[governance] Access to the Internet and Human Rights

[Paul Lehto]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 3:11 PM, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> wrote:

> Who is the "government" in your scenario, and "whose" money does it spend?
>

If it is legitimate government, then it is "our" government, spending "our"
money.  ("Our" is the grammatically parallel term for "We" as in "We the
People")

I am not saying, *per se*, that no one ever has, or could have, a right to
government-paid access to the internet.  That can be discussed elsewhere,
separately.

What I am, instead, saying is that it is very destructive of the internet
and especially the concept of rights of users regarding the internet to
claim, (as is conceded in the blog linked to at the outset of the thread)
that it is somehow a good point to believe that there is no right of
"access to the internet".   That's a false statement.

Anybody that stops somebody else from accessing the internet is wrong and
violating the rights of the person they are obstructing.  (This does not
mean that one has a right of access to the internet for ANY purpose
whatsoever, or at any time whatsoever, or at all places whatever...)
Depending on the jurisdiction in question, one may or may not have a cause
of action and therefore a remedy for such obstruction depending on whether
the obstructer is governmental or private, but it is nevertheless a
violation of rights to obstruct someone's access to the internet in the
vast majority of instances, regardless of whether the law provides a remedy
for financial or other damages, or not.  The question of effective
remedies, while quite important and indeed related, is also a separate
question from whether one's rights have been violated or not.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

Paul,
>
> On Jan 16, 2012, at 9:58 PM, Paul Lehto wrote:
>
> If *access to* the internet is NOT a human right, then governments can
> arbitrarily block access to the internet without due process of law of any
> kind.
>
> I am confused as to why anyone on this list or elsewhere would deny that
> "access to" the internet is a human right OTHER THAN the acknowledged
> confusion of when "access to" is interpreted as meaning "government-paid
> access to."
>
> But the key language in this debate in recent days has not, to the best of
> my memory, ever raised the question of whether :"*government-paid* access
> to the internet is a human right."
>
>
>
>

-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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