As the Egyptian revolution played out, and especially after the government effectively killed the internet in Egypt between January 27 and February 2, we’ve had an ongoing conversation around the office about whether or not internet access should be considered a human right. These freewheeling discussions are one of the things I love most about working at EchoDitto, and, as usual, this one sparked all kinds of new ideas and ways of thinking about the issue.

We somewhat inevitably ended up dividing the generic idea of human rights into two categories - “fundamental” rights, like air, water, food, and shelter, and “governmental” rights like those of speech, assembly, and political representation. Both types are important, but it’s hard to think of the internet as on par with clean drinking water, especially when vast parts of the world remain offline, limited by economics or infrastructure.

My colleague Juan Gonzalez put it this way;

There is no internet in the natural wild, just as there isn't electricity, or cars. How can these be "rights"? Rights cannot be invented -- they exist in nature when there is no government. You temporarily cede your natural rights to a government in the expectations of certain services and support. Access to the internet isn't so much a right as it is an expectation for the many other natural rights you give up to live in civilized society.

To which Jeremy John responded;

We do recognize that heat in the winter is a human right. It is illegal to shut off someone's heat during the winter, even if they haven't paid.

But the question is not one of entitlement, it's a bit more subtle. We can't be entitled to free use of infrastructure, but I do believe we have the right, where the infrastructure already exists, to be allowed to buy it at a reasonable price.

We also recognize education as a human right. Internet access is a precursor to education, it allows people to self-educate.

And Madeleine Perry continued;

On the one hand I think the right to free speech is an important one, and I see that as being primary in this discussion about the right to communication. But on the other hand, the internet is not equivalent to printing and distributing your own writings in, say, a brochure or pamphlet.

But why isn't it? Because you have to pay for it. It's an infrastructure, that, as Jeremy said, we should have the right to buy at a reasonable price.

So, then, what to do with the question of those people who do have access to it? Does it become a right when you have paid for the service? Is the dividing line between a right and a service whether or not you have the infrastructure available to access that service? And, therefore, does having access to the infrastructure give you a fundamental right to the service?

We have a widely (though not universally) accepted right to freedom of communication, be it in our homes or across continents, and in the digital age that communication involves the internet. Internet access isn't on the same plane with rights to personal safety, food, or water, but it is one way that people can assure their rights to those more fundamental things aren't being infringed, and if they are, it's one extremely powerful broadcaster for telling the world about it.

The creators of the United National grappled with issues like this in the post-World War II era, and the result of their philosophical struggles was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The document was often shockingly ahead of its time. Article 16 proclaims that “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family” - that was fairly radical in an age when anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books in 29 US states.

Similarly, on the issue of freedom of speech, Article 19 states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The media in 1948 was just barely expanding to include television, yet Article 19 applies as well to Google today as it did to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Communication through the internet is important for human knowledge and freedom, but no one would argue that all content on the internet is good for the world. However, the question is not whether or not we like what people are saying, but whether they are allowed to say it, and others are allowed to access it.

In a Washington Post piece on the Egyptian internet shutdown, reporter Monica Hesse made the distinction between the internet as content and the internet as medium. “It's not the loss of Flickr pages and Tumblogs and Sad Keanus that constitutes human rights abuse.” she wrote, “...the chilling aspect of an Internet clampdown is the assumption that lies behind it: If you will not let your people tweet, what else will you not let them do?”

Governments that support the right to free internet access don’t necessarily like everything that access provides (see our own government and Wikileaks) - but there is a sharp line between that and shutting down the internet as a whole.