Government shouldn’t interfere with the internet economy  It almost never ends well when governments interfere with the internet economy. The graduated response policy against the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted content is one example: it violates the same principles as a filter against child sex abuse material, but it also doesn’t succeed in its’ goal of helping content businesses innovate their business models, which is why France is considering discontinuing it. [1] Also, other businesses are slowly replacing the old fashioned music-industry, showing that companies on the internet are fully able to survive and thrive by offering copyrighted content online. [2]  When governments do become active in the internet economy, they’re likely to run very high risks. IT projects are very likely to fail, run over budget and time, [3] especially when it concerns governments. [4] This means that governments shouldn’t be ‘going digital’ anytime soon, as the data governments handle is too sensitive. The case of digital signatures is a good example: when the provider of digital signatures for tax and business purposes, DigiNotar, was hacked, it not only comprised the security of Dutch-Iranian citizens, [5] but also hampered government communications. [6]  [1] ‘French anti-p2p agency Hadopi likely to get shut down’. 2012.  [2] Knopper, ‘The New Economics of the Music Industry’. 2011.  [3] Budzier and Flyvbjerg, ‘Why your IT project may be riskier than you think’. 2011.  [4] ‘Government IT Projects: How often is succes even an option?’. 2011.  [5] ‘Fake DigiNotar web certificate risk to Iranians’, 2011.  [6] ‘Dutch government unprepared for SSL hack, report says’, 2012.


e internet freedom politics government digital freedoms freedom

Internet regulation isn’t an effective and legitimate means to create a safe internet  Setting up CERTs aren’t an effective means to create a safer internet, because most of the threats are a result of ‘social engineering’, which means that hackers use social cues to con people into believing frauds. People usually fall for this because of their own gullibility and naïveté, like in Nigerian email scams. [1] The most effective means of combating these threats is to educate citizens directly, the FBI already does this with Nigerian email scams. [2] People and corporations are primarily responsible for their own actions, which includes taking care of their own internet security by obtaining anti-virus software, and which also includes corporations making sure their websites are safe to use or else face liability charges if they turn out not to be.  Moreover, CERTs are illegitimate. They are illegitimate because they facilitate the sharing of information on specific persons across private and public organizations and because they are hard to control democratically. For example: the US-CERT is an agency residing under the department of Homeland Security. Through the sharing of information with private parties, these private parties, unwittingly, run the risk of becoming one of the government’s watch dogs. Moreover, this sharing of information is hard to control democratically: much of the information could be classified as secret, which means that citizens have no way of verifying whether public and private organizations are complying with data sharing regulations.  [1] Plumer, ‘Why Nigerian email scams are so crude and obvious’. 2012.  [2] FBI, ‘Nigerian letter or “419” fraud’.


Internet governance is necessary to combat heinous crimes committed via the internet  The internet is a means of communication – therefore also a means of communication between criminals. And because it is global it creates global crime problems that need coordinated responses. One type of crime that has particularly become a problem on the internet is child sexual abuse material: the internet allows for an easy and anonymous distribution method which can even be secured by modern encryption methods. [1]  Governments can help fight this by requiring ISPs and mobile companies to track people’s internet histories, hand over data when requested, and allow police to get information from them without a search warrant, something which has been proposed by the Canadian government. [2] In Australia, the government even proposed mandatory filtering of all internet traffic by ISPs to automatically filter out all child sexual abuse material. [3]  Admittedly, these measures seem drastic – but in cases like these, or similar cases like terrorism, the harm prevented is more important.  [1] ‘Child Pornography on the Rise, Justice Department Reports’. 2010.  [2] ‘Current laws not focused enough to combat child porn online’. 2012.  [3] Mcmenamin, Bernadette, ‘Filters needed to battle child porn’. 2008.


Internet regulation is necessary to ensure a working economy on the internet  As seen above, the internet has enabled many types of criminal behavior. But it has also enabled normal citizens to share files. Music, movie and game producers have difficulty operating in a market where their products get pirated immediately after release and spread for free instantaneously on a massive scale. The internet enables violation of their right of ownership, gained through providing the hard work of creating a work of art, on a massive scale. Since it’s impractical to sue and fine each and every downloader, a more effective and less invasive policy would be government requiring Internet Service Providers to implement a graduated response policy, which has ISPs automatically monitor all internet traffic and fine their users when they engage in copyright violation. Something along these lines has already been tried in France, called HADOPI, which has succeeded in decreasing the downloading of unauthorized content. [1]  Apart from this, governments also need to think about how to translate everyday offline activities onto the internet. For example, when you file your tax report offline, you would sign it with your handwritten signature. The online variant would be a digital signature. [2] Developing and deploying a digital signature would enable citizens and corporations to do business, file their tax reports and pay their taxes online.  [1] Crumley, ‘Why France’s Socialists Won’t Kill Sarkozy’s Internet Piracy Law’, 2012  [2] Wikipedia, ‘Digital Signatures’, 2012.


Internet regulation is necessary to ensure a safe internet  Citizens, corporations, and public organizations face several security threats when online: critical infrastructure systems can be hacked, like the energy transport system, [1] citizens can fall victim to identity theft, [2] and phishing, [3] whereby hackers gain access to bank accounts or other sensitive information. Specifically, it seems that the public sector is attacked the most. [4]  In response to cyber-threats like these, many governments have set up Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), Incident Response and Security Teams (IRTs), or Computer Security and Incident Response Teams (CSIRT; the fact that we haven’t settled on a fitting acronym yet shows how much it is still a novel phenomenon): agencies that warn citizens and organizations alike when a new threat emerges and provides a platform for (the exchange of) expertise in methods of preventing cyber-threats and exchanging information on possible perpetrators of such threats. Oftentimes, these (inter)governmental agencies provide a place where private CSIRTs can also cooperate and exchange information. [5]  These agencies provide a similar function online as the regular police provides offline: by sharing information and warnings against threats, they create a safer world.  [1] ‘At Risk: Hacking Critical Infrastructure’. 2012.  [2] ‘Identity theft on the rise’. 2010.  [3] ‘Phishing websites reach all-time high’. 2012.  [4] ‘Public sector most targeted by cyber attacks’. 2012.  [5] see for example the About Us page of the US-CERT or the About the NCSC page of the Dutch CERT


Battling hideous crimes shouldn’t lead us to draconian and ineffective policies  Everyone is against child sexual abuse material. But in their drive to battle it, governments might go too far. For example, granting the police the right to search without (full) warrant is a harm to citizens’ basic right to privacy and freedom from unwarranted government surveillance. [1]  The automatic internet filtering and data retention are possibly an even worse infringement on basic civil liberties: it designates all internet traffic and therefore all internet using citizens as suspect, even before a crime has been committed. This overturns the important principle that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.  Moreover, instead of the police and prosecution changing their behavior, internet filters hardwire these new assumptions into the architecture of the internet itself. [2] This means it is more all-pervasive and less noticeable, thus constituting an even worse violation.  These draconian measures might even seem worth it, until you realise they don’t work: blocking and filtering technology makes mistakes and can be circumvented easily. [3]  [1] ‘Online surveillance bill critics are siding with ‘child pornographers’: Vic Toews’. 2012.  [2] Lessig, ‘Code is Law’. 2000.  [3] ‘Why government internet filtering won’t work’. 2008.


p ip internet digital freedoms access information house believes google

This doesn’t enhance Google’s business proposition at all  Google already censors results all across the globe. It has been censoring digital piracy-related content since early 2011, but this hasn’t led to users abandoning Google for another search engine. [1] It has been leaving a backdoor open for the US Government, but this also hasn’t sent either users or employers packing. [2] Why should the small extra step of censoring according to China’s laws do so?  [1] Sara Yin, Pcmag, ‘Google Censors Piracy-Related Terms from Search Tools’, January 27, 2011. URL:   [2] Bruce Schneier, CNN, ‘U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google’, January 23, 2010. URL


Not censoring helps Google’s business proposition and corporate identity  Google’s corporate motto is ‘don’t be evil’. This is partly an issue of corporate identity, and partly a clever business proposition. In both cases, complying with Chinese censorship rules damages Google as a company.  The key to Google’s dominance in the search market is that users know Google will always deliver the search results most relevant to them. By adhering to censorship laws, users will trust the relevance of Google’s search results less, which hence erodes Google’s business position as users will be more likely to try alternative search engines. [1]  [1] Rebecca Blood, ‘Google's China decision is pragmatic, not idealistic’, January 2010. URL:


China won’t budge that easily  China has already faced trade sanctions for its human rights abuses for years, in particular there are bans on arms sales by the European Union that are still in place more than twenty years after the Tiananmen Square massacre that precipitated them. [1] These haven’t helped a bit. [2] Why would a relatively small move like Google stopping its censorship work?  Moreover: true reform in China has to come from within. When it’s forced from the outside, it will not be accepted. If Google stops cooperating with the government, reform-minded Chinese officials will have a harder time, because they will seem to be losing face in the eyes of more hardline officials. [3]  [1] See debate on EU arms sales to china  [2] James Dorn, ‘Improving Human Rights in China’, February 8, 1999. URL:   [3] Shaun Rein, ‘Opposing View: Google’s Big Mistake’, March 28, 2010. URL:


