Vint Cerf: Internet Access Is Not a Human Right
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
We don't want to regulate specific rights as reactions to the particular issues of the day, we want to distill those issues to their essence so that we can meaningfully protect freedoms that are fundamental to meaningful human existence.
However, as others have noted here, this article leaves a couple of important points unaddressed.
Firstly, how can we be sure that the internet isn't fundamental? I can imagine arguing (in an earlier time) that legal counsel shouldn't be a human right, because we'll have something better than the legal system at some point. Yet thousands of years of human development have led only to a more complex legal system with the same fundamental ideas. Maybe the internet isn't horse-riding, maybe it's the invention of law. How do we know?
Secondly, if internet access isn't fundamental, then what is its more essential formulation? Being banned from the internet today makes you deaf, dumb and blind; much like being banned from electricity would cripple you. The difference is, nobody's trying to make three strikes laws for the power grid. We need to protect something. So what is it? The idea of free access to information? Ability to form and join networks? It's clearly not anything that's currently protected.
Unfortunately, there is more than just an academic interest at stake here. It's well and good to say "ha ha, you see, I have a new and interesting perspective", but this is a situation where there are actual losses being made in terms of real people's access to the internet. Unless Vint Cerf is trying to say that's not important, perhaps it's a little counterproductive to make an article that shoots down a core idea for internet freedom without providing anything else of substance to fill its place.
So, all the other replies so far note the explicit mention of "the press".
I'll first note that we certainly no longer talk about "the press" in reference to physical presses, and I'd naïvely hazard that the framers of the constitution didn't mean it that way either. In that regard I think it's a bit of a red-herring to talk about.
The critical point really is whether we as free people have the freedom to communicate and associate.
The reason why the internet is interesting is because it's the confluence of two of our existing rights. Sure the internet can be used for the purpose of mass media publishing, in a manner that would be analogous/familiar to the framers. But i would argue that the internet's facility for real time communications has done something unique. The internet as a communications technology has enabled communities to form that, while not without precedent[1], would not otherwise exist.
So, to me, access to the internet is relevant both to the freedom of the press and the freedom to associate mentioned in the constitution. It becomes problematic to say that government or corporations can stand in the way of my intent or desire to communicate with whom i wish.
I'd like to flip this on it's head. The United States Postal Service is explicitly established in the Constitution (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause and note particularly that infrastructure was an important point of discussion/controversy that is essentially a footnote/non-issue now).
So, Why isn't internet access guaranteed by the US government in a similar fashion?
[1] Organizations which communicate primarily on the basis of correspondance have existed for centuries, but i'd argue the majority of them have been niche and primarily affluent, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society or more recently science fiction fan zines.
Without the internet and the freedom to associate, I would not have met my wife, a number of good friends, some of whom I been hired by, and in other cases hired, etc., etc.
This is also why things like SOPA/PIPA and net neutrality are both such fraught topics and also vitally important discussions to engage in.
Deleted comment
Its author asked whether discussing the Constitution was relevant in the context of general human rights (rather than a matter of US law), and observed that there are a number of abridgements we tolerate with respect to our rights in the US.]
My point is that the Constitution is an instance/attempt to enshrine what people viewed as natural rights of man into law. In that context, i think the Constitution is relevant, in looking at what it was that they were attempting to guarantee.
I'm not materially concerned with the abridgment of rights in extreme cases. In order to guarantee a orderly/functioning society, we submit to some limits on our inalienable rights. The important thing is that they are inalienable.
The material point is whether access to communities that only exists on the internet is something that shouldn't be interfered with or denied at the whims of others with whom our interests may diverge. I.e. can your internet service provider disconnect you because they don't like you? :P
Insofar as the government providing Internet access under a logical expansion of the postal service, that is an enumerated obligated power of government, not a right. The government is required to provide it (albeit ill-defined), which is different from you having a right to it.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
(edit: I don't mean that as a challenge, I am genuinely curious if you know more about this than I presume to. Sorry if that came off a little catty)
And perhaps i wasn't explicit enough, i'm not claiming that the USPS is a right (it isn't), but the point was that it is important enough that it was established in the Constitution, although i would want to dig up additional resources as to whether that is an act of practical expedience, principle, or both.
Regardless, the question still stands. Why doesn't the US government do for the internet what it does for mail?
