I believe Estonia did this first, a few years ago. This only dilutes real rights, such as freedom of expression.
As well as being very hard to enforce, it's not unlike house arrest. Like others here, I have difficulty functioning without net access. And it's pretty much an economic essential if you want any kind of a decent job.
(I had no idea that it's been almost six years already since I saw that!)
If you meant about the dilution of real rights, I'd have to get political to explain. I hope this is OK since the headline is already political.
It has to do with negative and positive rights. Very briefly, a positive right is a right to be given something through the action of someone else. A negative right is usually a right to be left alone in some way, such as a right to free expression. As a positive right, a right to internet access can only be guaranteed to everyone through a violation of someone's negative rights.
In other words, this is a right that prevents governments from cutting off an individual's access, not (and correct me if I'm wrong) any right to free state-paid Internet access.
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pd...
It's better to go to the originals on things like this then to read what they've become in the political folk mythology on the internets.
But if you have a right to be fed, it violates someone else's right to the food they own; if you have a right to medical care, nurses and doctors don't own their own time, etc.
- is a positive right (to have a jury trial at all implies judge, jury, etc., all of whom have better things to do with their time than listen to two losers argue back and forth, and thus somehow someone is going to be compelled to provide for the trial, either directly -- jury duty -- or indirectly -- via taxation)
- that a positive right makes it into the bill of rights means positive rights as such are not verboten, or somehow anathema to the founders' sensibilities
- or it's an entitlement (which is closer to the truth), but then again there's no problem with entitlements being enshrined in the bill of rights
I've got a special place in my heart for people who use the positive/negative distinction as a kind of club; cf my other post in this thread to see the origin of the notion in modern discourse.
Houw about three really good/strong examples?
I'll even stipulate one - trial by jury with competent representation. (I'm pretty sure that health care won't qualify.)
There are certainly positive rights that could be net beneficial. And taking away negative rights could also be helpful. E.g. the negative externalities of imminent domain could be reduced by censoring anyone who tried to talk about how it's a bad deal -- this would temporarily reduce the negative effect on real estate prices. But it sets bad precedents and leads to bad decisions.
But we have a right to health care, at least where I live, and I'm not aware of doctors' rights being compromised. Nothing's forcing them to work for the National Health Service.
That sort of right merely compels the government to implement certain policies (i.e. hiring enough public sector doctors).
I was thinking more along the lines of anything tax pays for (so yes, healthcare does work as an example, but not in the way you suggest). Presumably, taxing people is a violation of their negative right to be left alone. Yet tax pays for many good things, and I don't want to live in a place where it doesn't exist.
What makes freedom of expression a real right and not access to internet?
Who made you king of the universe?
As long as the "right to internet access" is a specialization of the right to freely associate (preemptively ruling out three strike laws and whatnot), I don't see how it's impinging upon anyone's right to be left alone.
If you believe in equal rights (i.e., nobody is king of the universe) then you can't support the infringing of some people's rights for the benefit of others.
Yet I'm all for tax, if it pays for necessary stuff.