Estonia: Where the Internet is a Human Right 499
securitas writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports on technological change in Estonia, where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It's now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business (meetings, votes, document reviews, etc.) virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only 10 years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match."
Re:A further comment (Score:4, Insightful)
What is next? The Human right to a car? How about the human right to friday's off every six months?
Hot running water a luxury? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking this into consideration, their system seems pretty natural. Estonia (unlike say the US) is starting their tech infrastructure from scratch. They don't have to deal with ancient systems kludged together with duct-tape or deeply entrenched telcos. If the US had an oppurtunity to start from square one, many of the problems we have wouldn't exist.
This is also a bit like the MS/Linux situation. MS made some bad decisions early, and has to deal with these decisions and peice together work-arounds. Linux was built from nothing, and has the obvious advantage of seeing what mistakes others have made and not repeating them.
As long as Estonia analyzes mistakes others have made and are careful not to repeat history (bad things), they may well end up with an example for all others on how to assemble a tech infrastructure.
"Crumbling, bankrupt mess"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dramatise if you must, but get your facts right.
Re:A right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so good.. (Score:1, Insightful)
So if most of the transactions are going through the richest 5% of the population, what use is the measure? Namibia is in this position.
Inaccurate Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
"...broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe" is another hot one. The article says that "Internet usage and broadband access are approaching West European levels." Hell, all that means is that Estonian rates are (a) lower, and (b) increasing relative to WE levels.
The article itself gives information that conveys almost nothing about usage: "Farmers are ordering broadband lines, and motorists on rural roads frequently pass blue information signs pointing them to the nearest place to access the Web." Wow, so at least 2 farmers have ordered broadband. And there are at least two signs on country highways - of course motorists frequently pass them, people drive down those roads all the time!
Re:What a pile of nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize you just described about every Soviet republic other than Russia, right?
Alright, so the 1940 date is a little late for some of the other republics (Ukraine comes to mind), but what SSR signed on without being "convinced" to do so by the Red Army?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Missing the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
How much different would the discussions below look if it had been German, England, Brazil, or the U.S.?
Perhaps /. has become too Estonia-centric? ;-)
Oh yeah, IMO, it is preposterous to propose Internet access as a basic right when literacy, healthcare, housing & even potable water aren't universally accepted as basic rights, regardless of the country. No slam against Estonia intended, of course.
Re:ooh (Score:3, Insightful)
Intolerance is America's biggest problem.
This is concepticide in action (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. I'm very happy that Estonia is making such good progress in getting people hooked up. But the issue of the misuse of the word 'right' remains.
This is concept-destruction, using concepts in ways that contradict their meaning, and if we let people get away with it people eventually forget what a real right is. They aren't the only ones, of course, but it's still very sad to see.
A right is something that you can have without taking away someone elses, that's one of the key qualities of it. Your right to free speech doesn't stop me from talking. Your right to practise the religion of your choice, or not, doesn't stop me from having the same right. But when you're talking about goods and services, such as medical care or internet access, these aren't things that you have as long as no one interferes to take them, rather they are things that someone must work to produce. So, if you claim a 'right' to these things, what you have done is claim a 'right' to someone elses labour, a right to enslave others, essentially. There is no right, there can be no such right, it is contradictory to the core of what rights are.
Re:A further comment (Score:0, Insightful)
Vacations are a human right. Civilized countries have laws protecting this. The US does not.
Re:A right? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about being able to carry a firearm; that lump of steal on your belt doesn't feed you, clothe you, make you happy, or help build society. Heck, you're not even allowed to fire it at most people except under special circumstances. But it's a gateway right - it positively aids in the protection of all your other rights, e.g. freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. The government knows that at any given moment a sizeable group of citizens has the ability to bring physical force to bear.
We're entering a world where information is more powerful than weaponry. Witness how much work Bush had to do on the political stage before he could invade Iraq, and how much information his army had to continuously feed out in order to keep proper appearances. In days past none of this was necessary for a superpower.
The idea that freedom to access and trade information is superior to the freedom to carrying a firearm makes perfect sense to me. Not that I would support a cancellation of the latter right, but I do recognize the shifting priorities.
And remember, all "rights" are novel. We call them "basic" or "inherent," but nature plays no part in them. All rights are contrived fictions that people created; and so every "right" has a birthday, so to speak. Today is the birthday of the Right To Internet Access. And her mother is Estonian.
What may be interesting (and wonderful) is that we now live in a world where people don't necessarily have to die for the creation and recognition of new human rights.
