Is the Internet a Human Right?
Is The Internet a Human Right?
A Review and Assessment of Human Rights and the Internet.
It may seem blasé, or more probably naive, in this post dot-com-bust world to still hold out that “information is power” and, moreover, that the Internet is fundamentally different than any previous information technology. Perhaps I am guilty of such sentimentalities, but allow me at least for the sake of argument to hold on to a small hope that the Internet really is something new. It would then be true that information and indeed the Internet—the phenomenon as opposed to the Internet as an enabling tool towards other rights—should be a human right in and of itself.
There is an unexplained inequality in commonly accepted formulations of human rights. Freedom of expression is nearly always considered a basic human right; in other words free and unregulated authorship is clearly privileged. However, freedom of readership is not usually accorded an equal footing, without any explanation for its exclusion. In my target book, Human Rights and the Internet, Marshall Conley and Christina Patterson offer a nice turn of phrase for this: “freedom of expression” versus “freedom of impression.”
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does imply some equality in information rights when it states that everyone has the right to “hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers” To receive and impart—that sounds like a symmetrical claim of information rights. Internationally, this obligation has been further articulated, expressing the right of all people to communicate freely and effectively, in instruments such as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Is there any force to a claim of symmetric rights to information if I am cut off from
A Review and Assessment of Human Rights and the Internet.
It may seem blasé, or more probably naive, in this post dot-com-bust world to still hold out that “information is power” and, moreover, that the Internet is fundamentally different than any previous information technology. Perhaps I am guilty of such sentimentalities, but allow me at least for the sake of argument to hold on to a small hope that the Internet really is something new. It would then be true that information and indeed the Internet—the phenomenon as opposed to the Internet as an enabling tool towards other rights—should be a human right in and of itself.
There is an unexplained inequality in commonly accepted formulations of human rights. Freedom of expression is nearly always considered a basic human right; in other words free and unregulated authorship is clearly privileged. However, freedom of readership is not usually accorded an equal footing, without any explanation for its exclusion. In my target book, Human Rights and the Internet, Marshall Conley and Christina Patterson offer a nice turn of phrase for this: “freedom of expression” versus “freedom of impression.”
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does imply some equality in information rights when it states that everyone has the right to “hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers” To receive and impart—that sounds like a symmetrical claim of information rights. Internationally, this obligation has been further articulated, expressing the right of all people to communicate freely and effectively, in instruments such as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Is there any force to a claim of symmetric rights to information if I am cut off from
References: Hicks, S., Edward F. Halprin and Eric Hoskins. 2000. “Human Rights and the Internet.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan IDC. 2003. The Worldwide Black Book. Framingham, MA. Kedzie, C.R. 1997. “Communication and Democracy: Coincident Revolutions and the Emergent Dictator’s Dilemma.” RAND Document No: RGSD-127. Available: http://www.rand.org/publications/RGSD/RGSD127. Miller v. California, 413 US 15 (1973), decided June 21. Full text online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=413&invol=15&friend=oyez Reno v. ACLU, et al. 512 US 844 (1997), decided June 26. Full text online at http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-511.ZS.html. Selian, A.N. 2002. It’s in Support of Human Rights, Democracy and Good Governance. Geneva: International Telecommunications Union. UN Administrative Committee on Coordination. 1997. ACC Statement on Universal Access to Basic Communication and Information. http://www.unites.org/html/resource/acc1997.htm. UN WSIS. 2003. Declaration of Principles. UN Doc WSIS-03/GENEVA/DOC/4-E. Available http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi-en-1161|1160.asp.