Not censoring its search results is a victory for human rights  The problem with Google censoring its results, is that in doing so, it is complicit in China’s repression of free speech: it adapts its own search engine to display only the results the Chinese government wants, thereby limiting its citizens’ basic human right to free access to information (a corollary to free speech). By avoiding this complicity, Google is taking a bold, praiseworthy step towards enhancing respect for human rights in China and with it, Google can set an important example for other businesses with dealings in China. [1]  [1] Human Rights Watch, ‘China: Google Challenges Censorship’, January 12, 2010. URL:


Not censoring doesn’t advance human rights in China at all  Human rights in China are violated on a daily basis. For example, the incidence of people ‘disappearing’ for no apparent reason has been on the rise. [1] These human rights violations won’t suddenly end if Google were to stop censoring its results.  What’s more likely to happen, when Google stops censoring results at google.cn, is that Google.cn will get shut down within days – thus, leaving Chinese citizens with no good way at all to access information, since google.com is on the other side of The Great Firewall and Baidu is a Chinese company fully compliant with the government’s wishes. By staying, Google can at least broaden the access to information the Chinese citizens have, something Google itself had acknowledged in 2006 when entering the Chinese mainland. [2]  [1] Human Rights Watch, ‘China: Enforced Disappearances a Growing Threat’, November 9, 2011. URL:   [2] Karen Wickre, ‘Testimony: The Internet in China’, February 15, 2006. URL:


Not censoring puts global pressure on China to change its free speech policies  Google’s decision to stop censoring was world news, and has put internet freedom on everyone’s agenda – even so much so, that U.S. Secretary of State mentioned internet companies ganging up to censor the Chinese corner of the internet specifically as a threat to freedom worldwide in a recent speech. [1] This helps to inform ordinary citizens of other countries who may not know about the ‘great firewall’ what the Chinese government is doing. By making a high-profile decision like this, and by engaging and informing the governments and publics of free and democratic countries like this, Google increases the public and political pressure on China to change its ways.  [1] Hillary Clinton, ‘Conference on Internet Freedom’, December 8, 2011. URL:


Google’s business is inseparable from basic human rights  The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a UN conference, affirmed that access to information is a basic human right, a corollary to the freedom of opinion and expression as articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [1] It is a right because access to information is often basic to human life; to how to live in society, to work and to educate ourselves. China ratified the Universal Declaration back in 1948 when it was accepted by the UN’s General Assembly, and was a party to the WSIS 2003 conference. This means that, if China is to be a responsible member of the international community, we can expect them to uphold the principles they publicly declare.  Google’s mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Note that this mission happens to coincide with the basic human right of access to information. This is why Google’s choice to interfere with China’s domestic politics isn’t just ‘big business interfering with a state’s sovereign politics’ – it’s a case of a big business whose business model happens to be providing a basic human right the sovereign state should have, by its own accord, provided a long time ago.  [1] World Summit on the Information Society, ‘Declaration of Principles. Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium’, December 12, 2003. URL:  Last consulted: December 22, 2011


Google’s revenues wont decline because of this  Google as a company is still going strong – in the third quarter of 2011, it managed to exceed analysts’ expectations and posted impressive revenue growth. Most importantly, the figures showed that finally the revenue from its mobile and video advertising platform started to come in. This means that the revenue for Google is now starting to come from all over their business portfolio, instead of coming from the search platform alone. [1] This result shows that Google’s revenues won’t sag a bit because of this choice.  Also, as argued above, by staying true to its company motto, Google actually strengthens, not weakens, its position with regards to the rest of the world – and possibly eventually in a democratic China.  [1] Financial Times, ‘Google shares soar on higher earnings’, October 13, 2011. URL:


Google will help Chinese internet freedom more by staying  As Google itself argued in 2006 when it first entered the Chinese domestic market; when Google is fully present in China, it can at least do its very best to allow its Chinese users as much access to all the information that Chinese users are allowed to look up. By expanding their access, Google can at least contribute to a broadening of the amount of information Chinese internet users can gather. The alternative is them relying on an even more censored Chinese search engine called Baidu, or having them try to access a heavily blocked, slowed down, restricted and monitored version of Google outside of China, for example google.com or the Hong Kong-based Google.com.hk. Having a locally accessible version of Google that is censored might not be optimal, but it’s better than nothing. [1]  [1] Karen Wickre, ‘Testimony: The Internet in China’, February 15, 2006. URL:  Last consulted: December 22, 2011


As a business, Google shouldn’t interfere with domestic politics  Business is business and politics is politics – and the two shouldn’t mingle. When a company wants to operate in a foreign country, it should respect the government and its regulations. We require the same when a company wants to operate within our territory: suppose a big Chinese company came to our home country and suddenly started criticizing our domestic policies – these are the policies of the sovereign state whose territory it is, and outsiders have no place to tell it how to run itself. [1]  [1] Nicholas Deleon, TechChrunch, ‘China has every right to be upset with Google right now’, March 23, 2010. URL:  Last consulted: December 22, 2011


Google can’t afford to abandon the Chinese market  In 2010, the search market in China was valued at $1.7 billion and was expected to grow at an average of 50% per year for the coming few years. [1] After the 2010 incident, Google has been losing market share in China rapidly. [2] From a business perspective, Google just can’t afford to miss out on such a business opportunity: not only will it miss entering this market when it is growing, it will also forfeit a comfortable position in the search market from which it can build its other businesses, like gmail and android, the way it does in other countries. [3]  [1] Melanie Lee, ‘Analysis: A year after China retreat, Google plots new growth’, Reuters, January 13, 2011. URL:   [2] Reuters, ‘Google search share slips as Baidu gains report’, July 26, 2010, URL:   [3] Kyle Baxter, ‘Android isn’t about building a mobile platform’, January 4, 2011. URL:  Last consulted: December 22, 2011


Staying will not help Chinese internet freedom at all  If google.cn was to be left uncensored, then within a short period, google.cn would lose its license to operate and will be pulled down. Chinese internet users will then have to rely either on Baidu, which provides more or less the same results as Google, or will have to try to break through the blockades of the Great Firewall to reach the Hong Kong-based Google. If Google does censor itself, it will only state ‘some results have not been shown’ – Chinese citizens still won’t know what has been hidden. Unless they then try to access the Hong Kong based Google, but then the Great Firewall will stop them anyway. Either way, Chinese citizens will be blocked from seeing what their government doesn’t want them to see, so what’s the difference? Google might as well stick to its principles and not censor itself.


p ip internet digital freedoms intellectual property house would use

Consumers will find ways to evade detection  Evading detection for most of the surveillance methods are relatively easy: consumers could start relying on proxy servers to hide their IP-addresses or start encrypting everything they share online to avoid being detected by fingerprinting-software.  In fact, recent experience in France with its Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet (HADOPI) law suggests that despite a graduated response-policy, piracy is actually on the increase. [1] This shows that graduated response won’t do what it is supposed to do; stem online piracy.  [1] Torrentfreak, ‘Piracy Rises In France Despite Three Strikes Law’, March 9, 2010. URL:


A graduated response will be an effective deterrent  Research has shown that consumers are likely to stop downloading from unauthorized sources when warned by their ISP. For example: Seven out of ten (72%) UK music consumers would stop illegally downloading if told to do so by their ISP, and 90 per cent of consumers would stop illegally file-sharing after two warnings from their ISP. [1]  This shows that the threat of a possible disconnection together with a friendly warning is enough to stop most consumers from downloading from illegal source. The reasoning behind it is simple: consumers can now download without a cost, a graduated response mechanism first raises awareness scaring off those who are only casually downloading out of convenience and then heightens the expected cost of infringement and thus makes it more likely consumers will use legal sources. [2] [1] IFPI, Digital Music Report 2009. 2009. URL for PDF:   [2] Olivier Bomsel and Heritania Ranaivoson, ‘Decreasing copyright enforcement costs: the scope of a graduated response’. 2009. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, Volume 6(2), p. 13 – 29. URL for PDF:


Graduated response is a draconian punishment  Citizens these days rely on their internet connection for their everyday lives: banking transactions, filing tax forms, and other forms of essential communication are all done online. Cutting access to these basic services is a draconian punishment: it basically amounts to making daily life a whole lot harder. Even if essential services were to remain accessible to the offender they could lose access to things somehow considered less vital such as their online social life. The punishment in no way is proportionate to the ‘crime’ of downloading a song that would have cost 99 cents on iTunes.


