In a message written on Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 10:22:52AM -0500, Jay Ashworth wrote: > Understand: I'm not saying that FiOS should be a human right. But as a > society, America's recognized for decades that you gotta have a telephone, > and subsidized local/lifeline service to that extent; that sort of subsidy > applies to cellular phones now as well.
There's a pretty big gap between providing subsidized service because it's good for people/society/the government/business/whatever and a "human right". The government subsidizes lots of things, roads, electric service, planting of wheat that doesn't make any of them human rights. A few years back I read the Wikipedia page on Human Rights, and it made me realize the topic is far deeper than I had initially thought. There really are a lot of nuances to the topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights Broadband, to me, is not a human right. It is something that makes our society more efficient, and improves the quality of life for virtually every citizen, so I do think the government has a role and interest in seeing widespread, if not universal broadband deployment. Failure to provide broadband to someone is not a human rights violation though, and the idea that it is probably is offensive to those who have experienced real human rights violations. -- Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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