One nation, online The push to make broadband access a civil right
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | June 20, 2010
If you're one of the millions of Americans who use broadband Internet at home, you probably take for granted how deeply it's woven into your life. It has transformed the way we pay our bills, seek romance, procrastinate, and keep abreast of politics and the lives of friends. The pre-Google era has become a distant, hazy memory.
If anything, many of us often half-wish we could escape the Internet's clutches. The constant connectivity can be a shackle as much as a convenience. Our habits have even triggered a serious debate about whether all that clicking and toggling is warping our brains.
But as the Internet grows more and more important to modern life, some are now asking a different kind of question: Should broadband access be a civil right?
It may seem strange to put the technology that brought us Facebook in the august category where we place voting, or trial by jury. But increasingly, activists, analysts, and government officials are arguing that Internet access has become so essential to participation in society - to finding jobs and housing, to civic engagement, even to health - that it should be seen as a right, a basic prerogative of all citizens. And in cases where people don't have access, whether because they can't afford it or the infrastructure is not in place, the government should have the power - and perhaps the duty - to fix that.
The idea is already gaining traction both overseas and in the United States. In 2009, Finland passed a law requiring telecom companies, as of next month, to make broadband available to all citizens, even in remote areas. UN conferences have featured discussion of an international "Internet Bill of Rights" that would include the right to affordable access; a Pew survey of attendees at the 2007 UN Internet Governance Forum in Rio found that a majority of the respondents supported the idea of such a bill. And the notion is not confined to the progressive spheres of Europe and the UN: In Washington, at least two of the five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn, have said that broadband needs to be seen as a civil right.
As Internet use becomes ever more widespread, advocates say, it becomes an indispensable venue for activities like speech and political participation. More and more government functions are gravitating online; a vast and growing segment of social and cultural life now unfolds on the Web. The Internet, these advocates argue, has not only created a new world, its prevalence has also made it a prerequisite for full membership in the old one.
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