The unauthorised downloading of copyrighted material should be addressed and prevented by the state  Copyrighted material is intellectual property: someone worked hard for it to produce it. Downloading this content without paying the proper rights holder for it amounts to theft.  Furthermore, downloading copyrighted material from an unauthorized source creates an impossible market for producers of copyrighted content, because they have to ‘compete with free’. Why would the average consumer want to pay for a download from an authorized website, when she can get the same movie from a pirate-site for free? To build a commercially viable content industry online, we need to protect this industry from the unfair competition of the parallel market. [1]  [1] Piotr Stryszowski , Danny Scorpecci, Piracy of Digital Content. 2009, OECD Publishing. URL for purchase:


Downloading isn’t a crime  Downloading content is not comparable to theft of material things, like cars: after downloading the original owner can still use his or her own copy.  Moreover: governments have always allowed consumers some leeway for replicating content for themselves under the ‘private copying exception’ or ‘fair use’-policy. [1] Before the internet came along, this exception ensured it was legal that one person could copy a song from a radio broadcast transmission for personal use. Why should downloading a song from the internet be any different?  Finally, research has shown that those who download the most from pirate sites are also the ones who buy the most music online legally – why would the content industry want to punish their biggest and most loyal customers?. [2]  [1] Natali Helberger & P. Bernt Hugenholtz, ‘No place like home for making a copy: private copying in European copyight law and consumer law’. 2007. Berkely Technology Law Journal, volume 22, p. 1061 -1098. URL for PDF:   [2] Ars Technica, ‘Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right’. April 2009. URL:


A graduated response is the fairest way to enforce copyright legislation  First, the sanction after three warnings can be tailored to fit general notions of justice, the punishment need not be severe and could fit the crime: maybe a consumer would be cut off of the internet for only two weeks, or only cut off from accessing download sites but still be allowed to access government and banking sites, or receive a small fine.  Secondly, the consumer has ample time to change his or her behaviour: a consumer can insist on infringing copyright at least two times before the sanction takes place. The consumer can easily avoid being cut off (even temporarily), meaning the punishment likely doesn’t even have to take place. [1]  [1] Barry Sookman, ‘Graduated response and copyright: an idea that is right for the times’, January 10th, 2010. URL:


Graduated response can be done prudently  Many companies have ‘Terms of Agreement’, violation of which automatically leads to cancellation of service. Suppose you don’t pay your library subscription for a year: no one would complain of ‘lack of due process’ if your subscription was subsequently cancelled. A Graduated response policy is no different.  Moreover, the graduated response policy can be made to fit the rules of due process. For example, in the French HADOPI-law, after a third violation, the case gets referred to an ‘expedited judicial procedure’, typically used for minor traffic violations, after which that judge will decide.  Compare this to the unfairness before a graduated response policy is implemented: copyright holders might detect and sue one single consumer and extract a very heavy penalty, whilst the rest of the downloading consumers got away. Both the uncertainty and the height of the fine made the situation before a graduated response-policy an ‘enforcement lottery’. [1]  [1] Nathan Lovejoy, JOLT Digest ‘Procedural Concerns with the HADOPI Graduated Response Model’, January 13, 2011. URL:


Graduated response is not a massive privacy violation  Firstly, ISPs already use Deep Packet Inspection right now, to engage in what they call ‘network management’, like checking whether users aren’t hogging up bandwidth by downloading too much via peer-to-peer software. But moreover, it is hard to see how exactly every form of deep packet inspection is a privacy violation: the inspecting is done by automated software and only checks for infringements. If no infringement is detected, no one will know what was ‘in the information packet’. Take the example of monitoring for the presence digital watermarks: basically, the monitoring-software has a database of specific ‘watermarks’ that content holders put into their videos, for example a unique combination of pixels. The software only checks whether that combination is present. If it’s not present, the software has no way of ‘seeing’ the information itself. Hence, even though it might sound scary, the technology can be designed in such a way that one can prevent it from becoming privacy violation. [1]  [1] see wikipedia: Digital Watermarking


ISP will not cooperate with a graduated response policy  The graduated response model requires cooperation from all Internet Service Providers. If just one ISP refuses, users will flock towards that ISP to be able to keep on downloading. Therefore there will always be an incentive to be the ISP that refuses so as to gain custom from others who have agreed to cooperate. ISPs will also have an incentive to not cooperate because the cost of monitoring and identifying is large, and significantly more so for smaller ISPs: initial estimates of the cost of graduated response for ISPs were around 500 million pounds over a period of ten years. [1]  [1] Michael Geist, ‘Estimating the cost of a three strikes and you’re out system’, January 26, 2010. URL:


The graduated response is a violation of the basic right to due process  Detection of copyright infringement isn’t usually done by a detective sitting behind a computer. It relies on software like automated crawlers and fingerprinting, often created by commercial vendors and hired by the copyright holders. This software automatically sends detected infringements to the ISP, without someone actually checking if this allegation is correct. This means many consumers can be unjustly accused of copyright infringement.  Moreover, most graduated response policies proposed require no judicial intervention at all for the sanction to be invoked. This means private organisations get to decide who has committed a crime and deserves the punishment. The ISPs and copyright holders therefore act as accuser, prosecution, judge and executioner. On top of this if a consumer would go to court, he would also face a reversal of the burden of proof: since he is suing against being fined, he has to prove that he is not guilty, a reversal of the presumption of innocence. [1]  [1] Peter K. Yu, ‘The Graduated Response’. 2010. Florida Law Review, Volume 62. Available for download (PDF) at:


The graduate response policy constitutes an invasion of privacy by the state  Graduated response would require huge amounts of monitoring and logging of all internet traffic using technical systems called ‘deep packet inspection’ (DPI) equipment. This means that a computer program will look in close detail at all of the information someone sends over the internet in order to check whether it violates some protocol, for example a ‘fingerprint’ of copyrighted data that the content creator put in.  This means a copyright holder, or a third party paid by the copyright holder to monitor internet traffic, suddenly has access to everything every consumer sends over the internet. This is a massive violation of privacy. Given the fact that advertising companies are already using DPI illegitimately for targeted advertising, it is obvious that content companies will also feel tempted to ‘do more’ with all that data they suddenly have access to. [1]  [1] Angela Daly, ‘The Legality of Deep Packet Inspection’, 2010. Presented at the First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Communications Policy and Regulation 'Communications and Competition Law and Policy – Challenges of the New Decade', University of Glasgow 17 June 2010. URL for download:


ISPs will gladly cooperate with graduated response  Almost a decade ago, ISPs engaged in a competitive battle to gain as much broadband penetration as possible. Now that markets have matured and broadband penetration has more or less ‘maxed out’ in developed countries, ISPs need to find new value propositions to attract customers. One of these value propositions is being able to offer high quality content at high speeds. To be able to offer this, ISPs will need the cooperation of content providers – who can ask something in return, like graduated response. [1] That this actually happens is borne out by the fact that in many countries ISPs are actually getting together to make sector-wide agreements, for example in the USA where the major ISPs have agreed to implementing graduated response. [2]  [1] Olivier Bomsel and Heritania Ranaivoson, ‘Decreasing copyright enforcement costs: the scope of a graduated response’. 2009. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, Volume 6(2), p. 13 – 29. URL for PDF:   [2] David Kravets, Wired, ‘ISPs to Disrupt Internet Access of Copyright Scofflaws’, July 7, 211. URL:


access information house believes internet access human right

The freedom of speech does not mean that there is a right to reach as broad an audience as possible. It does not mean there is a fundamental right to access the internet or any other individual medium of communication. If indeed there is some kind of ‘gap’ in human rights it does not mean that it has to be filled by creating some spurious new right for individuals to enjoy. If there was a lack of recognition of a freedom of readership then this is because there is no need for the human right to exist let alone in a form that privileges access to the internet over other forms of information access.


The right to internet access fills a gap in traditional human rights.  In our traditional human rights there is a hole when it comes to a right to receive and be able to seek out information. Almost everyone would consider freedom of speech and freedom of expression to be human rights but these rights are not very effective if there is not a way for those who wish to access that information. Michael L Best contends that Article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights on freedom of expression implies some symmetry but that freedom of authorship is privileged over freedom of readership. [1] In short governments could allow freedom of expression while ensuring that those expressing dissenting views have a very minimal audience without breaking human rights.  A right to the internet is the perfect human right to fill this gap. The internet is estimated to have over 35 billion web pages, [2] and the most recent digital universe study estimates that 1.8 trillion gigabytes would be created in 2011. [3] The sheer size of the internet means that it is the ideal medium for providing this right to access information. [4] The internet is also increasingly accessible to everyone making it possible to be considered universal; it is no longer something that the poor cannot hope to have access to. There are already over 2.1 billion people using the internet worldwide including 118 million in Africa. [5]  [1] Best, Michael L., ‘Can the Internet be a Human Right?’ Human Rights and Human Welfare, Vol.4 2004, p.23 (n.b. this link comes up with a warning when opened, dont worry it is safe - ahelling)  [2] World Wide Web Size.com, ‘The size of the World Wide Web (The Internet)’, 17 April 2012 .  [3] McGaughey, Katryn, ‘World’s Data More Than Doubling Every Two Years – Driving Big Data Opportunity, EMC2, 28 June 2011.  [4] Best, Michael L., ‘Can the Internet be a Human Right?’ Human Rights and Human Welfare, Vol.4 2004, p.23  [5] Clayton, Nick, ‘Internet has More Than 2 Billion Users’, TechEurope The Wall Street Journal, 19 January 2012.


This is taking the freedom of expression too far. A freedom to impart information does not mean the freedom to impart it through whatever medium the individual wishes simply through a method of communication. It is also taking it too far to consider that the government has a duty to prevent others from interfering with individual’s access as this is impractical. Governments should not have the power to interfere with private businesses that may wish to deny internet users access for things like not paying their bills. The third interpretation is interpreting this freedom much too broadly, human rights are meant to prevent the government from oppressing their citizens rather than forcing government to provide something.


