“Should Internet access be seen as a fundamental human right, in the same category as the right to free speech or clean drinking water? The United Nations says it should, but in a New York Times op-ed, one of the fathers of the Internet argues it shouldn’t,” Mathew Ingram reports for GigaOM. “Vint Cerf is the co-creator of the TCP/IP standard the global computer network is built on, so when he says something about the impact of the Internet, it’s probably worth paying attention to. But is he right? And what are the implications if he’s wrong?”

“In a nutshell, Cerf’s argument seems to be that if we define Internet access itself as a right, we are placing the focus on the wrong thing,” Ingram reports. “The ‘Net, he says, is just a technological tool that enables us to exercise other fundamental rights, such as the right to free speech or access to information — and rights should not be awarded to tools, but to the ends that they enable us to reach.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Sarah" for the heads up.]