Matt sent me this link, which mentions that Finland has just declared broadband access a legal right. By next summer, all Finnish citizens will be entitled to a 1mbps connection; within a few years that speed requirement will climb to 100mbps.
Perhaps predictably, I think this is great. Big government! Technology! Heedless disregard for cost or affected corporations! What’s not to like?
Actually, though, the English-speaking press seems a little fuzzy on what exactly this announcement it means. It appears to be a guarantee of access, not a promise of internet service paid for by the state. It’s also not quite as novel as it sounds: a French court declared net access a human right earlier this year (though I believe that decision was expected to be quickly overturned).
But whatever the specifics, a lot of people will no doubt find the idea of enshrining network access as a right to be frivolous or silly. They shouldn’t.
I think the temptation is to romanticize rights as timeless philosophical axioms; to connect them to an imagined state of nature from which your preferred understanding of the social contract then arises. It’s no doubt difficult to admit technology into that picture. But what’s the second amendment if not a guaranteed right to technology? “Arms” is, admittedly, a bit more poetically vague than “100mbps broadband connection”. But considering all the headaches that’ve been produced by that bit of American lyricism, it’s hard to blame the Finns for being specific.
To me it seems simple: society needs to guarantee its members the ability to do certain things, like defend themselves and communicate and participate in the economy. If the march of progress makes it absolutely or practically impossible for them to do so without access to some enabling technology, then the ability to use that technology will have to be guaranteed, too, right?
A right to bandwidth isn’t so strange. We had low-cost public nationwide mail service in the 1800s. Getting mail wasn’t a human right, but I’d have to say it was a worthwhile project.
It might be nice to start with the right to literacy, for all the same reasons.
Well, there’s an important ambiguity in the concept of a “right to…”, right? The right to keep and bear arms is simply the right to purchase a gun on the open market. It’s not a right to have the government issue you a gun. Nor is it the right to have the government subsidize your gun purchase if you can’t otherwise afford it, or even to guarantee that guns will be offered for sale in your preferred location and feature set. So if a right to broadband is like a right to keep and bear arms, all that tells us is that the state may not prevent people from purchasing or using broadband connections.
This version of a right to broadband could actually be relevant in some cases. There have been instances where a judge has sentenced a convicted computer cracker to staying away from all computers for a specified period. A right to broadband might rule out these kinds of sentences, or subject them to heightened scrutiny.
But in the Finnish case, it seems something stronger is being asserted: that people have a right to government assistance in obtaining broadband access. It’s not a crazy claim, but it’s a pretty strong one.
I think it’s true that there’s some ambiguity surrounding what this new Finnish policy means. My suspicion is that it’s similar to your description of how the right to bear arms works in this country: citizens must be able to purchase broadband access/guns if they so desire.
It seems to me that this is a stronger claim for broadband than for guns only because of the nature of the good under consideration: guns are portable, which broadband access is a service in the home (at least, that’s what I assume is meant by this policy). In practice this seems likely to be reflected primarily in building code requirements (similar to how the ADA works) and perhaps some cross-subsidization scheme similar to the Universal Service Fund.
Lemme guess. Rural electrification was “Big government! Technology! Heedless disregard for cost or affected corporations!”
Woot! Let those damn rural bastards live in the dark without porn!
Rural electrification has been a mess. The TVA is rife with waste and this program refuses to die now defines “rural” as including the Atlanta suburbs, which is just a payoff to local politicians.
If rural life sucks so much, move. Or buy a generator.
The French decision was not expected to be overturned, ever. It was delivered by the Constitutional Court which can’t be overturned.
What was expected to happen was that the government was expected to redraft the affected law in light of the Court’s findings.
The court’s point in that case was that the right to free speech was as critically dependent now on access to the internet as it once was on access to the town square, and thus someone’s internet could not be arbitrarily and summarily cut off by an administrative decision.
Sure, while a “right” has traditionally been thought of as a prohibition on a prohibition, and not as an entitlement, there has been significant movement the other way – meaning, a “right” that cannot be enjoyed due to financial lack is no right at all and so funding of that right is necessary in order to give meaning to the right.