[governance] rights based approach to the Internet

[Parminder]

Milton

Rights and markets are both important parts of the political economy of a
society, and there cannot be an either or. You know that any developed
country has a huge welfarist expenditure which is rights based. Do you
propose that it should be withdrawn?

The issue then is to recognize what aspects of the society are to be
governed by a rights based regime and what with a market exchanged based
regime. And many areas will be mixed areas, and elaborate political-economic
stratagems go into managing this mixture, at different levels for different
things. All these issues are a matter of political determination of  a
society, and this determination remains in  a dynamic flux as societies
change. We need to place the Internet in this complex political economy
matrix, and explore what factors are relevant to it at any given time, and
what's the state of these factors in different contexts. 

> Articulating a right to Internet in that case could mean cutting back on
> the right to health care or education or some other good.

This exactly is where you are very wrong, in not recognizing what the
Internet means or may mean to developing societies. In ICTD activity we are
trying to transform access to (and participation in) health and education by
using the Internet. Now if this transformational role of Internet is proven
and recognized in enabling access to basic needs, which themselves are
recognized as rights, instead of the Internet competing for resources with
these needs, it can changes the context of 'rights or markets' political
economy consideration. It may mean that a society begins to consider
Internet as a right. It wouldn't be wrong to do so, would it.

Parminder 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 10:57 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein; McTim
> Subject: RE: [governance] rights based approach to the Internet
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Gurstein [mailto:gurstein at gmail.com]
> > What a "Right to the Internet" does is to establish that a public good
> is
> > understood to be realized through the Internet being made available to
> ALL
> > within the community.
> >
> > How it is delivered or how this availablilty is practically ensured
> (by
> > the State; by the private sector through incentives, regulation,
> Public
> > Private Partnerships; NGO's; or other) really doesn't matter.
> 
> Oh but it does. There is this little thing called the budget constraint.
> 
> It means that society has many, many things that it wants and needs but
> perhaps not enough money in the treasury to get them all. So you have to
> choose.
> 
> Articulating a right to Internet in that case could mean cutting back on
> the right to health care or education or some other good. Or it may mean
> restricting freedom of choice; in setting up subsidy schemes for the
> favored good, one can create a kind of economic protectionism or
> inappropriate restrictions on human behavior in order to preserve the
> subsidy or protect the institutions delivering the subsidy.
> 
> This is why I don't like it when people confuse _policy_ with _rights_.
> If you say, "we should have a policy of promoting Internet access," fine
> -- one can then enter into reasonable negotiations and budget
> allocations regarding how much of the state's or private actor's
> resources are to be committed to one goal versus another. And you don't
> lose sight of the question whether the policy actually succeeds in
> promoting internet access. But if one says one has a "right" to a
> service, the production and consumption of which inherently draws
> resources away from other things, then one cannot make a rational
> decision about relative levels of resource allocation. And the rights
> language also encourages one to forget about whether the policy used to
> achieve greater levels of access is effective and efficient. Just look
> at what you said above - "really doesn't matter" how you do it.
> 
> >
> > In a "Rights" based regime the
> > Right of the State to support measures for the public good trump the
> > rights of private owners to dispose of their property as and how they
> > wish. This at least at the theoretical level has little to do with how
> 
> > the Internet "grows" etc.etc.
> 
> But it has everything to do with how the Internet grows. If the rights
> of private owners - who by the way probably comprise 80% or more of the
> Internet - to recoup investments in networks or internet services is
> regulated too much or completely undermined, then the Internet ceases to
> grow. And no amount of "rights" language on pieces of paper will make it
> grow.
> 
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