Internet access as a new human right.  Access to the internet can be considered a separate human right in and of itself. The UN special rapporteur in June 2011 published a report that implied that access to the internet is a human right “The Special Rapporteur remains concerned that legitimate online expression is being criminalized in contravention of States' international human rights obligations.” [1]  The right to internet access can meet the necessary conditions to be a human right; as a right is should be universal, everyone should have access not just a few. The internet is becoming much more than just a tool but is becoming a fundamental part of society creating a new sphere of interaction that everyone has a right to have access to.  Creating a right to internet access would be addressing a specific contemporary problem as with other human rights that are specific such as a right to basic schooling, enshrined in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights. Not having access to the internet is similar to not having basic schooling; it considerably narrows people’s options and their horizons. As Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web, argues "Given the many ways the web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty." [2]  [1] La Rue, Frank, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Human Rights Council, Seventeenth session, A/HRC/17/27, 16 May 2011, p.10 .  [2] Burkeman, Oliver, ‘Inside Washington’s high risk mission to beat web censors’, guardian.co.uk, 15 April 2012.


Creating a human right specifically for internet access is an example of ‘human rights inflation’ where by every group wants their issue to be a human right and as a result human rights that are not necessary or are too specific begin to devalue the whole concept of human rights. [1] While there may be a new ‘society’ operating online the internet is certainly not essential for the existence of society. An online society is an interesting distraction for people and indeed there are many who spend immense amounts of time cultivating virtual relationships but this virtual sphere does not need a human right to enable it to continue. The internet is in some ways a free for all and there have already been internet social networks that have collapsed or been taken offline. This may be disruptive for those who relied on this network as their online society but they can simply find another. If unable to access the internet they still have access to other forms of society in the real world. Thus while forming and taking part in society is fundamental for humanity that this should be possible online is not.  [1] Bleisch, Barbara, ‘The human right to water – normative foundations and ethical implications’, Ethics and Economics, 4 (2), 2006, p.8


Internet access is a necessary part of the right to freedom of information and expression.  Freedom of expression and speech and freedom of information is a fundamental freedom and is article 19 in the universal declaration of human rights. This is usually taken to have three parts for governments to uphold: a duty to respect, for the government not to interfere with the freedom to impart information, a duty to protect, preventing interference with lawful communications and, a duty to fulfil, a duty to provide government held information. [1] Access to the internet falls within this. The duty to respect means that governments cannot block access for people wishing to use the internet to express themselves. The duty to protect means government should prevent others from interfering with internet users and the duty to fulfil could easily be taken just a little bit further to having to provide access to the internet. Freedom of expression therefore covers a freedom to access the internet as it already provides for a freedom to access mediums to express ones’ self.  [1] Callamard, Agnes, ‘Towards a Third Generation of Activism for the Right to Freedom of Information’, in Freedom of Expression, Access to Information and Empowerment of People, UNESCO, 2009 pp.43-57. p.44


The conduit to access information is just as important as the information itself. There is little point in the information if we are cut off from the flows of that information and are unable to access it. [1] Having immense libraries may be an alternative method of accessing information for some but only for a tiny minority. As human rights are concerned with access to everybody the right an egalitarian method that allows everyone to access the information is needed just as much as the right to access the information. There is little point in a right to information without a corresponding right to access the internet or some other equally egalitarian method of obtaining that information.  [1] Best, Michael L., ‘Can the Internet be a Human Right?’ Human Rights and Human Welfare, Vol.4 2004, p.24


Human rights are meant to protect the individual from the state rather than being dependent upon the state. The state cannot decide what these human rights are and can only constrain human rights if it is necessary to protect the human rights of another. [1] Human rights are necessary precisely because states ignore the freedoms of their citizens so often. The sources of international law are irrelevant when referring to human rights as these are a higher law natural law that overrides a system of international law that has been created only over the last couple of hundred years.  [1] Brown, Chris, ‘Human rights’, in John Baylis and Steve smith The globalization of world politics 2nd ed Oxford University Press 2001, pp.599-614 p.604


Internet access is a commodity not a human right.  If a human right is inherent and inalienable then if something is to be a human right it has to be freely available for all rather than being much more available to those who are rich. The internet however is a commodity. We are charged for access to it and can be cut off for not paying our bills. We are charged more to be able to download more, in effect to have greater access to this human right. There has never been any suggestion that the equally great media advances of TV and telephones are technologies worthy of being considered a human right. As with the internet these increased the ability to express opinions to a wide audience, they helped democratise news and making it much more international. They meant that human rights violations could be much more easily told to the world in much the same way the internet does.


Internet access cannot be a human right when it is not available to all.  If human rights are inalienable and inherent in humans then no technology can be a human right as not everyone can ever expect access all of the time. Certainly at the moment huge swathes of the world have no internet access and this does not mean that their governments are violating their human rights.  The analogy might be given to freedom of movement. Freedom of movement is a human right however we don’t need the aid of a car to be able to exercise this right the technology itself is unnecessary as we have an inherent ability to move just as we do to communicate.


Internet access is an enabler of rights not a right in itself.  The internet is an enabler and so has little value on its own. [1] No one would consider the internet a human right if there was no content or information on the internet, what good would be a right to stare at a screen? It is not therefore access to the internet that is the human right it is access to information. The internet is obviously useful for this but it is not essential. If someone was denied access to the internet while being locked in a library would he or she really have had any right to information infringed? In such a case the only argument for a right to the internet is that it faster to access the information through the internet than it would be to look it up in the books that are all around. There cannot therefore be considered to be a right to the internet even as part of any right to information because the right to information would simply require that a government provides access to this information not that it has to be via the internet. Moreover as an enabling technology it is quite possible that the internet may at some point be out of date and replaces by some new method of storing information. As something that is transitory it does not make sense to consider there to be any kind of inalienable right to the internet.  [1] Cerf, Vinton G., ‘Internet Access Is Not a Human Right’, The New York Times, 4 January 2012.


Human rights are dependent upon the state  There is clearly not universal or even widespread acceptance of the idea that internet access should be a human right. Human rights are dependent upon the state, the desires of the community, and that depends upon the state’s socio economic context. [1] The internet cannot therefore be considered a universal human right because not all states are advanced enough to take responsibility for this right.  International law is based upon several sources; state practice, customary law, treaties and judicial decisions. [2] None of these sources yet recognise internet access as a human right, indeed if state practice is taken as deciding if human rights exist then the whole concept of human rights is open to question. [3]  [1] Turkin, G., Theory of International Law, 1974, p.81  [2] Shaw, Malcolm N., International Law 4th ed., Cambridge University press, 1997, Chapter 3.  [3] Watson, J.S., Legal theory, efficacy and validity in the development of human rights norms in international law, University of Illinois law forum, 1979, p.609


Human rights are as much aspirational as they are fact. When the universal declaration of human rights came out the majority of people in the world did not have “the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.” [1] Having the internet as a human right will increase access as it makes it more difficult for governments to deny access and increases the priority to provide access. [2]  [1] United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, Article 21.  [2] Wagner, Adam, ‘Is internet access a human right?’, Guardian Legal Network, 11 January 2012.


Being a human right does not prevent commoditization going alongside this. Everyone has a right to own property, as enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights, but it is accepted that property is also valuable in a commercial sense. Or more generally everyone has a right to shelter and this means that governments provide council housing and shelters for the homeless at the same time as houses often having very high prices. The human right is for a very basic level while those who wish can pay for more.


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There have been wrongful arrests during the war against terror. Riwaan Sabir was wrongfully arrested under the terrorism act in 2008 for downloading an al-Qaida training manual despite the manual having been downloaded from a US government website and been for his master’s degree at the University of Nottingham. [1] Since the offence was online it is certainly possible that information from spying was a part of the cause for the arrest. It is true that we probably have less cause for concern when it is foreign governments doing the spying but this could still have consequences such as being denied entry if you wish to travel to or through the country.  [1] Townsend, Mark, ‘Police ‘made up’ evidence against Muslim student’, The Guardian, 14 July 2012,


You are not going to be arrested because the government has access to your communications  Clearly much of the time you really do have nothing to worry about when it comes to intelligence agencies having information about you. People are not regularly arrested without just cause and we have little evidence that democratic governments use this information to put pressure on their citizens. There have been no known cases of this happening since the start of the war on terror. [1] When it comes to foreign governments this is even less of a cause for concern; while your own government might be interested in various aspects of your life to help it with the services it provides foreign governments only have one motivation; their own national security. If you are not a threat to that national security the chances of them ever taking any action against you are essentially nonexistent.  [1] Posner, Eric, ‘I Don’t See a Problem Here’, The New York Times Room for Debate, 10 June 2013,


In the UK case this is not all it appears. The Intelligence Services Commissioner is comparatively toothless, and both it and the Interception of Communications Commissioner are immensely understaffed for monitoring all UK intelligence agencies. Some experts such as Professor Peter Sommer have even suggested “I am not sure that ministers or the ISC would know what questions to ask.” [1] Moreover this is trusting that ministers have the best interests of the people at heart, in the case of this conservative government which seems perfectly happy to introduce bills that erode freedoms such as the ‘snoopers charter’ this seems unlikely.  [1] Hopkins, Nick, ‘William Hague on spying scandal: what he said … and what he didn't say’, guardian.co.uk, 10 June 2013,


There is no physical risk  In terms of physical risk it is almost certainly true that you have nothing to fear from government having loads of information. With the exception perhaps of the Russian FSB and despite the James Bond films intelligence agencies in democracies are not in the habit of bumping people off this mortal coil. In this sense it does not matter at all what information the intelligence services have on you; no matter how naughty you may have been it is not going to be worth some kind of physical retaliation. Essentially the argument here is that it does no harm, and even does some good, so why should it not continue?


