Internet not a human right, says Internet's dad

"There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right," writes Vinton Cert, the oft-described "Father of the Internet." And as far as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers fellow and president and chief Internet evangelist for Google is concerned, the Internet doesn't reach.

Internet not a human right, says Internet's dad Imagesizerfilehelenaspo

Hence the title of Cerf's Thursday New York Times op-ed, summarily titled, "Internet access is not a human right."

Who says it is?

A recent United Nations report calls out the "Arab Spring" uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as evidence that the Internet has "become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights." What's more, countries such as Estonia and France have straight-up declared Internet access a human right. Cerf calls these declarations a vast overstatement:

Loosely put,[a human right] 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 didn’t 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, I’m not sure where I would put it.

Cerf's position may come as a surprise to those who know that he is one of 83 Internet pioneers who last month signed an open letter to Congress protesting controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and related Internet legislation that would "create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure."

Cerf, however, says the argument over the Internet as a human right — or even a civil right "conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings," distracts from a much bigger issue: "the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights."

It's because the Internet emerged as an invaluable tool in gaining and sharing information that improves the human condition that the stewards of cyberspace need to step up their game:

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.

Point taken.

Here in the United States — where many of us take easy Internet access for granted — viruses, worms and the like are still a daily battle. Consider that elsewhere in the world, an infected computer hinders not just a random factoid on Wikipedia, but gaining access to information that could help set you free.

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/05/9978467-internet-not-a-human-right-says-internets-dad

Internet not a human right, says Internet's dad

Internet not a human right, says Internet's dad

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