The Right to Life, Liberty, and Broadband
Diane Ellis, Ed. ·
Jul 7, 2010 at 9:41am
Should internet access be considered a right? The Finns certainly think so. As of the first of this month,
every citizen of Finland has the legal right to a 1Mbps broadband connection, meaning that providers are now required to make the connections available to everyone. The government of Finland has also promised to make good on its goal of getting every citizen with a 100Mbps connection by 2015, saying that they now consider internet access a basic requirement of daily life.
If nothing else, at least the Finns are channeling the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt in doling out rights like candy.
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Re: The Right to Life, Liberty, and Broadband
A legal right to the internet is fine with me, especially for the Finns, whose country and government is especially well-suited to this kind of thing. The important part is to realize that legal rights are not human rights, though human rights should be reflected in the law. FDR's problem was that he did a Reverse Finland: believing that we had human rights to things like recreation and adventure, he proposed that we adapt the laws accordingly.
May '10
Re: The Right to Life, Liberty, and Broadband
If one establishes legal rights that are not based directly on human rights, then they should be identified as such in the law's wording. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before some judge mistakes one for the other.
Jun '10
Re: The Right to Life, Liberty, and Broadband
I once worked for a telecom company whose high-speed broadband service was called DSL--cable calls it service cable modem. And there are now viable wireless services. For those who've spent any time on dial-up, it's like entering the promised land. You can spend time on Ricochet, check email, look at other sites, pay a bill, etc, all very quickly.
But every great thing has a dark side. This was brought home to me at the time when my company was rolling out DSL and a co-worker said to me, "Have you considered the irony that this service will allow men to download pornography fast and efficiently." Which is true.
Bottom line: as thinking, moral adults we must filter out the bad--"put away childish things," as the Good Book says.
As to Aaron's comment, I agree. Legal rights and human rights are not the same thing, and making high-speed Internet connections a legal right (not to mention a human right) is bad policy and just plain silly.
May '10
Re: The Right to Life, Liberty, and Broadband
This reminds me of not-so-long ago when some ingenious bureaucrat decided that American taxpayers should subsidize not one, but two digital converter boxes per household for citizens receiving television signals over the air. However unaffordable, it's only a matter of time before the Obama administration puts our money where their mouths are and makes broadband a subsidized "right" for one and all.
Oh, the plight of the American poor, who desperately need someone else to pay so they may have high speed internet and two televisions!