[governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR

[Asif Kabani]

Ginger, and Friends,

Thanks for sharing.

Regards


K

On 5 January 2012 17:03, Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/opinion/internet-access-is-not-a-human-right.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
>
> Interesting opinion piece from Vint Cerf. I am copy/pasting it here for
> those who may not be able to access it:
> January 4, 2012
> Internet Access Is Not a Human Right By VINTON G. CERF
>
> Reston, Va.
>
> FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the
> world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that
> interact with it. Though the demonstrations thrived because thousands of
> people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as they
> did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize
> and publicize everywhere, instantaneously.
>
> It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about
> whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right. The issue
> is particularly acute in countries whose governments clamped down on
> Internet access in an attempt to quell the protesters. In June, citing the
> uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, a report by the United
> Nations’ special rapporteur<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/united-nations-report-internet-access-is-a-human-right.html> went
> so far as to declare that the Internet had “become an indispensable tool
> for realizing a range of human rights.” Over the past few years, courts and
> parliaments in countries like France and Estonia have pronounced Internet
> access a human right.
>
> But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology
> is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for
> something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the
> things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like
> freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any
> particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end
> up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a
> horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case
> was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were
> granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.
>
> The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that
> we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of
> speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily
> bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the
> United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access
> a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an
> end, not as an end in itself.
>
> What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a *civil *right?
> The same reasoning above can be applied here — Internet access is always
> just a tool for obtaining something else more important — though the
> argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than that
> it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human
> rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as
> human beings.
>
> While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a “right” to a
> telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of “universal
> service” — the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now
> broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions of
> the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of
> Internet access as a civil right, because ensuring access is a policy made
> by the government.
>
> Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue:
> the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and
> civil rights. The Internet has introduced an enormously accessible and
> egalitarian platform for creating, sharing and obtaining information on a
> global scale. As a result, we have new ways to allow people to exercise
> their human and civil rights.
>
> In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to
> empower users, but also an obligation to ensure the safety of users online.
> That means, for example, protecting users from specific harms like viruses
> and worms that silently invade their computers. Technologists should work
> toward this end.
>
> It is engineers — and our professional associations and standards-setting
> bodies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — that
> create and maintain these new capabilities. As we seek to advance the state
> of the art in technology and its use in society, we must be conscious of
> our civil responsibilities in addition to our engineering expertise.
>
> Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by
> which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation
> for the civil and human rights that deserve protection — without pretending
> that access itself is such a right.
>
> Vinton G. Cerf <http://www.icann.org/en/biog/cerf.htm>, a fellow at the
> Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is a vice president and
> chief Internet evangelist for Google.
>
> Ginger (Virginia) Paque
> Diplo Foundation
> www.diplomacy.edu/ig
> VirginiaP at diplomacy.edu
>
> *Join the Diplo community IG discussions: www.diplointernetgovernance.org*
>
>
>
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-- 
Asif Kabani
Email: kabani.asif at gmail.com


“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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