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Why assume it's a human right? Because it's popular to do so? Just curious.
Yes
No
the internet was cutoff in Egypt. Look what happened.
Why assume it's a human right? Because it's popular to do so? Just curious.
We have a reasoned bill of rights, because we decided that certain things done by governments to individuals/groups were unconscionable.
If, going forward, most news and information about the outside world comes through the internet, when does the ability to access that, or government ability to deny it, become a "right"?
It is looking more and more like the economic model for print media is looking less and less sustainable, with many larger cities losing their 2nd or 3rd newspaper. The trend shows no sign of slowing down.
Many people only access books via liabraries, in a manner similar to internet access.
Is it really that much of a stretch to lump in internet access with broadcast media and print media as part of a "free press"?
What about government run insurance?
Insurance company burocracies limit care all the time. Does that bother you?
How do you reconcile the profit motive, which provides motive for health insurers to provide as little care as they can get away with, with the greater economic good of keeping people healthy?
Do you just blindly trust that health insurers will make the call that advances the public good over their own profit margins?
Depending on what you mean by access, perhaps not. What do you mean by access?
Senator Susan Collins does, and Joe Lieberman too.
Last edited by Oh, Gee!!; 02-03-2011 at 01:42 PM.
It's definitely unwarranted, imo. First off, shutting down the internet isn't well defined. Is it just for US consumers? Or shutting down the internet for everyone? DNS is owned by WHOIS, which is an American company. (A sore spot for a few other countries.) We could shut down DNS entries, but that would have severe effects worldwide, and would piss off alot of other countries.
I can think of no attack that would affect us so greatly that we would need to shut off the internet for US consumers. A self-inflicted denial of service is probably the best outcome for any attacker anyways.
"DNS is owned by WHOIS"
gotta link?
DNS root-servers (sine qua non of DNS) are run by volunteers on servers spread around the planet.
Slowing down the speed or limiting the current accessibility of free speech ≠ abridging free speech/the press
If it wasn't a human right just 20 years ago, I don't see how it's suddenly a human right today.
"If it wasn't a human right just 20 years ago, I don't see how it's suddenly a human right today."
A country can define/restrict rights arbitrarily.
eg, Human-Americans think they have human rights, but they are really American rights, Americans don't "give" those rights to Human-Non-Americans. Complete arbitrary.
No rights are "inalienable".
God ain't in the loop.
Correct, although Verisign, a US company, explicitly controls certain immensely popular TLDs, such as .com, .net and .org"DNS is owned by WHOIS"
DNS root-servers (sine qua non of DNS) are run by volunteers on servers spread around the planet.
That's exactly what ICE has been abusing lately in order to seize domains without contacting domain registrars or the actual owner of the domain.
Follow me here..."DNS is owned by WHOIS"
DNS root-servers (sine qua non of DNS) are run by volunteers on servers spread around the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANNOn December 1, 1999, management of the top-level domains (TLDs) com, net, and org was assigned to ICANN.
I won't deny that there are DNS nameservers in other parts of the world. I'm not sure how effective they would be if US portions got shut down. Do you know about Start-of-authority? Zone transfers? etc etc.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, pronounced /ˈaɪkæn/ EYE-kan) is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998[1] to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
ICANN is responsible for managing the Internet Protocol address spaces (IPv4 and IPv6) and assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries, for maintaining registries of Internet protocol identifiers, and for the management of the top-level domain name space (DNS root zone), which includes the operation of root nameservers. Most visibly, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs). The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function.
ICANN's primary principles of operation have been described as helping preserve the operational stability of the Internet; to promote compe ion; to achieve broad representation of global Internet community; and to develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.[2]
I think it would work fine. Some of the newer root servers are distributed geographically and use AnyCast to provide better fault tolerance and load distribution.
The issue with .com, .net and .org domains is that ICANN subcontracts with Verisign for the management of those TLDs, which is an American company.
While I agree with you in this case, I don't think that works universally. That's like saying, "The freedom to vote is still maintained if we only open one voting center statewide, that happens to be in the most red/blue district".
While the right remains, the limited access capability does seem to "limit" the freedom.
RG isn't arguing there's a NEW right, just that the internet might fall under the right to freedom of speech.
And even then, that argument isn't a strong one. For instance, female voting rights weren't considered a "human right", until they were.
Can Verisign block access to all those TLDs instantaneously though? I know they can shut down sites and whatnot, just not sure about shutting down whole swathes of the internet.
They can redirect them to 127.0.0.1 in one big swoop, effectively doing basically the same.
Now, obviously ICANN could protest. But if there's a warrant?
Ah, didn't think about redirecting. I guess it wouldn't be too hard if all that info was located/routed on Verisign servers/routers.
One way or another, a US-based company DOES have the ability to cripple the Internet world-wide, regardless of worldwide DNS server location. Assuming, of course, that ICANN doesn't have backups of all .com/.net DNS entries to relocate to some other server somewhere else, along with the routing required to shift said traffic.
I'm guessing they don't.
Yes, it would be limited but the right would remain.
Convenience is not a human right.
I understood his question from post #1.RG isn't arguing there's a NEW right, just that the internet might fall under the right to freedom of speech.
In and of itself, the internet does not have anything to say.
People do though.
I did some thinking about the OP and I don't think internet access is necessarily a right. The information distribution of yesterday was the newspaper and then the radio and then the television. The evolution of that has been obviously towards the internet. However, never has it been asked if it is a human right to have a newspaper subscription, a television, or even a radio.
We should strive to have the best possible dissemination of information and strive to make sure everyone has access to it but no, the internet is not a human right. The internet is obviously not essential for life and should not be put at the same level as food, shelter, or to be generally free from unjust persecution and punishment.
So you think a state run by a Republican/Democrat that only allowed one voting place (coincidentally in the middle of a red/blue district) would be kosher/cons utional?
I think that was his point though, that the government blocking access to sites might be considered limiting a person's freedom of speech. (To be fair, it was an open-ended question.)
There are no rights unless government grants them, and enforces them.
Super bowl related?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_817458.html
Boutons, we know your whole "no rights" shtick. But whether a right is enforced/allowed/etc says nothing of the inherent moral rights.
Ie. right to life, liberty and happiness is a MORAL argument. It's obvious that life, liberty and happiness can be taken away.
And, if you change "pursuit of happiness" to "property," you have the basics of a libertarian ideology.
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