Finland is the world’s first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access.
I’ve mused on this issue before. See my previous post Is the internet an essential service?
It certainly raises issues around the re-write of Section 92A of the Copyright Act if termination of ISP connections remains included as a remedy for prolonged copyright theft.
This is interesting also in the wake of the French Constitutional challenge to having termination embedded in its copyright legislation, on the grounds that access to the internet is a human right. I understand the law has been re-worded but still contains suspension of internet access as an option.
The National Government’s re-write of Section 92A is due for release shortly. It’ll be interesting to see whether termination is still in the mix.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have guaranteed broadband access!
With satellite, cellular and the government’s rural fibre build to commence soon most of New Zealand will soon have access to broadband – so in that sense NZ too could “guarantee” Broadband access today. There is also the fact that some people just don’t want broadband – hard to believe I know – but there you are – something about a lifestyle free from email or phones
Just to preempt a response I’ve read about this, this doesn’t require people to have internet obviously but it’s like the right to legal council, the right to property, and so if you choose to have it no one can take it away.
The internet is part of modern free speech (it’s the mechanism that I use to talk to tens of thousands of NZers on mailing lists) and I read about New Zealand’s laws using it, contact friends, do my job, and so on.
More than that, termination doesn’t target individuals – it blames groups of people for the actions of one. We don’t cut off a family’s power supply if one person uses it to play music too loud. We don’t cut off a family’s post service if one person uses it to break the law. Yet the internet is a shared resource by many people.
There was a recent motion in UK parliament that recognised this. Here’s the quote: “disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection; acknowledges that illicit file-sharing only costs rights-holders money when people download infringing content in preference to buying it; further notes that identifying offenders using the Internet Protocol address of a specific machine may punish those who share a web connection” (source: http://j.mp/shCsS )
Terminating internet (or “suspending” as it seems it might be called) is an unfair and disproportionate punishment. So much of copying involves what people do in their private homes, on private internet connections, and persuading people to change their behaviour is a public-relations issue that can only be won with publicly respectable copyright law. P2P torrents were not designed to be private or secret, and termination laws risk causing a technology arms-race that will drive this underground. We’ll lose the visibility of file sharing on the internet if we get draconian punishments like termination.
A termination law will look more and more shortsighted in the decades to come, and it will inevitably harm many people for the actions of one person.
Good to hear your positive thoughts about internet access Clare
Finland.. they also have universal healthcare that includes dental,
free public day care and free public education at all levels…..
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