Re:A further comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ooh (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A right? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The standard of living worldwide is improving, and will continue to improve in the future, as far as we can tell.
2) Progress occurs mainly at the top end of society, with those at the bottom being left further behind. This is will proven by the fact that the disparity between rich and poor keeps growing larger, faster, especially in developed nations.
Now, given (1) and (2), one can consider basic human rights in the following terms: Human rights are not basic in the same sense as mathematical primitives are basic. Rather, they are basic in the sense that society, realizing that the lower classes are being left further behind , asserts that there is a lowest (most basic) allowable level of human existance. Society decides that, no matter what might otherwise have happened to a person, there are certain things that this person must have. Now, as a consequence of the fact that the standard of living continues to go up, it is logical to assume that society's opinion of the lowest allowable state will also continue to go up. The result is that rights will added to the sets of basic ones to reflect the continuing progress of society.
Consider, for example, one of the more recent, yet pervasive rights --- the right to an education. Education is free in most developed countries today. Why? Because society has decided that the education of children is too important to leave to the vagracies of a Darwinian universe, and has set a standard below which no person should fall.
Now, having internet access be a basic right seems novel, but fits logically if you consider the progress of human rights over time. Indeed, the right to internet access is merely an extension of the right to speak freely, and the right to an education. The internet is becoming critically important. Soon, I think having access to the internet will be almost as important as having access to an education. Most country's worldwide have made the latter a top priority, so, going forward, I would not be surprised to see the former becoming an increasingly important priority.
Re:"Crumbling, bankrupt mess"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A further comment (Score:5, Insightful)
By listing all sorts of "wouldn't it be nice" ideas and privileges as 'rights'. Rights are the biggies--life, liberty, pursuit of property---not this laundry list crap. Calling it a 'right' is just a cynical ploy to make an entitlement impossible to remove or de-fund at some future date. Deciding whether or not the government should pay for internet access is a normal legislative function, if you don't like it vote for somebody else. Getting rid of a 'right' to free internet access becomes a ridiculously tough struggle, with mindless NGO drones from around the world taking to the streets with the giant puppets, for reasons that are never really clear.
Calling that sort of nonsense a 'right' is the same as calling some 12-year-old building a website with FrontPage wizards a programmer. It cheapens the title for those that really deserve it. Don't let those imbeciles working on various European constitutions fool you, a right is something fundamental and undisputable, not something it would be kinda nifty to have that you don't want later unenlightened politicos to be able to take away. That's just childish, an example of one-man-one-vote-one-time that doesn't deserve to be even taken seriously.
Re:A right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A further comment (Score:3, Insightful)
Greed works, some people get rich, some get poor - they might even be richer than before, but they feel poor by comparison to the rich. Unfortunately, in case of the poor greed becomes jealousy.
They feel cheated, they want to kick the table and start a new deal (speaking in poker terms). Politicians appear who tell them they are right, and that they will change the situation. Well, if they get votes it gets funny, because there is no way to keep the promise - politicians can make the rich poor, but not the other way. Promises can be only kept by raising taxes and this of course only works for a limited amount of time.
It seems that Estonia somehow avoided this problem (they have linear tax!). I am curious why and whether they will have to deal with it in the future.
Re:A further comment (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some of the lesson is that modernization isn't that hard -- it can happen quickly, and democratically (meaning modernization of the masses, not just the elite). Productivity -- even in an underdeveloped nation -- is high enough that a self-investment feedback loop can do incredible things.
I think that's even true in the US, if we spent more of our wealth investing in infrastructure, education, society, etc., instead of wasting it on our petty consumerist tendencies, it would be amazing what we could accomplish. Instead we go to great lengths to fritter our wealth away.
The Internet & free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
What good is the right to free speech if nobody is allowed to listen to you?
This should also be considered in the context of a post-stalinist political sensitivity. Stalin considered typewriters to be weapons of revolution -- he knew that, if the people got together and realized that others had the same idea, the recognition of agreement could cause the people to refuse to act like sheep.
In North American we're spoiled. Access to basic telecommunications is so easy and ubiquituos that we consider it to be a right. The fact that we haven't had to fight for it (yet) doesn't make it any less important.
Consider this: When the Chinese censors tried to cut off access to google, we thought that something was wrong. They weren't cutting access to the net... just one of it's search engines. Similarly, many people were upset when the government effectively shut off Mitnic from access to computers (effectively including The Internet). Many of us are living like the internet is a basic right, but we just haven't declared it so.
