Friday, September 30, 2005
[TPRC] The Right to Communicate and the Freedom to Connect
At TPRC last weekend, I met Carolyn Cunningham, a PhD student at UT Austin and author of "The Right to Communicate: Democracy and the Digital Divide," which includes a survey of the Right to Communicate. Cunningham traces the Right to Communicate back to (John) Locke's notion of Natural Rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Just as the Right to Privacy is not explicit in the U.S. Constitution, neither is the Right to Communicate in the Universal Declaration. And just as the Right to Privacy is established by at least five of the U.S. Constitution's first ten amendments (first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth), so, says Cunningham, is the Right to Communicate strongly implied by Articles 19, 27 and others. However, case law and scholarly thinking around the Universal Declaration, a much newer document, is not nearly as deep, hence the Right to Communicate is not nearly as well-established.
The Right to Communicate is still being actively defined. Cunningham sent me several links to currently active Right to Communicate advocates, including CRIS: Communication Rights in Information Society and The World Forum on Communication Rights.
Is The Right to Communicate the same thing as Freedom to Connect? I'm thinking about it, and I'm still learning, but my gut says that the Freedom to Connect is much more narrowly defined. The stuff I've read on The Right to Communicate does not seem to draw a distinction between the physical layer and content. CRIS seems to lump pipe and pageant, connection and culture, wire and writings, antenna and art, together under the Right to Communicate.
Lumping layers can lead to trouble, and it apparently has; an abstract on Women's Human Rights: Violence Against Women, Pornography and ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) asks some very difficult questions. The URL for the full text behind the abstract, however, leads to "Error/Kernel (20) Module Not Found" (as of 9/30/05). I can only imagine the disputes behind this. Layers have their purpose.
So for now, I will read the Right to Communicate literature with great interest. But my assumption, until proven otherwise, is that the Right to Communicate is only loosely joined to, and far less prescriptive than, the Freedom to Connect.
Just as the Right to Privacy is not explicit in the U.S. Constitution, neither is the Right to Communicate in the Universal Declaration. And just as the Right to Privacy is established by at least five of the U.S. Constitution's first ten amendments (first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth), so, says Cunningham, is the Right to Communicate strongly implied by Articles 19, 27 and others. However, case law and scholarly thinking around the Universal Declaration, a much newer document, is not nearly as deep, hence the Right to Communicate is not nearly as well-established.
The Right to Communicate is still being actively defined. Cunningham sent me several links to currently active Right to Communicate advocates, including CRIS: Communication Rights in Information Society and The World Forum on Communication Rights.
Is The Right to Communicate the same thing as Freedom to Connect? I'm thinking about it, and I'm still learning, but my gut says that the Freedom to Connect is much more narrowly defined. The stuff I've read on The Right to Communicate does not seem to draw a distinction between the physical layer and content. CRIS seems to lump pipe and pageant, connection and culture, wire and writings, antenna and art, together under the Right to Communicate.
Lumping layers can lead to trouble, and it apparently has; an abstract on Women's Human Rights: Violence Against Women, Pornography and ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) asks some very difficult questions. The URL for the full text behind the abstract, however, leads to "Error/Kernel (20) Module Not Found" (as of 9/30/05). I can only imagine the disputes behind this. Layers have their purpose.
So for now, I will read the Right to Communicate literature with great interest. But my assumption, until proven otherwise, is that the Right to Communicate is only loosely joined to, and far less prescriptive than, the Freedom to Connect.
Technorati Tags: F2C, Right2Communicate, TPRC
Comments:
Interesting.
What follows is a peripheral question, and bit off topic. Hhow about the right to sell one's *ability and need* to communicate to whomever one chooses? Call this "ability and need to communicate" one's "communicative assets". Do I have a right to sell my communicative assets to anyone I want?
The *absolute* right to communiicate has always been constrained by limiting either basic communication (e.g. political oppression), or limiting access to communicative tools (e.g. communication infrastructure pricing models).
As technology continues to enable the ability to communicate, the desire to communicate increases. Demand creates up a market that's tapped by those who provide the means to communicate.
