[Freedombox-discuss] freedombox as a human right

Markus Sabadello markus.sabadello at gmail.com
Wed Jun 6 18:45:18 UTC 2012


Note this U.N. report:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf

It was mentioned several times during the recent RightsCon in Rio, which
had a few very interesting panels on the intersection of human rights and
Internet.

When the report came out, many articles commented that "The U.N. declared
Internet access a human right".
But what the report actually says is that the Internet can be a key enabler
for some human rights, i.e. privacy (UDHR article 12) and freedom of
expression (UDHR article 19), not that there is a right to Internet access
itself.

So I believe a human rights scholar would say similar things about the
FreedomBox or related technologies, or about the ability to run your own
web server.

Note that even if something is considered a human right, it doesn't mean
that it is absolute. Some (not all) human rights can be restricted under
certain conditions (e.g. national security, or when other people's rights
are being violated)

The fact that some states have implemented a right to (broadband) Internet
is of course to be applauded. :)

I have a paper<http://projectdanube.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Human-Rights-in-the-Information-Society.pdf>about
human rights and Internet, in case someone is interested..

Markus
-- 
Project Danube: http://projectdanube.org
Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium: http://personaldataecosystem.org/


On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho at gmail.com>wrote:

> Given that broadband access has been started to be suggested as a basic
> human right, such as access to clean drinking water
>
> I wonder if privacy enhanced solutions such as freedom box should be also
> pitched as a basic human right?
>
> If so, what should be a first goal?
>
> Perhaps the ability for everyone to easily run a web server, on their own
> hardware, and keep the logs?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/attachments/20120606/d6dd7cb9/attachment.html>


More information about the Freedombox-discuss mailing list