Is Internet Access A Human Right

So say four out of five adults of the 27,000 interviewed in 26 countries by the BBC

Personally, I was dumbfounded to read that the BBC even carried out a survey of this kind…But then it and its government have their own agenda…I just think the topic itself is rather stupid and arrogant…

I wonder what kind of loaded questions were asked to bring about these results especially in third world countries like Nigeria and Ghana?

Questions like this perhaps: “Listen, you idiot…We are a politically correct organization and we need politically correct answers…If you don’t answer correctly, we’ll send you off to Gitmo and you’ll never be heard of again…So, is internet access a fundamental right?”

Oops! I made a mistake…Maybe the questions weren’t loaded but the sample was…27,000 educated middle class people around the world were asked if internet access should be a fundamental right…So, that’s a majority of the affluent middle class then, not the majority of the roughly 7 billion people who live on this planet most of whom live below the poverty line…

As far as I see it, internet access is not a fundamental right and cannot be placed next to free speech and liberty…Although free speech is a fundamental right and the internet helps publish that speech, I feel the dissemination of ideas need not be a basic human right…If access to internet is a basic human right, then shouldn’t access to a telephone, TV, newspaper and radio also be? Why have these things been forgotten?

None of this matters unless governments enforce the right to food, shelter and education…Just think about it, what would a poor illiterate malnourished person living in a drought ridden village in Maharashtra do with internet access?

Calling internet access a fundamental right diminishes other more important rights needed for survival…

Just For Your Information
France’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, has ruled that the internet is a fundamental right…It was ruling on legislation against pirates stealing copyrighted music, videos etc. from the net… This is what the Council had to say: ‘The internet is a fundamental human right that cannot be taken away by anything other than a court of law, only when guilt has been established there.’


In October 2009, Finland became the first country to pass a law that makes broadband access a legal right for Finnish citizens…When the law goes into effect in July 2010, every person in the country, which has a population of around 5.3 million, will have the legal right to a one-megabit broadband connection…By 2015, this legal right will extend to 100 MB broadband connection