How would you feel if, in the midst of 9/11 or some political crisis, the government managed to shut off access to the internet "to prevent panic"? I've been on the inside of political news stories, and I do not trust the news media to report political events in a completely unbiased manner. For me the question is more one of whether or not the bias is in my direction.
The right to free speech requires the right to be heard. The interned allows people to be heard by whomever wants to listen to us. In my world, the right to the Internet is a corrolary of the right to free speech. The Estonian government has simply codified this concept.
Re:What a pile of nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Governments can't give rights. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that rights aren't given by anyone, with the philosophical exception of God. They are merely recognized. Modern governments recognize that people have the right to freely express their opinion, to worship as they choose, to assemble, and so on, because those are intrinsic to being human.
The poster's point is that by adding "and you have a right to running water, and a right to a 40-hour work week, and a right to Internet access, and a right to a refrigerator, and a right to 99-cent cheeseburgers with your Super Club card", governments cheapen the idea that these are fundamental human attributes and reduce them to the level of merely benefits bestowed by the government.
The American model recognizes certain God-given rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution not to create them, but to acknowledge them so that they cannot be infringed. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments acknowledge that the list is not all-inclusive of the entire spectrum of human rights - it merely enumerates some that are so important that they are worth mentioning on their own. For good or ill, of course, the judiciary has identified more rights over the years which are not specifically enumerated, like "privacy". But the theory is that "privacy" is still not considered a government-given right, because there can't be any such thing - it is intrinsic, and simply doesn't happen to be mentioned explicitly in the Constitution.
ASA
Re:Governments can't give rights. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is a "right" and what's not is completly dependent on the currently accepted ethics of the society in whose context this right is debated, and as this can change radically. There is no single, fixed definition, it all has to be agreed upon and fought for, and is highly variable. This process is otherwise known as "civilization." No God involved, it's all done by mere humans.
Re:Question for the americans (and others) (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Obviously Estonian government is not going to give citizens net-access, what they will propably do is to make sure that they have the chance to get a net-access, no matter where they are. Yes it is same thing as with guns. US Government wont buy citizens guns, they just give them the possibility to buy guns.
And my question stands: why is right to internet not valid right whereas right to carry guns is?
Wow there might be hope for the US yet. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not bad for a country that only 10 years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match."
So even thought things might look bad now in the 3rd world that is the USA, with countless homeless people, even more people living the poverty line, California and 5 other states recently bankrupt (failing to meet budget requirements) with a huge national deficit, a shaky international reputation and lack of human rights. Not to mention things are getting worse day by day. Perhaps The sates could use Estonia as a model to help pull them self out of their current slump.
No one in the USSR saw it coming either, a lot of them were laughing at how bad the USA had it, and how lucky they were to be living in the greatest nation on earth.
Guess things are just the same as always, the USA is 15 years or so behind Russia.
Re:Same words, a different time (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, the internet got listed, but the print press didn't. Maybe the print press isn't a right, lets just cancel it. The phone, too. And the radio, they can stream that over the net, right? No sense cluttering up the spectrum, it isn't a right like the internet, is it? Does that make the internet any freer than under a blanket right to free expression? No. Did everything else suffer? You bet. Unless you want to add every technology in use, and add others in as they become cool enough that you think it suddenly hits the threshhold of a 'right', then you are left with a patchwork of mindless drivel. A right to satellite radio? Sirius or XM? Hmm, a toughie. Let's just make a right to both, don't want to guess wrong, though we'll have to use tax money to prop them up if they fail.
You don't have the right to stuff. You just get the right to seek stuff. Resources are limited, and no paper decree will change that, declaring that everyone suddenly should have something won't make it so. All you accomplish is to move resources around, which you could do with a law, or you have a 'right' that isn't being enforced. Me, I prefer that only things that can realistically happen be rights - other can allow me to get stuff if I work for it, others can choose not to kill me, and others can leave me alone, and no-one else is affected or put out. No resources are tied up or forced to be allocated for future use, making them unavailable for others. I'd prefer not to set the precedent of rights getting ignored because they aren't feasible, because the next right to get ignored might be one I'm rather fonder of.
The internet is great, it enables us to do things that we only imagined just a few years ago. But it is only a technology. It doesn't live, or think, or occupy physical space. It could be superseded this time next year by a new technology that we can't even imagine today. But Estonia will still have a right to it on the books. They'll have to put money that could go into education, medicine, the arts, anything they want, into funding access to something that no-one then is even using, because someone thought it would be cool to call cheap access to a once useful communications technology a right. What hubris, to imagine that a mere set of computer codes and hardware standards are the end of science---never to be superseded---a glorious revolutionary thing that everyone everwhere at every time should have access to. Why not a right to 8-track tape, or AM radio, or the telegraph? At the time they were wonderful, but are not obsolete. In time, so too might the internet be.
