Human right to internet access?

Yesterday I went to the CUTEC conference here in Cambridge which provided a forum for encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. One of the major themes this year was around social responsibility and empowering individuals - big aims for a room of techies and ambitious PhD students.

In particular cloud computing was very much viewed as the way forward and the democratisation of information and accessibility to services - resulting, for example, in the wife of one panelist being able to get real time advice on breast feeding at 4am from other mothers via her iPhone.

In this context I was interested to see that the French courts have refused to uphold a new law allowing officials to cut off the internet connection of persistent online infringers. The Constitutional Court held that only a court could do that - on the basis that access to online services is a human right.

That's the first time I've heard of internet access being referred to as a human right, and I question whether an English court would reach the same view - and clearly on one level it's not in the same league as the rights to life, to freedom of thought and religious beliefs.

But there were many inspirational (as well as aspirational) stories at the CUTEC conference about precisely this issue - that internet and mobile technologies do change lives and communities; that widespread access to and democratisation of services could be the catalyst for social change and improvement in developing nations.

I suspect there's a fundamental tension here between the increasing attempts to regulate the online world (with admitedly varying degrees of success) and the desire to fully exploit its potential and enable people all over the world participate in the online revolution.

Comments

[Bob]

Wow! In France Internet access is a human right but in our country healthcare isn't. I would assume that healthcare must also be a human right in France, unless internet access is more important than healthcare.

[Geeklawyer]

Internet access as a human right is a meme I was propagating for some time: if you think of it in terms of facilitating democratic debate, freedom of association speech etc etc, it isn't such a stretch; it's a related concept.

I think that you are right that a UK court, c.f. a continental court, would find it a harder sell (ours being notoriously skeptical of Human Rights) but not an impossible one.

Also it is wrong to consider that it is a rights issue that would be ranked in precedence terms over or under related human rights: the jurisprudential approach when presented with conflicting HR argument is a 'balancing exercise' not a ranking one; see, e.g., Otto-Preminger Institut v Austria.

[TWBrit]

I think this might actually happen here, it's only a short matter of time before 4G is available and when this happens we really will be able to run our lives alongside real time web connectivity.
The thing that persistently stuns me is the incredibly short period of time that this level of technology has been available in it's present form and yet it's proliferation in modern culture and in every walk of life has been astounding.
At then end of the day we really are still only at the beginning, so yes, it probably will become a human right.
I also agree, Britain will recognize it after the rest of the world does.