Physical risk is not the only risk that people worry about. Denying someone their liberties such as privacy or freedom of expression does not pose a physical risk to them but that act is still wrong and it is still worth worrying about. Citizens have the right to go about their own business without their government spying on them. They should not have to concern themselves with what information the government does or does not have.


Clearly if no one ever actually looked at any information provided by surveillance then there would be no point in conducting it. Even if it were true that no one looks at any of the data being watched is still an intrusion that affects behaviour. It will affect decisions that are perfectly lawful because there will always be the slight worry that someone who you don’t want to have that information because they will think differently of you will obtain it. When the information is out of your hands you can no longer be certain who will obtain it. [1] Since people have been arrested for the information that has been conducted, clearly sometimes the information is checked and used.  [1] Moore, Mica, and Stein, Bennett, ‘The Chilling Effects of License-Plate Location Tracking’, American Civil Liberties Union, 23 July 2013,


There are safeguards to prevent misuse  In democracies there are numerous safeguards and levels of oversight to prevent abuse. In the UK for example there is a “strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight”. Agencies are required “to seek authorisation for their operations from a Secretary of State, normally the Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary.” The Secretary is given legal advice and comments from civil servants. Once the Secretary has given assent they are “subject to independent review by an Intelligence Services Commissioner and an Interception of Communications Commissioner… to ensure that they are fully compliant with the law”. [1]  [1] Hague, William, ‘Prism statement in full’, politics.co.uk, 10 June 2013,


No one will ever actually look at the information  If the concern is privacy then there really should be little concern at all because there is safety in numbers. The NSA and other intelligence services don’t have the time or motivation to be tracking down all of our foibles. [1] If the intelligence agencies are watching everyone then they clearly do not have the personnel to be watching the actual communications. Instead certain things or patterns will raise alarm bells and a tiny number will be investigated more closely.  [1] Walt, Stephen M., ‘The real threat behind the NSA surveillance programs’, Foreign Policy, 10 June 2013,


The circumstances in the cold war were clearly different to today so this kind of abuse of power would be unlikely to happen. More broadly yes there is the potential for abuse in much the same way that there are people in banks who could steal large quantities of other people’s money. That there is a potential opportunity does not mean it is ever used. Abuse can never be totally avoided but if abuse is a concern then whether or not there is a program of surveillance is not the highest concern. Even if there were not wide ranging surveillance problems those in intelligence looking to abuse their position would be able to obtain the information because they have the technology to do so.


Far from threatening democracy the intelligence agencies are using this information to protect democracy from terrorists who wish to overthrow the whole concept of democratic governance. Intelligence agencies are clearly under civilian control and have several layers of oversight to ensure that this kind of misuse does not take place. In the United States this means there is oversight from Congress and in the UK from Parliament. There is also judicial oversight in the form of the Interception of Communications Commissioner and Intelligence Services Commissioner in the UK [1] and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the US. [2]  [1] ‘Judicial Oversight’, Security Service MI5,   [2] ‘Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’, Federal Judicial Center,


Lack of trust  The problem is that when it comes to privacy it is not really our personal physical security that we are worried about. Part of the problem is that we value our right to a private life and that we should have control over that to the extent of being able to decide how much information others know about us. To a large extent this is an issue of trust; we (sometimes wrongly) trust our friends and others with information about us. We often trust faceless entities; companies and governments too though usually to less of an extent. But a lot of that trust is as a result of their willingness to tell us what they know about us, to provide information in return, or to provide methods for us to restrict what they know. In cases like this that trust has not been earned; we were not asked, and not obviously given anything back, and there seems little change of us changing the terms of the relationship.


Loss of Privacy  It is wrong to state that we only have anything to ‘fear’ if we have done something wrong; a great many people want to keep things private where what they have done is morally perfectly right and justifiable. It is perfectly justified for a married couple to want to keep a video of them having sex private – even if it is sent from one partner to the other by email, or for someone to keep his/her sexual orientation secret even if they have told someone about it. [1] If we want such information to be kept private does the state have any business picking that information up from our emails? It may not go any further than the intelligence agency, it is possible no one there will look at it but it is still an invasion of privacy.  [1] Phillipson, Gavin, ‘Q&A: The right to privacy’, BBC Religion, 14 June 2013,


The use of meta data causes unintentional harm  The other possible harm is unintentional. The amount of data involved is huge and too much even for a vast organization like the NSA to actually physically look at. Instead it uses data mining. This is why the NSA wants data that may seem useless to others. The records of which phone numbers are phoning who, as the NSA was obtaining of Verizon, might seem useless but can tell them who you are contacting, and how much contact time they have. In turn they could look at who your contacts have been talking to and if it turns out that several of them talk regularly to suspected terrorists then even if you are innocent a finger of suspicion might be pointed. There has even been a study showing that individuals can be identified from just the time of call and nearest cell phone tower after just four calls. [1] PRISM gives the NSA even more ‘useless’ data to play with. The results of this data mining may usually be accurate but will not always be so and the result of being flagged like this can be problematic for individuals. It may mean additional airport security, having problems getting a visa, [2] or in the worst case finding its way onto a no fly list.  [1] De Montjoye, Yves-Alexandre, et al., ‘Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility’, Scientific Reports, 3, 25 March 2013,   [2] Brown, Ian, ‘Yes, NSA surveillance should worry the law-abiding’, guardian.co.uk, 10 June 2013,


Abuse of information and power by intelligence agencies  Even when the government does not intend harm there are still cases where direct harms can occur as a result of surveillance. The most worrying are where the state abuses the information it holds. Abuse of power and of the information held by government is perhaps the main reason why it is difficult to trust in intelligence agencies. In one historical example from the 1950s FBI agents interviewed a Brooklyn liquor importer for repeating a rumor that the FBI Director J Edgar Hoover might be a “queer”. This clearly necessitated a reminder through questioning that Hoover’s “personal conduct is beyond reproach,” leading to the man quickly agreeing that “he thinks Mr. Hoover has done a wonderful job.” [1] Did this have anything to do with national security? No. Was it an abuse of power and surveillance? Yes. So far as we are aware the intelligence agencies don’t do things quite like this anymore but the revelations like PRISM, or the waterboarding a decade ago, show they are still happy to abuse their position from time to time. This is hardly a good way to build trust.  [1] Gage, Beverly, ‘It’s Not About Your Cat Photos’, Slate, 10 June 2013,


Is it really an invasion of privacy if no one else knows about it even if that information is added to some giant computer database? The information we wish to keep secret remains a secret, in the unlikely event that some analyst reads the information they are never going to broadcast it to others as keeping secrets is a part of what intelligence agencies do.


A threat to democracy  Yes the NSA is unlikely to look at individual’s personal information if the person in question is nobody of interest yet there are people who may be of interest to the state who are essentially innocent of anything except annoying the state. The ability for almost anyone in the intelligence apparatus to look up personal information has to worry anyone who might otherwise dissent, investigate the government, or turn whistleblower. Intelligence officials can hold the information as a weapon to ensure compliance and ruin careers if they don’t get their way. [1] This has happened before. In the US when diplomat Joseph C. Wilson published about the manipulation of intelligence on uranium from Niger being used as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq his wife had her cover blown and career destroyed by people within the Department of Defense. [2] When we know that the Obama administration has been more determined than ever to prevent leaks and prosecute perpetrators can it really be said there is no damage to democracy if these courageous people are not coming forward?  [1] Walt, Stephen M., ‘The real threat behind the NSA surveillance programs’, Foreign Policy, 10 June 2013,   [2] Wilson, Joseph C., ‘What I Didn’t Find in Africa’, The New York Times, 6 July 2003,   Lewis, Neil A., ‘Source of C.I.A. Leak Said to Admit Role’, The New York Times, 30 August 2006,


Metadata and data-mining are not new they are simply becoming more frequent, and more accurate as a result of more information. In the past there have been other ways of collecting data; tax records, voter registration, reverse telephone directories. [1] At the same time government and the intelligence agencies are not even those who make most use of this, there are whole private companies devoted to sifting this data. [2] There is little reason why we should particularly worry about this being done by intelligence agencies.  [1] Gomez, David, ‘Hoovered’, Foreign Policy, 11 June 2013,   [2] See the debatabase debate ‘ This House would not allow companies to collect/sell the personal data of their clients ’.


The intelligence agencies are not violating any right to privacy if they are not actually looking at the content of any emails, even less so as they in almost all cases won’t even be looking at the metadata. It is not possible for intelligence agencies to be asking the people before engaging in every surveillance policy as even knowing the broad outlines of what the surveillance involves could allow the targets of that surveillance to avoid that surveillance. While individual citizens are not asked this is where the people’s representatives should be trusted, it is ministers and members of parliament that allow surveillance and hold the agencies to account.


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This has absolutely nothing to do with censorship – not having net neutrality will not stop users accessing certain sites, just make it slower. Data from some points of origin, especially games and file-sharing programmes slow down the entire network. It’s unfair to other users.


