I seem to have difficulty shouting over the voices in some other peoples heads.
No, I am not taking or trying to take the internet away from anyone. On the contrary, I think that restricting human rights to freedom of speech and ‘the internet’ but excluding all other forms of communication allows all sorts of wriggle room for dodgy practices. What is ‘access to the internet’? You have the right to submit packets, or the right to subscribe to a service, or the right to join a particular forum? Individual forums or services currently reserve the right to ban particular nuisance members, and this keeps some sort of check on the trolls. But if all the service providers shared their records, and an incorrect political opinion got you and your family banned from all of them forever, then that would clearly be an issue, and I would argue it would be a human rights issue. But we know this without having a precise definition of ‘access to the internet’.
At this point, another set of voices starts yelling ‘you mean I have to buy a computer and pay for the internet connections for everyone who hasn’t got them because it is their right to troll me?’. No, again. No-one should open your post and censor your letters, but I don’t have to lend you a stamp. We should have freedom of speech, but we do not have to give the Wesbro Parish Church the address of the local gays. And so on. Again, all without having a precise definition of ‘access to the internet’.
No, I don’t have a Magic Box ™ that tells me what is right and wrong. I suspect you don’t have one ether. Most of the cases are pretty obvious, and the rest of the time we wing it. Humans do that, and its okay. Adding a $1000/hour lawyer does not always make things better.
