Finland First Country To Make High-Speed Internet A Human Right

By JacobSloan on July 7, 2010 in News 9

Finland has a passed a law requiring that major internet providers provide one-megabit internet connections for all households (at whatever price each household can afford, it seems). That said, 96% of the Finnish population already has consistent internet access…so the point of this law is more just to flaunt how great life in Finland is. BBC News writes:

From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection. Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.

The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.

Speaking to the BBC, Finland’s communication minister Suvi Linden explained the thinking behind the legislation: “We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life. Internet services are no longer just for entertainment.

“Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access,” she said. It is believed up to 96% of the population are already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply with the law.

Finland, Human Rights, Internet, Law, Society, Technology

tonyviner

That's terrific, yet we are still stuck in the fucking Dark Ages. Scandinavia sounds more appealing every day. Their women are better looking (and in a lot of cases speak better English than some of the goofy hos we have here), there music is ten times better than anything on our pubic airwaves. Their prisons are humane (almost to a fault), they understand basic human rights such as health care, and now Internet. Here we are still struggling to allow blacks to vote. Greatest nation in the world my ass.
- Adf
  
  but… Internet isn’t a basic human right. I mean everyone should ideally have access to it. But to say that the internet is a basic human right is just asinine. Health care? while ideal to be available, these things aren’t basic human rights!!! I don’t even why I read the comments on this damn site.
EcstasyOfApostasy

FUCK YEAH, FINLAND! Everything about Finland is more awesome that the US. For example, their version of Barney the Dinosaur is a fucking heavy metal band (go google Hevisaurus).

The only think that sucks is people like to kill themselves a lot there, but the severe lack of sunlight in the winter months can do that to you.
Cerebralcaustic

“socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a ‘new freedom’.
Socialism was to bring ‘economic freedom’ without which
political freedom was ‘not worth having’.

To make this argument sound plausible, the word ‘freedom’
was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power
of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity,
release from the compulsion of the circumstances which
inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us. Freedom in this
sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth. The
demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the
old demand for a redistribution of wealth.”

Fredrich Hayek, “The Road to Serfdom” (abridged edition, 1945)

http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43p…
- Hadrian999
  
  without wealth or power you aren't free at all.
  without wealth or power you can be compelled by the wealthy or powerful.
  today slavers don't need chains or guns they compel servitude with high housing costs
  and low wages, being a paycheck away from destitution effectively renders people into serfs by another name.I'm no socialist but if you think there can be any freedom without economic freedom you are kidding yourself.
Alech

1Mbit being described as “high-speed” did make me chuckle.
- jacobsloan
  
  A reasonable reaction, but the 1mbps figure is just the starting point…by the year 2015 the minimum requirement will be up to 100mbps.
jacobsloan

A reasonable reaction, but the 1mbps figure is just the starting point…by the year 2015 the minimum requirement will be up to 100mbps.
Adf

but… Internet isn’t a basic human right. I mean everyone should ideally have access to it. But to say that the internet is a basic human right is just asinine. Health care? while ideal to be available, these things aren’t basic human rights!!! I don’t even why I read the comments on this damn site.