If you can read this you are very lucky

http://www.ahumanright.org/

by trikkia • 16 years ago

40 35 16 years ago

ahumanright.org

wccrawford• 16 years ago

Not lucky so much as able to Select All and then stand about 4' back from the screen.

What a horrible design.

wyclif• 16 years ago

I think the design is a spoof on http://isyournewbicycle.com/

NickPollard• 16 years ago

Readability[0] handles it ok.

[0] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

spudlyo• 16 years ago

Although it doesn't do so without complaint. I wish you could suppress that warning.

hugh3• 16 years ago

Yes, I'm afraid I gave up reading it after a couple of clicks.

No, mysterious group hiding its identity, I will not invest more mouse clicks just to read your advertising spiel. If you want me to read something you can give it to me in plain twelve-point text, thanks.

Lagged2Death• 16 years ago

You're not supposed to be able to read the majority of the text. That's the point, analogous to the majority of the population which doesn't have access to broadband. It's supposed to feel frustrating and exclusionary.

nborgo• 16 years ago

As nice as the concept sounds, they probably should have pointed it out. It's too subtle, seeing as most of us missed it. Even something like "You think this is hard to read? Imagine being..." would make it work better.

Making your entire message a pain to read seems like a bad idea, either way.

I sat there expecting a background image to load but ended up closing the tab, assuming the page was broken.

VMG• 16 years ago

I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be provided by somebody else.

billswift• 16 years ago

You might notice that all of these invented rights are from socialists whose main purpose is to increase the power and extent of the state.

pierrefar• 16 years ago

Do you know what a socialist even is? Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Your sentence woudl be acceptable if you said "left-leaning people" as opposed to equating everything to political left with socialism. And even then, you'd need to specify which country you're talking about; for example, compare the UK's nationalized healthcare with the USA's current attempt.

gnaritas5• 16 years ago

> I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be provided by somebody else.

So you don't believe in property rights; the right to an attorney; the right to a trial by jury; the right of a speedy trial; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; the right to confront your accuser? All of these things require someone else to do something they might not be paid to do or would be paid by the government to do through tax revenue.

gxti• 16 years ago

> So you don't believe in property rights

The right to keep people OFF my property and do with it what I like.

> the right to an attorney; the right to a trial by jury; the right of a speedy trial; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; the right to confront your accuser?

The right NOT to be hassled or detained by the government unnecessarily.

Oversimplified explanations yes, but I don't see any of those as requiring others to step up and fulfill my own rights. Police keep people off my property using the implied threat of violence not because that is the only way to fulfill it, but because the alternative -- me enforcing it with overt violence -- is less palatable both to myself and to the police.

Whether the proposal by this website falls does fall under "positive rights" depends on the interpretation but I gave up on trying to read it so I can't say. If they call for the right to obtain access to the internet without interference (censorship, etc.) then I respect that although I don't necessarily stand behind it. If they call for the right to have free WiFi across every square millimeter of Earth then I don't think anyone who gave more than a cursory thought would agree.

ynniv4• 16 years ago

Everything that you just mentioned is a limitation on what a person can do to another person. They are fulfilled by people doing less, not more, except for the right to an attorney. Free attorneys are only provided in criminal cases (which are brought by the state at great expense), and so you could say that this right is also merely a limit on the state's ability to punish individuals.

Usage of the term "right" as a benefit and not a limitation comes generally from humanitarian groups. For instance, there is no "right to clean water". If you choose to live in the middle of a desert, you can't expect someone else to bring you water.

The "right to use the Internet" is absurd. It implies the right to a free, usable computer, and free, well functioning communication systems, with free electricity. If you live on an island hundreds of miles off the coast, do you still have this "right"? Who will you expect to provide these for you? This makes no sense.

jquery• 16 years ago

Those are all restraints on govt. Or at least primarily function as such. I don't see them as human rights.

Don't confuse our society's paradigm with fundamental rights, like life and liberty. It leads to long arguments where people shout right past each other.

jodrellblank2• 16 years ago

Their page finishes "...Because access to information is a human right" and it sort of is:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

- http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

Looks to me like they are saying "we will build a free communications network because equal access to information is a human right" not "because it should be a human right".