Risk of a two-tier Internet  As things stand there are relatively flat rate services. The concern is that ISP would charge higher rates for full Internet access or act to ensure that their own content arrived seamlessly and smoothly, while that of competitors was delayed or poorer quality or that higher bandwidth applications end up with a higher price-tag [i] .  This is of concern both to end users and to the producers of content. There are very real concerns here, as a result, about the impact this has on freedom of expression. The best way to avoid censorship – either commercial or political – is to ensure that it remains impossible to achieve in the first place.  Once it becomes possible to give preference to some forms of content or points of origin, then commercial censorship at least becomes a great deal easier.  [i] BBC News Website. “BT Content Connect service faces ‘two-tier net’ claims. 4 January 2011.


The idea that there is a virtue in providing things for free takes a somewhat cavalier attitude toward jobs. It is a predicate of this, and many other, arguments that the Internet should be either free or very cheap, but this does little for protecting genuine sources of expertise. Equally the costs incurred by ISPs for carrying the huge data loads of heavy users will simply end up being met by users who aren’t using that level of data. It doesn’t seem that unreasonable that those using the data should be paying for that at least. After all, they’re already avoiding paying the studio, the writer, the actors, musicians [i] and many others involved in the production of goods. Freeware may be freely given, but plenty of other pieces of intellectual property aren’t. Why should those people then have the data usage subsidised by others as well?  [i] Songwriters Guild of America. Rick Carnes. “Demythologizing Net Neutrality.


Privacy  This was the clinching argument in the Dutch example. Labour MP Martijn van Dam, one of the bill’s co-authors said that Dutch ISP KPN was similar to “a postal worker who delivers a letter, looks to see what’s in it and then claims he hasn’t read it. It is simply a basic principle of the Internet that for it to continue working as it does now, all data needs to be treated the same otherwise judgements will be formed on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ data [i] .  The principle here is that the data being used is simply none of the ISPs business. Their job is simply to provide an agreed bandwidth, at an agreed price to the end user. How the end user makes use of that band width is up to them. If, for example, they’re choosing to Skype from a mobile device – one of the points of contention – it’s hard to see what that has to do with the ISP.  [i] PCWorld. Matthew Honan, MacWorld. “Inside Net Neutrality: Privacy and BitTorrent. 14 February 2008.


The postal worker analogy is an interesting one. Certainly, the end user wouldn’t want the worker snooping through their mail; however they would expect to pay more for the stamp if they were sending a parcel – the equivalent of sending voice messages or receiving films rather than email and text. It is also not directly analogous to a postman looking at the contents of someone’s mail because to tell what type of data it is and the size ISPs don’t read the content of the data.


Threats to Freeware, Shareware and Objectivity  There are very real concerns that ISPs have a commercial interest in guiding people away from certain sites – especially when those sites provide services or products for nothing when the ISP or a related company charges for a competing product. File sharing more generally is an obvious target. The example of Comcast against NetFlix and other file sharing sites is simply the most obvious [i] .  There are also concerns about the impact on objectivity more generally; the Internet works most effectively as a tool because it is, by definition cross-referencing. Although there are many mistakes on many sources as a whole it is possible to reach something resembling the truth. Essentially, “We need freeware, we need shareware, and we need open access. People need to be able to trust sources that they can find on the internet, rather than have them controlled in a small number of hands or by the government.” [ii] Making some sites more accessible than others reduces users’ choice and their ability to check multiple sites so preventing this cross-referencing.  [i] A useful overview of some of the more notorious examples can be found here .  [ii] Bob Gibson, Executive Director of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, on the Charlottesville, VA, politics interview program Politics Matters with host and producer Jan Madeleine Paynter discussing journalism


It’s no secret that many companies have had difficulty working out effective models for dealing with the internet. That doesn’t justify simple price-gouging. Neither does it justify an invasion of privacy. It’s the equivalent of a restaurant waiting for customers to order, eat their meal and then set the prices.


The reverse also applies. In most countries the costs of basic infrastructure are shared. Taxpayers don’t get a discount if they don’t have kids in education, any more than they would just because they disagreed with a war that their taxes help to pay for. The argument doesn’t make sense.


Allow ISPs to monitor and remove illegal or unwanted data  Many ISPs are responding to user interests when cutting out particular types of data. At the request of the user why shouldn’t they be able to monitor what is delivered to a certain IP address. Most ‘net nanny’ software is not that difficult to get around [i] .  Why not let parents who bought their kids a computer to help with their homework not be able to block them from making calls or watching movies?  If you compel net neutrality then, say, the ISP who caters for religious customers can no longer deliver the service that they have requested. Denying freedom of choice seems a high price to pay so that someone can get movies without paying for them.  Equally, if ISPs themselves want to stay within the law and prevent people from accessing illegal or otherwise unpleasant sites, why shouldn’t they?  [i] Foss Force: Keeping Tech Free. Caesar Tjalbo. “Top 10 Reasons ISPs are against net neutrality”.


Realistic costs for users and providers of bandwidth and phones  The example of mobile devices is, perhaps the most clear-cut. Manufacturers of mobile devices expect to make their money back and make a profit. They need to do this to pay salaries, invest in the next project and keep their shareholders happy. To do that they make a calculation based on the price of the original product and what additional revenue they are likely to make over the lifetime of that product’s use.  Phone companies in particular have complained that major content providers are simply not paying a fair share of the costs with the VP of Verizon, for example, accusing Google of getting “a free lunch” at the expense of network providers [i] .  Net neutrality compels some companies to ignore basic financial realities [ii] . For all that Proposition – and others such as politicians in Amsterdam and Santiago – may think that changing the basic rules of economics is a good idea, they have yet to explain how this Socialist utopia will work.  [i] Washington Post. Ashad Mohammed. “Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google’s ‘Free Lunch”. 7 February 2006.  [ii] The Economist. “The Difference Engine: Download Dilemma”. 6 May 2011.


Incentivise ISPs to provide more data capacity  If the ISPs were actually making their money on the basis of data provision rather than bandwidth then it’s in their interest to provide it. If they can’t, they don’t make money.  If they want to sell more data, they have to provide more bandwidth, otherwise they can’t do it. This way both the data gluttons and the dieters get what they want. The gluttons get a fast provision of the resources they want or the capacity to share those resources at a reasonable speed and the dieters get cheaper provision.  Measures being pursued by the European Commission aim to do exactly this. They will allow ISPs to control the passage of data across their networks but must, at the same time, make it clear what they are doing and offer low data use price plans accordingly [i] .  This is more so with mobile devices than with ‘plumbed in’ ones. For many people, it wouldn’t occur to them to use Skype for a call and a phone – even a smart one – is primarily just that, a phone. Why should they pay for a capacity they will never use because others can’t take a bus journey without watching a movie?  [i] Out-Law.com: Legal news and guidance from Pinsent Masons. European Commission to propose net neutrality measures. 30 May 2012 .


Censorship has routinely been presented in terms of ‘protecting public morals’ or ‘defending national security’ or some similar euphemism, with legislation aimed at pornography but catching everything else in its track as simply the most obvious example [i] . It doesn’t change what it is [ii] . In addition to which, there are very real reasons to believe that the incentives of ISPs here are more financial than moral – they would, after all, stand to make quite a lot of money.  [i] The New Statesman. Nelson Jones. “The Censored Isle”. 6 August 2012.  [ii] Boston College Law Review. Prof. Jonathan Zittrain. “Internet Points of Control”. Vol. 44, pg. 653, 2003.


faith religion general house believes belief god irrational

Most suffering and pain can be accounted for by the free will that humans exercise; God made us free and we use that freedom for evil as well as for good. As for illness and disease, it is hard for us to know the mind of God, but it may be that these trials are a necessary part of a world in which free and spiritual human beings can evolve and develop.


The problem of suffering  The world is full of suffering and pain among innocent people. If God is good and all-powerful then why is this the case? Either God does not exist or he is not worth believing in since he does not care about human suffering.


This is an inaccurate caricature of the relationship between science and religion. In fact most of the great scientists of history, such as Descartes, Newton and Einstein, have been religious believers, and the more we learn about the physical world (e.g. the fine balance between the fundamental forces of the universe, necessary for organic life to develop) the more it seems that it has been designed to produce human life by an intelligent God. The fact that there is a physical side to reality does not, in any case, mean that there cannot also be a spiritual dimension. Nor does the fact that the mind and brain are closely correlated mean that they are the same thing.


The Null Hypothesis  With regards to any proposition the only consistent and rational view is to assume that it is not true unless sufficient evidence is put forward to nullify that assumption.  The proposition need also be falsifiable, that is to say, there must be some potential fact that could be proven in order to disprove it. God is unfalsifiable because there is nothing.


Religious belief is completely irrational  There is no evidence that God exists. Reported miracles, healings etc. are never reliably proved actually to have happened, and in any case everyone’s religious experiences are different and point to the psychological differences between human beings not to any objective divine reality. Belief in God is simply wish-fulfilment. It would be nice if there was a loving all powerful being watching over us, but there isn’t.


There is good evidence that God exists and there are good arguments for accepting religious beliefs. The fact that we live in a beautiful, orderly universe in which human beings exist and have special moral and spiritual awareness points clearly to the existence of a divine Creator behind the universe. Billions of people have had religious experiences of one sort or another - all of them revealing the existence of divine reality - the only good explanation of this fact is that the divine reality is really there.


All beliefs rely upon some form of presupposition as their grounding. The null hypothesis presupposes a natural world – but belief in God presupposes a supernatural world. It is unfair therefore to apply the null hypothesis to religious faith.  Moreover, belief in God is a different to belief in an object in the physical world that we would expect to be physically verifiable. [1]  [1] Wolf, Gary. ‘The Church of the Non-Believers’ WIRED Magazine. November 2006.


