europe and the rest of the world, but let's term it as a "fundamental responsibility," and not as a "fundamental right."
After all, let's be honest: if the government assumes Internet access as a fundamental right, it ultimately is granting itself the fundamental right to tax its citizens to pay for it. I don't feel any burning desire to pay for your "right" to download silly YouTube videos, porn, or even to read this blog, which is what people would do 99.999 percent of the time with their Internet access. None of these is fundamental to freedom or to a happy, fulfilling life (except maybe that last one ;-).
Do more, in other words, and expect less.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay. It is your right. :-).
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Knowledge and education are the ultimate equalizers. Corporations and governments(which are the same thing these days-especially in the US) can't keep people down when this power is available to everyone.
Actually, guns are.
I actually argue for the very thing you accuse me of overlooking: education. That is where we should be putting our dollars, and I don't need a government to force me to do so.
I give a double-digit percentage of my gross income to this. How about you? Instead of berating me for not wanting government to legislate rights that are neither fundamental nor rights, why not help me to focus on actually, personally making life better for people?
I don't think the intention is to say that you have a right to be provided with the means to access the internet, just that you can't be denied the freedom to access the internet if you have the means to do it. In other words, it's a negative right rather than a positive right, precisely the factor you hold up as a good thing within the US constitution, a point I agree with you on.
Reding compares it to freedom of expression, where the same principle applies; it doesn't imply that you have the right to a printer, just that the state can't arbitrarily prevent you using it to print letters and leaflets if you do have one. Your comment is akin to saying that freedom of speech shouldn't be viewed a fundamental right, because having a phone isn't a fundamental right.
In the context of three strikes legislation, which could see those accused of copyright infringement banned from the internet without due process, I think Reding's comments seem perfectly reasonable, unless you believe that the government should have the ability to arbitrarily forbid you from accessing the web.
What are you on?
I live over 5500 meters from the exchange, and my DSL connection is very slow. After literallly years of lobbying and petitions by an entire town, it seems that our P&T will finally install some DSLAMs to enable us to get something better than a couple of hundred Mbs per second. I dont live in a backwater, just a place that by unhappy chance runs of an exchange in the next town.
The EU already has a requirement for complete telephone coverage, and it seems entirely correct to me that privatised telecoms companies, given a tax-payer financed infrastructure, should not be allowed to service only the most profitable geographic locations. Mrs Reding is not proposing this as a some fundamental human right, but as measure to ensure that our society is as fair and equitable as possible, by placing additional, but reasonable, obligations on those who wish to run a public utility for a profit.
Just thought I would help you to understand the difference.
The EU were previously proposing that the minimum ubiquitous rate should be 2Mb/s, but there already quite a number of people saying already this is too slow.
For instance, most state, towns, city, provinces, and federal goverments due believe that you have a right to the New York times, the Wall street Journal, and any other well respected periodical. They are all housed in your local library. Most western nations believe in Freedom of speech as a right, and also believe access to an education is also a right. (at least at the lower levels, Europe is a little ahead of the US on ideas about upper education.) For a citizen to really be able to have access to an education, they do need reasonable access to information, which is why there is libraries, and public schools. As more and more information is becoming digitized, and more of every day affairs, and transactions are occurring online, it is becoming apparent that to maintain that right, and freedom to information, one does need access to the internet.
As far as providing cable access to citizens as an analogy, first off I think you are being a little ridiculous. Second, television is provided free of charge, at least in the US, over the air. So that point is a little moot. As far as CSPAN goes and what is covered, you can access that online, or in print.
If you are going to be making analogies, I think it would be more fair to compare it to utilities. After all, if your landlord isn't providing running water, or doesn't have electricity, or heat, by law, you can refuse rent until it is fixed. That doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for those utilities, you still do, but it is a right to have access to those things. Cutting someone off from internet access, is similar to not allowing someone into the public library, especially when there is no other company in the area that provides internet access.
Take your essay home, rewrite it with some more thought! Try to figure out the distinction between WWW and "the Internet", then separate out how/why the EU should have any say in how the WWW works and the "Internet" works, and submit it again. Take a look at commercialization, as a starter. You get a C+ on this piece.
Administrative tasks such as paying taxes, get certificates from the state or register your business require internet access from both sides, and since e-Government is a primary goal and the service directive is aimed at this goal, Viviane Reding simply draws the conclusion that if the EU is keen on bringing all government services online to get better government efficiency in the nations and between the nations, the EU has to provide everyone the opprtunity to use these services.
If you look on the german side, there is a right for an analogue landline, but that doesn't mean that the government is operating it and charges for it through taxes. It simply means the companys cannot deny a landline if someone wants one.
Please try to see it from an european perspective ? do not mix european affairs with the apparently inherent US american fear that »the state« tries to rob your money and freedom whenever he can. Because the EU and the US are different political animals and shouldn't be mixed so lightly.
1) Free speech cannot be separated from access to a a variety of communication media. If I'm allowed free speech, but only within the limits of my bathroom, then I'm probably living in China. Same thing if I'm allowed free speech, but only talking to people who are my friends already, and not using the telephone or even ordinary post mail, then this is not free speech. Free speech is when i'm allowed to step on a soap box in a crowded place and speak. Since the Internet is becoming the number one communication medium, as well as today's crowded place, it follows quite simply that forbidding Internet access is indeed a significant restriction to free speech.
2) You talk about entitlement to Internet access as though the issue was FREE (as in free beer) Internet access, as though the people fighting here were like spoilt kids who expect everything to be given to them. This is not what is at stake here. The question is whether I can be forbidden Internet access, even as I'm ready to pay for it. In jail, convicts are (generally) allowed to read newspapers. It seems reasonnable to ask that people who have not been convicted of wrongdoing have access to today's prime media.
- by mikeblogs June 2, 2009 1:36 AM PDT
- I enjoyed your article. I did some lobbying of our MEPs to try and amend the 'net discrimination' clauses in the EU Telecoms package. Unfortunately these were adopted in a mangled form on May 6th. We hope, but do not know yet if the entire package will be reviewed as a result of the EU Parliament rejecting the three strikes, (Hadopi, graduated response or the Carla Bruni clauses). We hope so.
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(19 Comments)'Internet as a right' clauses were inserted pretty late as the haggling on the nature of the internet access was threatening and eventually did push the telecoms package into a third reading. The high brow vision of universal affordable access, hid some ugly manipulation and lobbying for key amendments known as the AT&T and the Wiki amendments. In there raw form they would permit ISP to prioritise traffic as they see fit with UK civil servants giving advice that internet access is on a par with a Cable TV service, i.e. you get what your given but competitive markets would prevent ISPs from being too nasty.
While Ms Reding did not go into detail as to how a Universal Service might be defined, delivered and paid for, she did at least wave the flag enough to maintain the idea of the Internet as an open space, something which the EU committee on consumer protection was busily undermining.
The lack of scrutiny in these European institutions is pretty awful.