Gun rights activists are fighting a similar issue in areas where the relevant enumerated right is formally acknowledged yet acquisition of viable tools needed to exercise that right are forbidden. A right is suppressed if the government prohibits tools needed to exercise it in a normal, modern manner. "You can have a musket (but no cartridges or semiautomatics), so your right to bear arms is not infringed" is just as absurd as "you can have a Gutenberg-style movable type press (but no photocopiers or websites), so your right to speech & press are not infringed".
Methinks the government COULD consider the internet a logical technological extension of Constitution Article I Section 8 "The Congress shall have Power ... To establish Post Offices and post Roads". If we want "press" to include "blogging from my iPhone", then surely "post" (as in mail and delivery thereof) should include "e-mail" (and delivery thereof). Insofar as it is treated as a "common carrier" wherein delivery is assured strictly regardless of content, and nothing akin to the gov't monopoly on First Class mail, that would be a proper exercise of an assigned federal power in a modern context.
There is a subtle but important semantic difference between the governmental power to provide a service to citizens vs. the citizen's right to that service. In this thread's context, it's akin to the obligation of the gov't to deliver mail to your door (or even just to a local Post Office), but there is nothing obligating the government to bring mail into your house and read it too you (or transport you to the Post Office to pick up a package).
Of course, he is correct that the actual right is the right to free speech, but practically considered in context of modern life, the two are arguably effectively equivalent as simply denying access effectively curtails the inherent right.
And what to make of the speakers' corner in Hyde Park? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakers_corner
In Ceausescu's Romania in the 1980s if you had a typewriter you had to declare it to the local police, so in order to avoid all the hassle of dealing with the police, or even the Securitate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate), you'd just forget about it and carry on with living your daily life, freedom of expression be damned.
Also, Romanians were very frustrated by lack of TV air-time, by the end of the 1980s the Romanian national television was only airing 2 hours per day, mostly filled with bullshit propaganda. During the 1989 December revolt lots of people actually complained about that out loud. It would be interesting to see what happens if SOPA (or any related law) actually has a similar effect on Americans' access to the web, will they complain on the streets?
I must tell you it is very frustrating. Where to go now, if we don't roll back these clearly authoritarian steps (Patriot Act, NDAA, and now SOPA) in America? (Please don't tell me to move to Canada!)
Fortunately, I'm not :) I still live in Romania. I do work for a small startup who is owned by 3 Americans though, and I don't even bother to tell them how fucked up this all looks, they all know it.
Another related and not-so-cool story was when I went to London and when I saw all those surveillance cameras literally invading the whole city. Guys like Ceausescu or Stalin would have given their right arm to have that kind of tech at their disposal, but instead there I was, in the land of the Magna Carta being surveilled and monitored like not even my parents were during the ruling of a communist dictator. It's not even funny anymore.
Wouldn't the equivalent be owning an ISP in that case?
I think a better analogy might be the right to own and read a book. Which is pretty a pretty fucking important right.
Having an internet connection is per definition dependent on somebody providing the connection.
Consider:
- You have the right to "bear arms" but "you do not have a right to purchase bullets".
- You have the right to "free press" but "you do not have a right to purchase ink".
In an alternate universe, the author could have used "freedom of the press" as the anecdote. In 2012, where are you going to keep your printing press? But for the fact that the Constitution mentions a free "press", the word would seem hilariously backwards to us today.
It is a fine thing to be paralyzed about writing legislation that restricts freedom that could have unintended consequences a hundred years hence. But I do not think that we face the same problem when recognizing a right.
Vint Cerf is arguing for a higher, abstract, freedom of uncensored communication which should not be confused with a civil obligation to provide a certain infrastructure. The idea of "a right to internet access" is dangerous if it is understood too narrowly, focusing on a current means rather than a properly recognized timeless end.
Internet access is a public good, as is the physical existence of material printing presses. But that doesn't oblige a government to build a certain communications infrastructure (although a wise government might well chose to encourage such).
A "higher" right to uncensored communication does oblige a just government to never censor the internet or deny access to it. A right in this sense might be better understood as a restriction on government: "Congress shall make no law ..." rather than "Congress shall ensure the provision of ..."
So the question is not whether it is a human right, but whether it should be. And that is a decision only humans can make.