Religion may have been the occasion for various social and political wrongs, but it is not the cause. You can be quite sure that if you took away all the world’s religions people would still identify themselves with national and political groups and go to war over territory, political conflict etc. Equally elitism and bigotry are, sadly, parts of human nature with or without religion. In fact religious belief, when taken seriously and sincerely, is a force for good in the world, promoting humility, morality, wisdom, equality, and social justice. Social justice is at the heart of the Christian gospel.


The God hypothesis is unnecessary  Science provides us with the tools to form a comprehensive view of the Universe which does not include a supernatural being. From Galileo to Darwin to the modern day, scientists have continually uncovered the true natural mechanisms behind the creation and evolution of the universe. There are no gaps left for God to act in [1] - science has revealed a closed natural order governed by natural laws. Brain science has shown that there is not a ‘soul’ but that all our mental states are simply caused by brain activity. There is, therefore, no reason to believe in life after death - one of the main tenets of religious belief.  [1] Bube, Richard H, ‘Man Come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-gaps’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society,  , p.207


Religions have no true claim to special moral knowledge  Religions through the ages, and still today, have been agents of repression, sexism, elitism, homophobia, and - most of all - conflict, war, and racial hatred. The very nature of belief in received wisdom means that it must be, at its core, a conservative and regressive force. Moreover the positive moral rules that religions claim to promote tend to have existed independently of those religions – the world did not have to wait for the ten commandments to learn that murder and theft was wrong, but it waited until the 19th Century to reach a consensus that Slavery was wrong.  Whatever small amount of psychological comfort religious belief may give, the evils it is responsible for in the social and political worlds easily outweigh it.


This argument is based on a subtle fallacy – the only reason we are here to observe the fact that the Earth is so well suited to support life is that fact that it is so well suited to support life – if the Earth was a barren rock then we would not exist to see it. It shouldn’t be surprising therefore that out of the billions of solar systems in the Universe; we live on the planet that is suited to our survival.  Additionally, while the conditions necessary for life appear to be rare (and our ability to observe planets from even relatively nearby solar systems is limited), the Universe has billions and billions of chances to ‘get it right’. It is very unlikely that you will win the lottery, but with millions of people playing it is actually very likely that somebody will win the lottery.


This is just special pleading; firstly there is no reason to consider Godly wisdom as being beyond our capacity to comprehend; and secondly there are discernable flaws in that wisdom as it is presented in a way that humans are supposed to be able to perceive and understand.


The Prime Mover  The universe follows rules of causality – cause precedes effect. But it cannot be the case that cause and effect regress infinitely into the past – there must be a ‘prime cause’. There is an identifiable point for this – the Universe was formed about 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang, before which we cannot detect any chain of causality. What was the prime mover? It had by definition to be a being existing outside of our conception of reality – the natural answer being ‘God’.


The rareness of Life  Life requires an extremely fine set of conditions in order to exist. The right distance from the Sun, a magnetic field to deflect solar radiation, the right atmospheric composition and conditions etc. These conditions are extremely rare; indeed only on Earth have we observed that they are just right for life to have evolved. [1] This is so unlikely that it leads to the conclusion that God must have intervened.  [1] McAlpine, Kate, ‘Extraterrestrial life could be extremely rare’, physicsworld.com, 1 August 2011,


Revealed wisdom  Godly wisdom is not the same as human wisdom and cannot be subject to the same criticism. The nature of humanity means that our ability to understand God’s wisdom is fundamentally limited; and thus arguments based on morality or science are irrelevant – what matters is that God has revealed Himself.


This argument is an attempt to shoehorn God into one of the ever-shrinking gaps in our knowledge of the Universe and should be treated as such – it doesn’t really give reasons why one should believe in God, it throws up conjecture and asks ‘why not’?  If everything needs a prime cause, what is the prime cause of God? If God can be an exception, why can't the universe be one especially since it is more rational with accordance to Occam's Razor - that the simplest hypothosis is most likely to be correct. This point is merely a substitution of one problem by another.


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Evil may be thought of as the absence of good. It is a privation of goodness, just as darkness is the absence of light. God is good and the embodiment of goodness, but humans have been endowed with free will; they can make the choice not to follow the path of good. People have the ability to make both good and bad choices; if they did not then they would not truly be free. God’s greatest gift to humanity is thus also a heavy burden. [1]  [1] Kekes, John. 1990. Facing Evil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.


If there is a benevolent deity, then there should not be the kinds of evil observable in the world and He would likely show more interest in His creation than He appears to have done so far:  If God, or the gods, were good there would be no evil in the world. Disasters would not kill millions of innocents, disease and hunger would not claim the lives of children every day, war and genocide would not slaughter people indiscriminately as they have done for countless bloody millennia. The world is awash with blood, pain, and suffering. No loving God would make a world so imperfect and troubled. [1] The world’s ills are perfectly explained by the natural, amoral development of the Universe, of life, and of humanity. The reality of the Universe, however, is incompatible with a God of goodness, as He is conventionally described by today’s predominant religions, which stem from the Abrahamic tradition.  [1] Tooley, Michael. 2009. “The Problem of Evil”. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Available:


entirely natural theories can adequately explain belief in God and the development of religions, so an existent God is superfluous to the understanding of the phenomenon:  The reason people believe in God and why religions have formed can be explained perfectly well by natural processes and psychology. Religion is an outgrowth of humans’ brain architecture developed through the process of evolution; it developed as a by-product of other useful cognitive processes. [1] For example, survival capability is promoted by an ability to infer the presence of potentially hostile organisms, the ability to establish causal narratives for natural occurrences, and the ability to recognize that other people are independent agents, with their own minds, desires, and intentions. [2] These cognitive mechanisms, while invaluable to human survival and communal development, have the effect of causing humans to imagine supernatural purposefulness behind natural phenomena that could not be explained by other means. No gods are required to explain religious belief, so the existence of such belief is no reason to believe in such beings. Religion was a cradle during mankind’s childhood and adolescence. The time has come to grow up as a species and accept that there are no gods.  [1] Henig, Robin. 2007. “Darwin’s God”. The New York Times. Available:   [2] Pinker, Steven. 2004. “The Evolutionary Psychology of Evolution”. Annual Meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Available:


The question of God’s existence does matter, not only to those who believe, but to understanding of life and its meaning. If there is a God and He has a plan for humanity and the Universe, then in order to understand the plan and to become an active part in it, one must try to understand in some sense the nature of God. However, even if God were disinterested in His creation, that would do little to affect whether He exists or not.


It is unreasonable to suggest that God must reveal Himself to humanity, or to make His existence manifestly clear because that would undermine the value of faith. [1] Belief is an important component of all religious teachings because it is what allows the soul to transcend the material world and to commune with the divinity. For the religious, a life without faith is meaningless. Furthermore, if God were to make His desires and commands known, then free will would be undermined. It is necessary to the exercise of individual human agency that God not dictate every command to people. That is why God leaves life, at least on the surface, up to humans.  [1] Maitzen, Stephen. 2006. "Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism". Religious Studies 42.


In reality there are only two theological positions, atheism and theism; agnosticism is nothing but timid atheism:  God, like unicorns, has never been shown to exist, and thus it is logical to accept that He, just like unicorns, does not exist. That is why a position like agnosticism makes no sense. There are no agnostics on the subject of unicorns; there are only agnostics on the subject of God because people tend to be reticent to say they are atheists due to the prevalence of belief of God even in the most secular societies. But fantasy is fantasy, and an agnostic is really just an atheist by another name. Were someone to claim that dragons exist, the person he told it to would not be justified responding saying he did not know whether they exist and that it must be an open question until evidence is presented to corroborate the claim. [1] Rather, he would likely respond with disbelief in the absence of evidence. That is how reasoning works. Thus agnosticism is a philosophically meaningless position. There is either belief or lack of belief, atheism or theism. Opponents of atheism seeking to hide in the nebulous realm of agnosticism, or who claim that because one cannot know there is no God one must be agnostic, hold a position that is philosophically bankrupt.  [1] Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. Ealing: Transworld Publishers.


Entirely natural theories can adequately explain the existence and development of the Universe and all it contains, making God irrelevant to the discussion of reality:  Physics and cosmology explain the development and evolution of the Universe and the bodies within it. Chemistry explains the interactions of substances and the origin of life. Biology explains the development of life’s complexity through the long process of evolution. God, or gods, is a superfluous entity in the discussion of existence; He is entirely unnecessary to human scientific understanding. [1] At best, believers can point to various missing links in science’s explanation, using God to fill the gaps. The God of the Gaps is a weak God whose domain grows smaller each day as science progresses. Furthermore, there is no evidence of the supernatural existing at all, if that is what God is meant to be. The burden of proof in a debate concerning the existence of something is on the individual making the positive claim. In a debate over the existence of God, it is up to the believer to provide evidence for that belief. [2] The rational position in the absence of evidence is atheism. It is not a positive claim about anything, but is merely the absence of belief in God, which makes sense in the light of there being no positive evidence of God’s existence. If believers claim God lives outside the Universe, or that He cannot be empirically identified due to His ethereal nature, then in truth they are saying nothing. Only the natural world exists insofar as humans can demonstrate. The supernatural is pure fantasy.  [1] Boyer, Pascal. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.  [2] Russell, Bertrand. 1952. “Is There a God?” Campaign for Philosophical Freedom. Available:


Even if atheism was wrong and God did exist His seeming lack of interest and interaction with the Universe as far as humans can perceive means his existence is irrelevant:  It seems as if life goes on whether God exists or not. Theologians, philosophers, and laypeople have been fighting both in academia and on the actual battlefield over the question of God’s existence, yet in all the centuries no definitive answer one way or the other has been given by either side. [1] It seems there is little value to belief one way or the other, so arguing for God’s existence seems simply to be a waste of time. If God were proved to exist, or not to exist, little in life would change at all. Thus a position of atheism serves to relieve the hassle of pointless debate.  [1] Borne, Étienne. 1961. Atheism. New York: Hawthorn Books.