(Also, "protection from X" is mentioned in several of the articles in the universal declaration and that always has to be provided by somebody else. So does the court of law and the other countries to which you have a right to travel).

cromulent• 16 years ago

I hope that an exception to that rule would be basic education.

kilps• 16 years ago

Take a look at the South African Bill of Rights - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_South_Africa_Ch... - it includes rights to education, health care, water, access to information and human dignity (which many of the other rights are a result of).

Perhaps it is a result of our history, but I don't see why promoting a basic standard of living through socio-economic rights is a mistake - you can't properly exercise your right to freedom of speech (which I assume is the sort of right that you are in favour of) without food and water.

kevinburke• 16 years ago

Agreed about the lucky part, but I generally disagree with saying "X is a human right." Because different resources are always competing with each other at the margin so if you put in a huge campaign for Internet access, etc, you're probably crowding out other valuable infrastructure, like plumbing or electricity.

Furthermore you can take things too far. Water is so cheap in the US because "it's a human right" but this doesn't mean that it's above the laws of supply and demand, which in Southern California anyway means that people still take long showers during droughts, because the water's not priced at market level. See more here http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=davi...

On another note, just putting in Ethernet lines and computers won't have magic side effects. I was in India last spring, and when I went out to the field most places generally had a computer. However it was almost always under-utilized; for example in one place the computer had been off for 2 months because the mouse was broken, and another place had Photoshop and was using it only to resize images because they didn't know how to use it.

xd• 16 years ago

Wait, wait. It's "A FREE COMMUNICATION NETWORK AVAILABLE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD" yet only accessible to "95%" of the world's population? .. either "95%" have the technology to access it, or 5% live in outer space .. or did I miss something.

jodrellblank2• 16 years ago

Or 5% live on Earth, have the access available, but don't have the cognitive ability to use it (babies, mentally disabled, physically disabled, presumably).

sbt• 16 years ago

I would like to believe these guys but the figures seem a little low and I couldn't find a citation. What does 'access' mean here? How do they define 'broadband'?

earl• 16 years ago

Apparently they also believe in super fucking annoying websites.

psawaya• 16 years ago

I think this is a really interesting idea, but this site serves only as a frustrating introduction to a blog post that explains everything.

http://www.blog.ahumanright.org/2010/10/buy-that-satellite/

trikkia• 16 years ago

agree

ynniv4• 16 years ago

Tries to be anonymous, but Google knows better. Looks like this is mostly a Deutsche Telekom AG project. Someone has to make money providing this "right".

Currently, ahumanright.org is designing a pilot program for a developing country to roll out 10,000 end-user devices and ground stations to test the feasibility of such an idea using pre-existing satellite infrastructure. On their board, the organization has had people like the late Senator Gaylord Nelson, principal founder of Earth Day International; Lon Levin, founder of XM Satellite Radio; and Simon P. Warden, Director of the NASA Ames Research Center. So far, ahumanright.org has secured funding from Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) and are looking for volunteers.

[ https://www.stanford.edu/group/sdg/cgi-bin/dev/liber/?q=node... ]

Palomar5’s main sponsor has been Deutsche Telekom AG, one of the world’s leading telecommunication companies.

[ http://www.gaffta.org/tag/palomar5/ ]

EDIT: As if to prove my point:

As the CTO of Deutsche Telekom Thomas Curran advised us: “You’re evangelizing for access, expanding it. That can only help the industry.”

[ http://www.blog.ahumanright.org/2010/10/buy-that-satellite/ ]

Vivtek• 16 years ago

Readability design is apparently not a human right.

CPops• 16 years ago

Their campaign to try to equate internet access with a human right is unfortunate.

It takes whats a very sensible overall idea that almost everybody agrees with (increasing the unhindered flow of information) and immediately makes it sound bad or controversial to a large and influential part of the technical community.

TGJ• 16 years ago

You can't have a basic human right if someone else has to be involved for that something to happen.

If you can read this you are very lucky

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