On 1/5/12 8:07 AM, "Jay Ashworth" <[email protected]> wrote:
>----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Zaid Ali" <[email protected]> > >> On 1/5/12 7:22 AM, "Jay Ashworth" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >Vint Cerf says no: http://j.mp/wwL9Ip >> > >> >But I wonder to what degree that's dependent on how much our >>governments >> >make Internet access the most practical/only practical way to interact >> >with them. >> > >> >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. > >> I agree with Vint here. Basic human rights are access to food, clothing >> and shelter. I think we are still struggling in the world with that. >>With >> your logic one would expect the radio and TV to be a basic human right >>but >> they are not, they are and will remain powerful medium which be enablers >> of something else and the Internet would fit there. > >Well, I dunno... as I think was obvious from my other comments: TV and >Radio >are *broadcast* media; telephones and the internet are not; they're >*two-way* >communications media... and they're the communications media which have >been >chosen by the organs of government we've constituted to run things for us. > >You hit the important word, though, in your reply: "*access to* food, >clothing, >and shelter"... not the things themselves. > >The question here is "is *access to* the Internet a human right, >something >which the government ought to recognize and protect"? I sort of think it >is, >myself... and I think that Vint is missing the point: *all* of the things >we generally view as human rights are enablers to other things, and we >generally dub them *as those things*, by synecdoche... at least in my >experience. If I wrote a blog article that criticized the government and it was shutdown along with my Internet access I wouldn't say that my right to the Internet was violated. I would say that my right to free speech was violated. Regardless of one way or two way communication it is communication. Zaid