Science cannot explain everything. People have spoken of the existence of the soul and of God through the ages because reason and logic are sometimes not enough to explain the complexity and depth of the human experience. God is far more than the occupier of the gaps in scientific knowledge. However, the gaps are indicative of the limitations of science and show that faith and God can still have a place in human comprehension of the world.


There is no strict dichotomy in theology. It is perfectly reasonable for someone unsure of whether God exists to take up a position of agnosticism, refusing to emphatically accept the existence of God or to deny it. Atheism is a positive claim insofar as it is a statement about the nonexistence of God. The burden of proof is thus not so clearly on the shoulders of theism alone. Rather, they are rival claims that each side must be supported by positive evidence.


Not everything about religion can be explained by evolutionary psychology. The existence of the soul and the concept of an ethereal God not directly connected to the processes of the world could not simply come about by way of evolution. Rather, there must be true meaning in these concepts, or they must at least be indicative of something other than the strictly material, contradicting the denials of atheism.


Just because God cannot be understood by conventional understandings of physics and logic does not invalidate His existence. In fact, it is unsurprising that trying to discuss the attributes of God would confound human reason. That is why faith is essential to understanding, and why science and reason are limited tools. Thus even if one considers the conventional description of God to be unsatisfactory, it is not sufficient reason to conclude that God does not exist. That is why one should at best adopt a position of agnosticism.


If there were a God there would be irrefutable evidence of His existence and people would feel compelled to belief by the fact of it:  Many people do not believe in God, and the ranks of atheists are growing every day, particularly in the developed world. It seems that as human knowledge of the Universe expands and as social institutions develop and improve, people feel less dependent upon the crutch of religious faith, and place greater store in reason. [1] If God existed He would make His existence clear to all humanity, not just to a chosen few. In so doing His wisdom would naturally drown out an earthly knowledge, which would obviously be inferior to any that might be furnished by an omniscient being. [2] God has clearly never imparted His wisdom to people since no such divine wisdom exists in any holy book. Were there a correct holy book currently in use, it would necessarily be the only one, because everyone would acknowledge its superiority at once. Reality shows all holy books to be flawed works of flawed men. There is no glimmer of divine spark in any of them, and the only thing that separates most of them from the ravings of madmen is that large groups of people have chosen to believe them. The more reasonable conclusion is one of atheism, and that people believe in God out of ignorance, not revelation.  [1] Drange, Theodore. 1998. "Nonbelief as Support for Atheism". Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy.  [2] Schellenberg, John. 2005. "The Hiddenness Argument Revisited". Religious Studies 41.


The nature of God as it is conventionally described is logically contradictory:  A creator god is a logical absurdity, as demonstrated by empirical fact and rational reflection. Certainly God cannot exist outside of the Universe, as such a concept is effectively meaningless. In fact, physics explains that when the Universe expanded as an inflating field of space and time as the result of a quantum fluctuation, causality itself arose from the process, making a causative agent “prior” to the Universe not only unnecessary, but also impossible. Furthermore, the idea of an omnipotent God is logically contradictory because if God were omnipotent He would be able to create an entity greater than Himself, yet that is impossible. [1] The very attribute is logically unfounded, making the conventional explanation of God invalid. Thus atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is the only logically justified theological position.  [1] Savage, C. 1967. "The Paradox of the Stone". Philosophical Review 76(1).


If everything has a cause, then so too must the creator. Trying to place the deity outside of the spatio-temporal realm of the Universe is not a good argument, as nothing can be said meaningfully about what is “outside” the Universe, since we cannot observe or detect it. [1] Furthermore, saying God, or a creator, is uncaused and always existed is a poor argument because again this cannot be verified in any meaningful way. Irrespective of these problems, however, the argument falls down because it presupposes that the Universe has a cause, which is not necessarily the case. The very notion of causation is built into a temporal understanding of physics, which may not have been the case in the “pre-Universe”. Atheism can survive in the presence of science, theism cannot. If theism cannot survive, then neither can the agnostic middle ground based on the plausibility of theism.  [1] Mackie, J. L. 1982. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


The rational position in the absence of positive evidence about God is not agnosticism, but atheism. While there is always a degree of doubt in every statement, this does not mean that negative claims about an entities existence can never be made. One can rationally state that fairies do not exist, even if there is no positive evidence for their non-existence. The very fact that no evidence exists for the existence of fairies, in the same way there is no evidence for the existence of God, is evidence of the negative. Thus, in the evidence of positive evidence for God, the rational default position is atheism.


The complexity of the universe and of life cannot be explained by atheism:  Atheism suggests that the Universe came about by chance and the interaction of natural properties. Yet nature is marked by clear design that atheism cannot explain. The complexity of the human body, of planets, stars, and galaxies, and even of bacteria attests to the existence of creative agency. It is impossible that such things as interdependent species could come to exist without the guidance of a higher power. [1] Likewise, certain organisms can be shown to be irreducibly complex, meaning that if one were to remove any part of it, it could not function. This refutes the gradualist argument of evolution, since there is no selective pressure on the organism to change when it is functionless. For example, the bacterial flagellum, the “motor” that powers bacterial cells, loses all functionality if a single component is removed. [2] Besides design, the only explanation of its development is blind chance, which seems less sensible. Atheism cannot account for these facts and thus collapses into nonsense.  [1] Ratzsch, Del. 2009. "Teleological Arguments for God's Existence" The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.   [2] Davis, Percival and Dean Kenyon. 1989. Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins. Richardson: Foundation for Thought and Ethics.


Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. Since the Universe began to exist it must be caused:  Every human, every being, every object in the Universe is a finite and contingent being. These all have causes, yet a causal chain cannot be infinitely long. Humans are born, stars form from gases, even the Universe had a beginning 4.3 billion years ago. Nothing in the Universe causes itself. In order to escape the logical impossibility of the infinite causality loop it is necessary to posit the existence of an uncaused cause. This cause exists outside of the Universe, as it is cause of the Universe. [1] Without a creator, the Universe is a logical absurdity. Atheism cannot provide an alternative explanation to a creator, and thus fails quite literally from the beginning.  [1] Craig, William Lane. 1979. The Kalam Cosmological Argument. London: MacMillan.


In the absence of positive evidence for the existence of God the rational position is agnosticism, not atheism:  In a situation where there is an absence of either positive evidence for a claim or definite negative evidence for it, the natural response is not rejection of the claim, but rather skepticism and admission of lack of knowledge one way or the other. [1] In the case of religion and God, this position is agnosticism. Humans are fallible organisms, and thus all statements about truth and about the Universe must be qualified by some degree of doubt. Positively rejecting the existence of God, as atheism does, ignores this requisite doubt even though it cannot prove that there is no God. Rather, in the absence of evidence for or against the existence of God, the most the atheist can say honestly is that he does not know. The claims of atheism are positive ones and thus require evidence; an atheist position is thus faith-based in the same way a theist one is.  [1] Hume, David. 1748. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Oxford University Press (2008).


Atheism does not seek to explain the origin of the Universe, life, etc.; that is what science is for. Atheism is about the existence of God. The atheist position is supported, however, by the fact that there is no evident design in the Universe. People tend to anthropomorphize their environment, trying to assign human-like qualities to animals and nature. All of the complexity in the Universe can be attributed to natural processes; the Universe, stars, and life are all the product of physical and chemical interactions. There is no mystery in the basic process. Complexity can be shown to arise from less complex conditions without aid of intelligent agency. Clearly, complexity is not indicative of a creator. The complexity of the Universe does nothing to support claims for the existence of a deity, but rather showcases the wondrousness of the natural world.


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There are, of course, risks in any medical procedure. However circumcision remains astonishingly safe. Furthermore, denying the parents of a child the right to raise that child in accordance with their own beliefs would represent an unacceptable intrusion by the state into its citizens’ private and religious lives.  By implementing the resolution, a western liberal democratic state is obliging, say, orthodox Jewish parents, to compromise some of their most important moral and cultural beliefs. Ultra-orthodox Jewish groups believe, literally and without equivocation, that whoever breaks the covenant with God by not submitting to circumcision will be condemned for all eternity. The state should not compel parents (and children) to endure the moral, psychological and ideological turmoil associated with such a compromise; ultra-orthodox Jewish parents will see the state as forcing infinite harm upon their children.  There are risks to giving a child a bike or taking them on a plane. Parents are aware of this but act in what they consider to be the best interests of their child.  If we were to prevent parents from every taking a decision that might be risky for their children, they would never cross the street, eat a Big Mac or take up sports.