For example - you can't speak in favor of terrorist attacks, then a violent protest becomes classed as a terrorist attack, then a protest in which some participants are violent is a violent protest, then any protest might turn violent, then any public meeting which disparages the government becomes classed as a protest. Suddenly, you can't criticize the government, or you're a terrorist.
It's far better to say you have absolute freedom of speech, and hope everyone turns a bit of a blind eye when the really crazy stuff gets silenced. That way, if too much stuff is getting banned, people will push back.
If so, then what about the Internet? It's still early days for the Internet, but I think it's already becoming as important as electricity for many people.
I'm not convinced that the Internet is just like the landlines, but we might need a more abstract description of the Internet, just in case say a new "Internet" of mesh networks builds momentum and starts replacing this Internet. But even then, it would be pretty close to what we have today.
I don't see the Internet as just one thing that gets used for a couple of decades and then discarded, but more like something that will continually evolve. I see the Internet closer to the abstractness of "communication" than to the physicality of the "landline", which also implies only certain technologies.
If the only communications media we have are Internet-mediated or face-to-face, is the right to communicate - the freedom of speech - entail a right to access the Internet? In that reductio ad absurdum, I think it would.
Due process? Checks and balances? Oversight, probably judicial?
1. Statements like this: the author comes up with a criterion for what a human right should be, and gives examples of things she thinks are human rights, but doesn't notice that they violate the criterion.
"The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information..."
These are fundamentally NOT rights that can be identified by their outcomes. This point is almost trivial. The freedom of speech is not "an end in itself" any more than the Internet is. Free speech is "an enabler of rights, not a right itself" which is his criterion for not-a-human-right. We want free speech so we can influence civil rights, protect our freedom or <insert whatever right we think we have> not just so for the sake of spouting things into the public or private sphere.
2. Rights conflict, so asking whether something is, or is not, a right becomes irrelevant. Let's say we've decided I have a right to not be murdered. Great. That might conflict with your right to, say, freedom. Obviously that's restricted so that you don't do things. Or maybe everyone has a right to their property, but also an equal chance at getting to water, and I own the only watering hole. The question is what we do when they conflict (i.e. we say that my right to not be killed trumps your right to do whatever you want, or access to water trumps the right to property).
3. They never seem to make a broader point about how to make the world a better place, other than "now that you know the Internet isn't a human right, you can, er, um, work to make it better?" Blah.
You own what? The land? How much of it? And why? Because I can't take it from you? Watch me (and my army). You own the well? To what depth? Watch me (and my army) dig deeper and take the water from underneath "your" watering hole.
It seems you're conflating somewhat the concepts of personal freedom and interpersonal contracts. For example, your right not to be murdered and my right to "freedom" are not in contradiction if my right to freedom is constrained to apply only to those actions of mine which have nil or negligible impact on others.
I think Cerf's point is that we should not take something which is complex and takes extraordinary human effort to produce, maintain, protect and secure as a granted right. It intermingles motivations undesirably.
This is what I mean by conflicting rights: when they conflict, we constrain them. There are situations where it's murkier. Instead of "negative" rights and corresponding obligations (I have a right not to be murdered, so you have an obligation not to murder me) into "positive" ones (I have a right to life, you have an obligation to feed me if I'm starving and you have food). Suddenly you're constrained in a fundamental sense if I have a right to life: your doing anything other than feeding me has a horrible impact on me. Where do we draw the line at how much I can expect from you? To the point at which your not sacrificing other rights (this is Peter Singer's argument[1]), or do we just ignore positive rights/obligations altogether? Gets murky.
And when it gets that murky, it's silly to try to divide things we want/need into categories of "IsAHumanRight" and "IsNotAHumanRight".
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Cerf writes:
Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue: the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights.
If then said "so it doesn't matter if the internet's a human right, let's just help people use it for the betterment of the world, etc." then I'd be all on board. Instead he makes a big deal about not putting the internet into the sacred but ill-defined category of "IsAHumanRight", all the way up to making that his title, when it should be (IMHO) "Stop worrying about rights, help the Internet help people."
[1] http://www.amazon.com/World-Globalization-Professor-Peter-Si...
The problem is that I know of no country that offers "freedom of access to information" as an ordained right. In America, we accept Voltaire's line: "I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." but that is not quite the same as "freedom of access".
I wish Vint Cerf had actually said something rather than just waxing poetic.
