[governance] Access to the Internet and Human Rights

[Norbert Bollow]

Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> wrote:
> Your explanations strike an similarity between right to "internet
> access" and "right to food". Now imagine, that we talk about
> food. Food, has always been precious resource for humanity. Whoever
> has access to more food is richer, can afford more etc. This is so,
> because everyone needs to feed and do it regularly.
> 
> Few thoughts about "food":
> 
> - fact is, every Government claims to provide "free food" for those in need.
> - fact is, in every country, there are people starving. In few
>   countries those people are less, but they do exist.
> - in all cases where there is "free food" provided it is of
>   relatively limited nature. If you are producer of food, you will
>   not agree "government money" (that is, your money) to be spent
>   driving you out of business.
> - whatever a Government provides, it has extremely high bureaucracy
>   costs associated.
> - in most cases, it is not the government that provides free food,
>   but various groups of people (often called charitable societies).
>   Those groups buy or produce food with their own efforts, eventually
>   convincing others to donate.
> 
> Therefore, "free, Government provided access to <whatever>" is a myth.

All of these statements are true.

Nevertheless, the right to food is internationally recognized as a
human right.

Of course the assertion that this is a human right and its
codification as international law has not caused food to be
automatically provided when members of my family have a need to eat.

More generally, I am very skeptical of the ability of any human
government or legal system by itself to solve the various problems
related to the production of food, its distribution, paying for the
work involved, and (may I say it?) balancing (in ways that do not
involve famines, wars, or other major injustices) the number of
people who try to live on planet earth with the planet's capacity
for sustainable food production.

Nevertheless I would think if the legal system of any country does
not recognize the right to food as a fundamental human right, that
legal system is fundamentally broken. That would be a legal system
that values e.g. the desire of Hollywood companies to "get paid for
every copy of a film that someone views" more highly than the
fundamental need of people to have food.

It is true that with regard to some important needs of humans,
governments find themselves unable to fully solve the relevant
problems.

So the choice is

(a) to deny that these important needs are human rights, which has
the effect of creating a skewed legal system in which the business
interests of influential companies are valued more highly than
these important needs of humans; or

(b) to accept that these are human rights, while acknowledging that
there are problems, that have not yet been fully solved, with
empowering people to enjoy these rights.

In my mind, there is no doubt whatsoever that 'b' is the right
choice, while I see an awful lot of 'a' happening in the practice
of governments. I have no doubt that this is in significant part
a result of the influence of companies who expect that their
profits could decrease if governments were to put more emphasis on
seeking to empower people to enjoy their human rights and less
emphasis on providing a friendly environment to the companies who
are paying those lobbyists.

Google is such a company whose business is set up in such a way
that it might easily suffer if the influence of the International
Bill of Human Rights on Internet governance increases, since that
would result in an increased emphasis and on matters of privacy
and increasingly strict legislation in that area.

I'm not able to speak about Vint Cerf's particular motivations for
writing that essay, nor do I know whether he might be truly as
ignorant about the International Bill of Human Rights as that
essay gives the impression of him being.

But I have spent a lot of time in another area of Internet governance
on opposing efforts of lobbyists of another company (one lobbyist
after the other, every few years a new one has taken over the role)
who all of them have used the same strategy of muddying the waters by
at least pretending to be ignorant in exactly the same way (that was
obvious to someone like me who had actually thought the matter
through, but that is not obvious at all to the government decision
makers who lack either the intelligence or the personal interest to
truly understand the issues.

I have always treated these lobbyists with respect personally (while
of course opposing much of what they were pushing for), and I do not
regret having always sought to do this.

But at the same time, I find it simply naive and unrealistic to expect
company-paid lobbying to pursue any other objectives besides the
company's business objectives.

Why should Google's "Internet evangelist" be an exception to this
rule?

Greetings,
Norbert
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