15 Oct Finland Makes High Speed Internet Access a (Human?) Right
Wow! I know there has been some talk and some cases about an international right to internet access. But Finland has upped the ante by guaranteeing a right to high speed internet access.
Finland’s Ministry of Transport and Communications has made 1-megabit broadband Web access a legal right, YLE, the country’s national broadcasting company, reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, every person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection.
I don’t know about how I feel about making internet access a “human right”. Is telephone access a human right? TV access? Radio? On the other hand, if we are going to make internet access a human right, it makes sense to guarantee broadband. I shudder at the thought of using dial up on today’s internet.
i’m quite confident that there’s a significant (and longstanding recognition of the) difference between a “human right” and a “legal right,” and in this instance the right is of the latter kind.
Completely agree with Patrick. If you’d read your own quote Finland have specifically made it a legal right, but not a human one. Very significant difference between the two!
Does it really matter whether it’s a legal or human right? The asininity of either boggles my mind. Imagine claiming the right to have a newspaper delivered daily, telephones, laptop computers, color television or even internet—these are conveniences, and though valuable, they are not necessary to the human condition.
Fundamentally, a right is something which should be inalienable to a person, not something that barely existed 2 decades ago but some bureaucrat thinks would make him more popular with the local yokels if he declared them entitled to it.
So long as they pay for it, I imagine the Finnish can declare whatever physical good they see fit to be a “right.”
I think it’s kind of absurd, but it is their country, not mine, after all.
Well, they have the tax money to pay for it all, and a small population to deliver it to. I guess whatever makes them happy.
There are various political and principled socio-economic reasons that could motivate a decision such as this and thus I, for one, would not be quick to christen it “asinine.” For possible theoretical justifications that might animate and undergird (i.e., justify) these reasons one should look to the literature on “social exclusion” (Rene Lenoir) and related works evidencing “relative deprivation” (e.g., Adam Smith) concerns and a “capabilities approach” (Amartya Sen and Martha C. Nussbaum) when addressing some of the questions of social inequality and distributive justice.
Yeah, how dare Finland try to minimize social inequality concerning the 21st century’s most important communication medium! Next thing you know, the Finns will want living wages, quality health care…
Oh, wait…
I wonder how much of the effort to find a human right in internet connectivity is related to efforts to take away US control over ICAAN.
I don’t see anything particularly objectionable here. As others have pointed out, Finland isn’t declaring broadband internet access a “human right”. It’s simply declaring it one of the things that the Finnish government chooses to guarantee to its populace as part of their Scandinavian-style welfare state. If anything, guaranteeing people access to reasonable-speed internet is more relevant to equality of opportunity than a lot of more equality-of-outcome types of things Scandinavian-style welfare states provide; internet access is a major factor in enabling entrepreneurship, for example.
I reside in Africa and availability of high speed internet is still a luxury and not a necessity. It would be great to make it a legal right just so people in rural areas can access passage to the modern world. I strongly believe it will increase the literacy rate.
I’ve considered it some more and still think it’s asinine, and here’s why: I know I’m a bit of an anachronism in a world where one group’s alleged need to something (like high speed internet) entitles them to demand, as a right, other people to provide it to them, but I still believe rights are inherently negative in nature. No person is entitled to some thing as a right, but rights encompass guarantees of freedom of action and due process to protect from legal oppressions. Governments grant other benefits to their citizens, but calling them rights is a sad misnomer adopted by our modern legal framework. Even given my stance on that, I can at least understand where people might try to speak of people’s rights to certain objects that are fundamental to the existence of man—food, shelter, healthcare, etc. I don’t agree, but I understand it. But to make the leap from that to the right to high speed Internet makes a mockery of millions of people worldwide suffering from genuine government oppression and material poverty. Mark N., I agree that this is what Finland is actually doing. But they’re—apparently—doing it in a manner that wraps it in language… Read more »
Sorry for the blocky-ness of the previous post. The line breaks didn’t really show.
[…] high speed internet (1-megabit broadband Web connection) a right, starting from July 2010, and the Opinio Juris blog discusses, whether this is a human right or a […]