That is already happening with fibre rollout. The Labour BBC fund was specifically aimed at these organisations – particularly central and local government and large health and educational institutions (incidentally at which the students are benefiting). Again the Labour BIF requirements would have met the same criteria.

Such early adopters are willing to sign up because they are prepared to pay the up front costs on higher initial monthly fees to get started. The fibre backbone created can then be used to push out to other groups that have lower price thresholds until over time (the less the better) we have adoption by all.

It is also government/business (mainly the latter) that will drive the applications that general users will use. And it will be content that drives uptake. If there is none, then why would you use fibre. And I do not buy that greater speed in itself will be enough. That speed will drive content and if that content does not come then FTTH will be of next to no added value.

So I do not see it as a business subsidy and neither did the last Labour government or the current National government.

As for the BRT, it is largely an irrelevant organisation these days. It’s day has gone.

Lawrence Miller, the only legitimate rights were the ones that the American founding fathers fought for (ideologically) that lead to the 4th of July independence.

F.F., got to agree with JP here: I mean, have any peoples or countries around the world actually adopted the US founding forefathers views as the only true values and principles?

I don’t think any have.

That tells me that its a very US-cultural centric view which a some espouse but not the rest of the world.

But putting that aside for a moment, I don’t see how the “only” legitimate rights are those in the Declaration of Independence. Many countries, including New Zealand, have their own unique rights tradition that are both legitimate and worthy of inquiry.

Your example of the suggestion there should be restrictions on who can walk down the road, is irrelevant and has got nothing to do with rights. Roads are publicly owned. Internet/telecommunication companies are privately owned. It is wrong to dictate to a private company to give access to others simply because of the misguided notion that they have a (bogus) right to get access to the internet. Do you see the difference? It is something (legitimate rights) that the US founding fathers realized long time ago.

http://bit.ly/aHwOcS

If I am correct then Clare’s call for ‘Open ‘ Access becomes more important, especially when one considers that some major information sources are now tailored more for the mobile data world than the browser based one

Do we suggest there should be restrictions on who can walk down the road?

And it should be free (ie publicly funded), but I hold out little hope for that as a future outcome.

Falafulu Fisi: please don’t re-judge my talk without actually hearing it, or reading my paper. I critique notions of Internet rights-talk founded on abstract notions of natural human rights. As Thomas points out, I draw connections between the idea and concrete legislative and quasi-constitutional documents here in New Zealand.

I object to the idea of labs of computers where students are taught computing as part of their normal day. The computer is a tool and should be used as such unless students chose to study them. The use of computers in the classroom today feels like having a class about a hammer. Instead, a hammer is used as a tool in other subjects (science when talking about magnetism, wordwork etc.)

Back to the point though – I think Peter Harrison is onto something. If access can be guaranteed in the form of public access (and hopefully without the terrible filtering of words that American libraries employed) then perhaps Internet can become a right within this country.

I still have reservations about the way that data is charged for in this country. I’ve said it before – the term “datacap” is used as a shortened form for data capture anywhere but NZ. Until we can get access that is on par with the rest of the world, I really don’t see that declaring Internet as a public right is practical.