Tim Berners-Lee: Web access is a human right

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041211-mit-berners-lee.html

by luigi • 15 years ago

33 38 15 years ago

networkworld.com

sigzero• 15 years ago

That's a stretch and one I don't agree with.

jdludlow2• 15 years ago

Of course it's not a human right. Neither are water or food, so his analogy is pointless.

This is "you have a right to free speech; you don't have a right to a printing press" for the modern age. You still have the right to free speech, and in the case of the Internet, the right to freely associate. You don't, however, have the right to have someone else pay your ISP bill.

True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others.

calpaterson4• 15 years ago

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

jdludlow2• 15 years ago

Yes, thank you. I knew there was a term for what I was trying to say, but I couldn't remember what it was called.

gloob• 15 years ago

To quote myself from a few months ago:

"I am a citizen, you must hold (if you are the government) or fund (if you are a taxpayer) an election for me to vote in."

What's your feeling on that positive right? I've encountered people who argue against democracy, and I've encountered people who will re-word the right as stated above and then call it a negative right. I disagree with the former, and the latter only succeed in demonstrating that the difference between positive and negative rights is one of phrasing, and not of the right itself. Do you have a different take on the matter?

The idea of "negative" and "positive" rights is one way of looking at the matter, but it has flaws.

Edit: I don't mean to imply the parent post is making any argument one way or the other; I'm just commenting on the idea itself.

Edit 2: Other things (some completely outlandish, some more plausible) worth thinking about:

  - I own a square mile of land with a river running through
    it.  You own an adjacent square mile of land downriver
    of mine.  If I, entirely on my own property, divert the
    river such that it ceases to run through your property,
    have I aggressed against you?  Do you have the right to
    never have the value of your property decrease?
  - I am fantabulously wealthy and buy up all the food in
    the world.  Do I have the right to refuse to sell it?
    Have I aggressed against the other 7 billion by forcing
    the large majority of them to starve to death?
  - The local branch of the Nazis are hunting for members
    of unpopular minorities.  I am a gay black Jew.  Am I
    justified in trespassing on a stranger's property in
    order to hide and evade capture?

_delirium3• 15 years ago

I don't think that there are many people who really believe that access to water isn't a human right, or at least who would be willing to act consistently with that belief. Most people have at least an implicit belief that if lots of people were ending up dying of thirst, it would be a responsibility of society to do something about that.

nooneelse4• 15 years ago

> "True rights require no infringement on others. You simply have them, without requiring labor, money, or time from others."

Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life.

calpaterson4• 15 years ago

It's a real shame when an expert on one topic starts to talk in public about another area they don't really know about.

"Human Right" is an attribute with a lot of implications. If the web is a human right because otherwise people end up disadvantaged, then surely more basic communications technologies are human rights also? Like pens and paper? Even worse, if your logic is that things become human rights because they're simply beneficial, then you have to create loads of new human rights. Washing machines are human rights. Public transport is a human right. Five pieces of fruit a day is a human right. And then you're starting to loose a lot of the original meaning of the term.

_delirium3• 15 years ago

The idea's been applied to more basic information sources for a while, at least by some people. Some of the advocates for public libraries have long argued a version of "access to knowledge" or "access to information" as a right. Extending that to the internet seems to be sort of a modern version (although that could presumably also be fulfilled via libraries; it's not clear that home access to internet is specifically required).

ck2• 15 years ago

Let's put it this way.

If 99.9% of a society is web enabled and you deny access to the web to a subset by pricing it out of reach or allowing carriers to not install cables because it would not be not profitable for them in the short term, well then you've done a human injustice.

But would not say it's a human right just yet. When society demands that you are web enabled or face crippling setbacks and some people still cannot afford it, then you've got a problem. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

Instead, let's focus on affordable, accessible, quality health care as a real human right since many 3rd world countries still won't have that for quite some time, as well as the United States.

teaspoon• 15 years ago

I'd venture to claim that it is far more feasible to bring 100% of the world population internet access than to bring them health care at even US Medicaid standards.

lotusleaf1987• 15 years ago

This is already happening in Finland: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-10-15/tech/finland.internet.rig...

A rising tide floats all boats, so I really don't see why this is such a big deal. If the government was willing to build an ISP or subsidize existing providers, this would be a win-win scenario for everyone-- it would accelerate the spread of information, increase literacy, give people the ability to self-educate.

If you think people should have access to public libraries and public education growing up, I don't see why you'd disagree with this.

jcromartie• 15 years ago

It must be pretty awesome to be a guy who invented a human right.

jpr• 15 years ago

It's easier than you think. Just invent something and declare it human right. Done.

benologist2• 15 years ago

Internet access and especially personal internet connections is a luxury that almost the entire world has very limited or no access to.