I know it's onerous for people who think logically, but authors should think beyond the literal correctness of what they're saying and consider how their words will be read in the forum where they are published. I think his resistance to declaring internet access a "right" stems from his understanding that a particular technology is not the right level at which to articulate such a right, but in an op-ed column in a newspaper for general readers, this piece says that it's completely possible for citizens to be denied access to the internet with no infringement on their rights. I realize he said no such thing if you read his words precisely and logically, but dammit, that's not how op-eds are read.
Meanwhile, his non-lobbying activities of the last 30 years include some rather disturbing things, such as a long stint on ICANN's board of directors.
Have all the respect you want for his early contributions, but you've got three decades of evidence that he really has nothing substantive to add.
The Internet is 'just a technology' if you define it as a network of nodes which communicate using Internet Protocol.
That may have been the original meaning of the term as Vint planned the early work, but that meaning is not what it means to most people.
In modern usage, the open Internet is a global network that allows data to be passed between any two hosts without requiring that third parties authorise the content of that data.
Under that definition, the Internet is a concept synonymous with uncensored automated communication, rather than a specific technology; these concepts are capable of surviving into the future even if the hardware and software protocols layered on it change drastically.
The social meaning of the Internet as a human right can be defined as the right to globally interconnect any means of communication that doesn't involve the physical transport of people or objects. I.e., uncensored communication without borders.
That's what the word Internet means to ordinary people today. Protocols, networking layers or physical networks are irrelevant, it's about the right to do what we do via the Internet today.
Didn't it also speak to being able to hire a press (i.e. get someone to run a print for you) to avoid something like "thou shalt not print any materials concerning x, y or z on behalf of a, b or c."
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances
beyond his control.
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary
and fundamental stages.
The state must provide for the defendant in order to ensure those rights are met. Same as the state must incur the cost of sitting an impartial jury, presenting witnesses against him, etc.
One can argue whether this is realistic, or not, but in principle human rights are distinct from civil rights.
Those are Natural rights, also called "nonsense upon stilts" by Jeremy Bentham and "imaginary, like the Bogeyman" by George Carlin ;)
Something that has to be provided is probably better called an "entitlement".
"we have come close to this with the notion of “universal service” — the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions of the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of Internet access as a civil right"
Let's not confuse access to Internet (which is described here) and free access to it. You can have free service to all houses in the US but if the likes of SOPA are implemented, I think most people agree that some rights are being trampled on. Otherwise, why oppose SOPA at all, or why find the Chinese Firewall objectionable? To put Cerf's analogy on better ground, it's as if you have phone service but can only call some numbers.
Internet access is certainly looking like its shaping up to be one of those things.
1) And everyone else would be much much worse off.
2) The phones, not the rich, but both come to think of it.
Just because you have a right doesn't mean you have to "cash in" on it. According to the Constitution, I have a right to "liberty" [1]. If I didn't want liberty, the right should still exist for those who want it. Just because I don't want it doesn't mean nobody else wants it. Over-protecting is a better policy than under-protecting.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_o...
So if internet access was a right, what is the corresponding duty it imposes and who is that duty imposed upon? Must the state (and therefore you) provide me with a super computer & T1 connection or is free netbook and dial-up for all sufficient? Or perhaps your rich neighbour. Why not TV or radio as human rights?
Claiming these things as human rights imposes unjustifiable burdens upon others when you have no right to do so. If you disagree, please explain why I should be forced to ensure you have access to facebook and where your power of imposition comes from.
But just because something is not a right, doesn't mean that universal access is not a good thing. Plenty of goods such as education, healthcare and sanitation fail the duty test but their universal access is still a very good thing. We may even agree that these things 'should' be a right but in that case the right is a political one based on mutual agreement, not some inalienable human right.
The right to bear arms is a political right (in the US at least) as well as a negative freedom. It is not however, a human right. If it was, the nearly every other country in the world would be violating fundamental human rights by denying their citizens the opportunity to carry a weapon that kills with such ease.
Access to the internet wasn't fundamental to human existence 100 years ago when it didn't exist or even 10 year ago when it did. Its still not fundamental to our existence today - its just very useful.
I, for one, disagree.
If it was, the nearly every other country in the world would be violating fundamental human rights by denying their citizens the opportunity to carry a weapon that kills with such ease.
Yes, yes they are.
