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

Fri Jan 6 05:19:46 EST 2012

I think the important thing in what Vint is saying is this -

QUOTE ³The 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.² END
QUOTE

What we currently define as the Internet wont be here forever  it will
morph into another and hopefully much better global communications mechanism
or series of mechanisms. We are already seeing Internet content being made
available via mechanisms which would never be defined as internet, eg mobile
phone apps, television publishing of you tube content etc.

Unfortunately the history of rights in this area from a UN perspective
continues to be haunted by the NWICO debates of the mid 1980s and the
projected right to communicate, vigorously opposed by USA at the time and
some of its allies. At that time the debate was about access to broadcasting
and therefore to a large degree access to spectrum  and indeed these remain
important issues.

I would like to see our efforts going towards the right to access knowledge,
the right to communicate, and freedom of speech. And I would like these to
be enshrined as applicable (where appropriate) in all present and future
media forms.

Ian Peter

From: gpaque at gmail.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 07:33:30 -0430
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: [governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/opinion/internet-access-is-not-a-human-rig
ht.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 Nations¹ special
rapporteur 
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/united-nations-report-in
ternet-access-is-a-human-right.html>  went so far as to declare that the
Internet had ³become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human
rights.² 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 didn¹t 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, I¹m 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 ³right² to a
telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of ³universal service²
 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 <http://www.diplomacy.edu/ig>
VirginiaP at diplomacy.edu

Join the Diplo community IG discussions: www.diplointernetgovernance.org
<http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org>

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