The current scenario permits only a few entities to create those means. For instance, many American states have outlawed the ability of a municipality to purchase and leverage its own citizen's communicative assets. communicative assets.
So, if it turns out that one has an absolute right to communicate, it's clear that the current scenario limits the means to communicate in certain ways (via pricing models), and certainly forbids the right of a communicator to sell communicative assets to anyone who is willing to provide a market to buy them
What follows is a peripheral question, and bit off topic. Hhow about the right to sell one's *ability and need* to communicate to whomever one chooses? Call this "ability and need to communicate" one's "communicative assets". Do I have a right to sell my communicative assets to anyone I want?
The *absolute* right to communiicate has always been constrained by limiting either basic communication (e.g. political oppression), or limiting access to communicative tools (e.g. communication infrastructure pricing models).
As technology continues to enable the ability to communicate, the desire to communicate increases. Demand creates up a market that's tapped by those who provide the means to communicate.
The current scenario permits only a few entities to create those means. For instance, many American states have outlawed the ability of a municipality to purchase and leverage its own citizen's communicative assets. communicative assets.
So, if it turns out that one has an absolute right to communicate, it's clear that the current scenario limits the means to communicate in certain ways (via pricing models), and certainly forbids the right of a communicator to sell communicative assets to anyone who is willing to provide a market to buy them
Looks like a typo on the url, a space before the HTTP, and the publsihing software decided to put the http://www.cirsinfo.org in front of it.
http://www.crisinfo.org/%20http:/www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=r&x=91654
The real working URL is http:/www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=r&x=91654.
That points to a PDF file to download and read.
http://www.crisinfo.org/%20http:/www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=r&x=91654
The real working URL is http:/www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=r&x=91654.
That points to a PDF file to download and read.
Nobody ever talks about the "right of not communicate".
That applies for example in the case of spam, where somebody (many)wants to communicate things that I AM NOT INTERESTED to know.
Who protects the one who doesn't want to?
The right to communicate, as the freedom to connect always means that for one who has the right to there must be another one who has the chioce to or not to.
Who protects the choice?
Patrizia
That applies for example in the case of spam, where somebody (many)wants to communicate things that I AM NOT INTERESTED to know.
Who protects the one who doesn't want to?
The right to communicate, as the freedom to connect always means that for one who has the right to there must be another one who has the chioce to or not to.
Who protects the choice?
Patrizia
One only need take a look at the literacy rates and number of printed publications of the U.S. during the late 18th and early 19th centuries to see that Americans greatly valued and exercised their right to communicate during the years in which the constitution was framed. The U.S. postal service was intentionally designed to provide equal access to all citizens by standardizing postage. By thinking of modern telecom as something superfluous to daily life we have failed to follow cultural precedent.
A fairly solid case could be made that the framers intended the Constitution to reflect a "right to communicate." It would seem to me that freedom of speech is only legitimated by a "freedom to listen." When corporations fail to provide (at an accessible cost) services related to not only "listening" but "listening equally" (i.e. dialup vs. broadband)it would seem that it becomes the right and responsiblity of the government to correct the imbalance, something becoming increasingly difficult with the proliferation of muni-wireless bans.
On a fundamental level participation in a republic requires that all citizens have access to the same information in reasonably similar ways. The reason presidents build presidential libraries is because it was once considered the height of civic duty to contribute to the equitable distribution of information, and no monument could better represent a civic leader. Why today is it considered normal to refuse provision of information services in the name of profit?
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A fairly solid case could be made that the framers intended the Constitution to reflect a "right to communicate." It would seem to me that freedom of speech is only legitimated by a "freedom to listen." When corporations fail to provide (at an accessible cost) services related to not only "listening" but "listening equally" (i.e. dialup vs. broadband)it would seem that it becomes the right and responsiblity of the government to correct the imbalance, something becoming increasingly difficult with the proliferation of muni-wireless bans.
On a fundamental level participation in a republic requires that all citizens have access to the same information in reasonably similar ways. The reason presidents build presidential libraries is because it was once considered the height of civic duty to contribute to the equitable distribution of information, and no monument could better represent a civic leader. Why today is it considered normal to refuse provision of information services in the name of profit?