What could possibly be a more fundamental right than the right to defend oneself? And arming oneself to do so obviously follows from that, IMO. Heck, a wildly popular definition of what "government" is, is based on the idea of self-defense as the fundamental innate right (I'm referring to Bastiat and his idea of "government as the collective extension to our individual right of self-defense").
If so, what grants you the authority to impose that duty upon me? Why am I not allowed to protect myself by ensuring you don't have the means to harm me?
One way to protect oneself is to ensure no one has the means to do harm to each other. Given that that option exists, then the right to bear arms can't be a fundamental human right because it is clear not fundamental to human existence. If it is a right, then it is a political right that comes from mutual agreement.
I just default to the definition of "right" that's more like "something you can do without needing anyone's permission." I don't accept that anyone is ever obligated to do something (provide me with a gun, for example) because of someone else's rights.
in the negative sense, I have the duty not to stop you bearing arms
No, you could try if you feel justified. But at that point there's no more reasoning from first principles or anything... you just have two sovereign individuals with a dispute over something. The dispute can be settled through diplomacy, force, or whatever. I'd hope it was the former not the latter, of course.
One way to protect oneself is to ensure no one has the means to do harm to each other
Any living human being has the means to do harm to another, including killing them. Killing another human with your bare hands isn't terribly difficult, especially if you catch them unaware (e.g., slap on a rear-naked-choke and simply choke them to death). So by your standard, living itself can't be a fundamental right, since we all have a right to commit genocide (since that's one way to make sure no human can harm another human).
We need to define these things, otherwise the discussion becomes a clash of presuppositions and worldviews.
Now im not saying the internet should be free but it should be available to all people, unrestricted by usage, uncensored by governments and affordable.
"In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to empower users, but also an obligation to ensure the safety of users online." Ummmm, yesssss
"Technologists should work toward this end." And, as far as I know, they are.
This entire column just seems like wasted space and time, arguing frantically against... what, precisely? Engineers who don't think about "harms like viruses and worms that silently invade their computers"? There's a lot of alarmist language, and very little substance.
The technology may not inherently have an ethical or moral dimension but the uses to which it is put often do.
In my view, a human right is something that, all things being equal, a human being would be able to provide by him or herself, and which can be restrained by another human. So there is a right to live, to eat, to speak freely etc.
Therefore, Internet access is not a basic human right, as it has to be provided by someone and isn't available to a naked human in the middle of nowhere, as we all once were.
Human Rights should be as specific as possible (but no less specific). There is real risk in making them too general. The Bill of Rights is a good example of what works (freedom of the press, right to bear arms, etc.). Abstract ideas that can be misinterpreted or interpreted under the aegis of whatever the mass public can be sold with (often as mere lip-service) are what can be most dangerous.
Related: Finland makes broadband a 'legal right' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10461048
Freedom of the press means you can own one. It does not mean your printing press can be taken from you and redistributed to some one else that can't afford to buy a press.
So you'd have two classes of people, those with internet access and those without. Those without pay much more for food and clothing and possibly eventually shelter.
For some reason people partaking in this debate often feel that it's sane and logical that use of the internet should be a human right in a free-of-charge sense without a second's thought about the costs, while they realize the ridiculous err in their reasoning when you put it in the context of transport or communication. Somehow, in that context, they understand that these things cost money, and that it's neither violation of human rights nor denial of access to ask for payment prior to use.
In my opinion, we have the right to free speech by virtue of being human. At bare minimum, one has a brain, and that brain controls one's mouth. No other human can control someone else's voice in any fashion similar to how he controls his own. To restrict someone from exercising this right requires an outside force to aggress against the speaker. Societies today more or less agree, there's little (or nothing) one can say that should justify violence against the speaker. Similar reasoning can be applied to the use of justly acquired property as a means of disseminating information. It's a promise from government: "I won't take this away from you".
The right to a trial is different. No human is born with this right, as no human pops out of the womb with a staffed courthouse in his possession. In fact, the notion of a right to trial doesn't make sense if there are no laws. It also doesn't make sense if there are no conflicts (alone on a desert island). It's also a promise from government: "I'll give you the right to contest my decisions before I use force against you". It's more like a return policy than a natural right, in my opinion.
On the other hand, by this reasoning at least, there's no such thing as a right to free beer, because then someone, somewhere would be obligated to brew you some beer, and that would violate his rights.