A assembly of rights should be designed like the best computer program. Every possible outcome should be handled by the fewest lines of the most elegant code, reduced to only the cleanest essentials. Once you start adding in piles of extra pieces that don't belong in the core, exceptions and special circumstances that some marketi^H^H^Hpolitician demanded be included, you get bugs, you get failures, you get bad code. Simple. If you wouldn't run your computer on it, why run your country on it? You want a Constitution by Microsoft?
Me, either.
Re:The Internet & free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
What good is the right to free speech if nobody is allowed to listen to you?
You're talking about two different rights. One is the power to speak and the other the power to listen. Both need to be protected. But you seem to imply a third right, namely the power to coerce people into listening.
I have the right of free speech, you have the right to listen to my free speech. But I do not have the right to compel you to listen. That's tyranny.
The "internet" should not be a right. It would imply the power to coerce others into giving you hardware and connectivity. It's another application of the "tax one group to payoff another" philosophy.
Let them do what they want (Score:2, Insightful)
To me, the situation is simple. The democratically-elected representatives of the Estonian have seen fit to recognise as a fundamental right access to the Internet. So what? Let them recognise whatever rights they want. TO object to a foreign government recognising a right which wouldn't fit into your own country's concept of fundamental human rights is a bit presumptuous, especially when guaranteed access to a further source of de-centralised information is an objectively good thing.
International human rights concepts should be limited to providing a baseline that all human beings are entitled to rely on. If some governments want to go further, so be it.
Re:Governments can't give rights. (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, just to defray side arguments that will generate a bunch of heat, but no appreciable light - we can rephrase this without the use of 'God' and have the statement be just as valid. The point ArsSineArtificio is trying to make is that to call internet access a 'right' muddles the distinction between 'inalienable rights' (to use the phrase from the Declaration of Independence) and 'entitlements'.
So the question is why would two things - both enshrined in a constitution as 'human rights' be different? By defining internet access, medical care, living wages, or anything else which costs money and requires human endevour as a 'human right' no different from free speech and due process, governments set themselves up for a fall.
Let's start by examining a 'traditional human right', the right to free speech. It costs nothing for the government to not throw someone in jail for saying, for instance, "We should make sure that everyone has access to the internet!" You would be hard pressed to find an example of a situation where a government had to spend money to not throw somebody in jail for speaking his mind.
Now let's examine this 'newfangled human right' to have internet access. If internet access is a human right, then Estonia is already in violation of the rights of some two-thirds of its citizens. So through no fault of its own, the government of Estonia is now guilty of human rights abuses, simply because it hasn't shelled out for every citizen to have internet access. What I typically term as a human right is not something which can be directly abridged by natural circumstances. Is Estonia violating its citizens' rights if an EMP knocks out all the switches in the country? Or if a storm destroys too many phone lines?
Entitlements are elements of government policy which are subject to the economic realities of the day. It may, under extreme circumstances, not be possible to provide entitlements. Rights, on the other hand, are inviolable, regardless of budget crises.
If no one makes a distinction between rights and entitlements, then we're in trouble. First, during economic hardships, the government can't provide internet connectivity. In that case they're violating human rights. However, taking them to court does no good because there simply isn't the money to rebuild the system. So the court might then nullify the 'human right' of internet access. Now some citizens blame the government for screwing things up. The folks in power don't want criticism, so they start locking up their detractors. Now the courts, who have just taken away one right, is asked to defend another right. However, since they've just tossed one out, there's nothing to stop them from tossing the second one except their own judgement. By making the distinction between rights and entitlements at the outset, and preventing entitlements from being enshrined as rights, we make the court's decision much simpler. You can take away entitlements due to economic or technical considerations, but you can't take away rights so easily.
Now if they were saying that this service could not be denied to any citizen who had the means to purchase internet access, this is a gift horse of a different color. It would prohibit the government (and thereby lawyers for the RIAA et al) from disconnecting the internet access of its citizens. This would be an enviable right, and one possibly worthy of addition to the pantheon of Western-style 'Fundamental Human Rights'.
The article is far from clear on this subject.
Not the internet, but facets thereof (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, free speech as it occurs online, the free exchange of information, those, like many nifty things, ought to be protected, but there's a difference between protecting them and declaring them rights.(see all the junk necessary that must be provided to prevent appearing to "obstruct those rights").
*honk*
Re:A further comment (Score:2, Insightful)