U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right | Hacker News Reader

U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right

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82 pointsnephics21 comments

I was about to get up in arms about this, but it turns out they didn't really declare internet access a human right. The human right is the right to proportional punishment. Their claim is that cutting someone off from internet access just because of copyright infringement is not proportional punishment. At least, that's my reading. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

"The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

The important part is "regardless of the justification provided", in my opinion.

So they mean that if you already have internet access and it's taken away due to any condition on purpose, then your human rights have been violated.

Importantly, this makes it a negative right rather than a positive one. That means the gov't can't block you from the internet but it's also not obliged to provide it for you, in the same way the freedom of speech means you can't be silenced but needn't be provided with a megaphone or airtime.

Not that these declarations carry much weight.

What they're saying is that EU countries shouldn't be permitted to make laws that ban people from using the internet.

Great, so I don't have to pay my Comcast bill anymore and they can't take my internet access away?

That's not how human rights (usually and also in this case) work. You yourself are responsible for getting internet access.

Newspapers that don't pay their bills have no right to be bailed out. One reason for this is that freedom of speech and freedom of press are negative rights: the government is not allowed to stop you from publishing your newspapers but they also don't have to provide you with the means for publishing newspapers[#]. That's your own responsibility.

The second and related reason is that private entities like companies or people are (usually) not limited by human rights. Those rights (usually) protect people from the government, not from each other. A journalist can't sue her editor for not allowing her to publish an article. (Well, she can sue but wouldn't win.) Only governments have to respect human rights. (Again, usually.)

[#] As always, plenty of funny and interesting edge cases are worth discussing. What if the government bans paper? Or requires all print products to be printed on super-expensive paper that's not economical for newspapers?

Do governments care about human rights? How is canceling someone's Internet connection for downloading a movie worse that putting someone in a metal cage for 30 years because they made some drugs?

There is only one human right: the right to kill yourself. Everything else is a privilege that can be taken away for no reason.

Seriously, the 2nd part is a tired argument. It's like the philosophers who claim that altruism is impossible.

And the first part is taking one weird historical 'moral' thing and applying it to the rest of our present laws. Sex was abhorrent to Victorians, so we still have an irrational hang up about it. For some reason in the early 20th century drugs joined the moral hit list so we still have an irrational hang up about that. I think it will eventually go the way of other bizarre 'moral' hangups such as feminism and homosexuality, but there is an element of self-harm to drugs that makes it more tricky.

And to be honest the recognition of the equality of women and same-sex relationships is far higher on the overall good for mankind than the right to use drugs, so as a race I think we're doing pretty well on our priorities so far.

One weird quirk of law doesn't mean at all that governments think they can freely trample over most human rights without serious opposition from the masses.

...same-sex relationships is far higher on the overall good for mankind than the right to use drugs...

Are you seriously comparing putting people in jail to treating gay couples the same way we treat single people?

I wasn't entirely clear, I was talking about homophobia, not just same-sex marriages.

Homophobia is in our recent history, certainly in the UK, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28.

War on drugs: millions of people in jail right now.

Section 28: local government can't promote homosexuality (repealed more than a decade ago). No criminal penalties for violations.

Perspective, please.

"There is only one human right: the right to kill yourself."

That would seem to be more easily taken away than, say, the right to think.

That's true. Thinking about it more than I want to, it's probably possible to take away everything.

A long time ago, I asked on HN how to kill myself if I was, say, tied to a chair. The answer is to bite your tongue off (so you bleed to death), but I suppose that someone who has tied you to a chair can simply put a gag in your mouth (or cauterize off your tongue). Similarly, there are plenty of drugs that can be injected into you to stop you from thinking.

Anyway, with this in mind... I don't think I'll be able to ever sleep soundly again. Thanks! :)

I was going to say the best way to take away your right to kill yourself is to kill you first. You can't kill yourself if you're already dead.

I'm reminded of Bradley Manning..

I wonder what consequences this is going to have for countries in the long run with big firewalls or filtering. UN doesn't have much jurisdiction and can't do much, but these maps always paint an interesting picture: http://map.opennet.net/filtering-pol.html

That's awesome. This should have been done a while ago, though.

The record/music industries must feel pretty screwed right about now. A judge declared that an IP address != a person, and now they can't unfairly cut people off. I'd say that's a win for free speech.

I don't see why some people dislike this idea. If you think about it, this is really just an extension of the right to speech and the right to assembly. The only new thing is officially recognizing the Internet as an avenue for these things.

There's a lot of other stuff I would much rather see "declared a human right".

I'd also like to see what we mean by "human right" defined more clearly. It certainly doesn't seem to mean that everyone has a right to it, or that depriving it from someone is a crime against humanity.

As with many things, I don't think the U.N. advances discussion as much as it obscures key issues.

I firmly believe we are all moving toward a transhuman time when connectivity is king. My computers and connections are a part of my brain -- or at least will be -- and governments' role in my life end where my brain begins.

But making everything in the world a "right" is totally fracked.

It concerns me that well-meaning people are trying to create more and more controls on top of rapidly-advancing technology using terms and concepts they don't fully understand. In this game of "where's humanity going?" You don't get extra credit for good intentions. I don't mean to selectively pick on the U.N. The same is true for dozens of governmental and treaty efforts around the globe.

The way to deal with these governments cutting off internet access is in the streets, which the protesters are doing.

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