To call it a basic human right when it's only really accessible to an elite slice of humanity is just silly.

cryptoz• 15 years ago

There are far more connected people than you think. Something like 30% of the people on the planet have web access. 30% is not "an elite slice", especially considering that over the next decade or two the number will climb higher and higher until it's pretty much 100%. The developing countries - especially in Africa - are exploding in web use, especially mobile web.

TBL is perhaps a bit early with his words, but not by much I'd say.

Edit: Numbers: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

benologist2• 15 years ago

I don't know, I've been in a lot of poor countries and I'm sitting in a really poor one right now - Nicaragua. There's loads of internet cafes and the people do use them but that's like an hour here and there for the small % that actually use the internet at all.

I bet that 30% includes them even though they're a long way from our dependency on being connected 24/7 and the deep integration into our lives - we're probably disconnected less than these people are connected.

benihana• 15 years ago

Here's a simple check you should make before opening your mouth to talk about human rights.

Is the thing I'm talking about created, made, or maintained by the work of others? Yes? Then it's not a human right.

nooneelse4• 15 years ago

Infants must be fed and cared for in several ways, necessarily using the resources and time of others. Therefore, within your framework, they have no right to life. Care to rework it a bit?

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

While access to water is a more fundamental right...

Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning.

I firmly believe that computers are becoming integrated with our minds. That means, yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them. It's an open issue to figure out exactly when we cross that line where the rules change, but we're getting very close.

But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness.

We face this same problem with the word "war". We have a war on drugs, a war in Afghanistan, a war on poverty, a war on crime. If it's all a "war", then none of it is a war. The word war has no meaning that we can grab onto.

Sorry, I know it sounds pedantic or like splitting hairs, but it matters: Berners-Lee could make a good case for this, if he knew what the argument for rights were based on. Without that, however, he actually hurts the cause. That's not good.

bobbin_cygna• 15 years ago

> yes, there are going to be real rights associated with them.

what's a real right?

warrenwilkinson• 15 years ago

My criteria is when someone mentions a right, can I meaningfully append the question 'At whose expense'? If I can, it's bogus.

These are rights: Right to liberty, to own property, to your life, to the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of speech.

These are not: Right to a job, to a 'fair' wage, to an education, to internet access, to clean water, to a pig every month.

Real rights prevent someone from doing awful things to you, basically "No one will harm you, or interfere with you doing this" (where this might be living, owning property, speaking, etc). The bogus rights are basically promises of free stuff.

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think this is the wrong forum.

I'd start the conversation with Hobbes, Locke, and Mill. I wouldn't start the conversation with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which is where we seem to be starting.

Apologies, not trying to blow you off. I think the key to the discussion is twofold: creation criteria for rights and acceptance criteria for rights. There's a lot in both of those branches of thought. For purposes of my comment, however, I think it's just a matter of whether you generally feel I'm bringing up something serious or just pointlessly posturing. There are a lot of ways to argue what's a "real" right, and even if I screwed up the defense of my position it wouldn't matter. The point is whether you feel the generalization is mostly true or not, ie, is there more foundational material required to make the case. Some folks are perfectly happy with any plea for something desperately-needed that comes out of an emotionally upset person's mouth as being a right. I am not one of them. To each his own.

Links for those interested in further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

pbourke2• 15 years ago

> Sorry, I can't get past this. If the word "right" is so fluffy we can use it anywhere, it doesn't have any meaning.

Rights are simply those things that a society values and there are tradeoffs inherent in any articulated set of rights. You may believe that internet access or water is "fluffy" compared to some other rights, but is that not just your own cultural and/or cognitive bias at work?

> But if "health care", "internet access", "water", and all these other things are tossed out as rights, it takes away the entire reason that internet access may qualify. It's just a jumble of feel-good meaninglessness.

No, it's a set of choices and an expression of values. Let's be clear - these kinds of things are about the relationship of the rich portion of the world to the poor portion of the world. In particular, this type of language indicates that the rich portion should value access to {water, internet, health care} for everyone regardless of geographic or economic circumstance. Your values determine what goes in the set, and you call the members of the set rights.

gaius2• 15 years ago

OK but even in the West we don't really believe that water is a fundamental human right and that's easy to prove: you get a water bill. So it's a vital service, sure, but it's not a right, a water supply is a service you pay for. Same with food, we don't really believe there is a basic right to food; if you want to eat you buy it from the supermarket.

darksaga• 15 years ago

Some alert congress so we can update the constitution.

Tim Berners-Lee: Web access is a human right

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