A human right to the Internet?

Is access to the Internet a human right - or should it be?

Jon Penney was the most recent InternetNZ Cyberlaw Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington. He studied aspects of this question, with a particular focus on whether anything in the existing framework of human rights law could give a pointer towards answering that question.

He gave a farewell lecture on the subject earlier this month, and the video of that presentation is now available online here: http://www.r2.co.nz/20100709/ It's worth a lookif you are interested in the issue.

There's a good piece by Stephen Bell on the Computerworld website (available here) that covers similar sets of issues.

And last Wednesday, InternetNZ convened an initial round table discussion with the Human Rights Commission on the same area. You'll hear more on that in coming weeks too.

What's your view?  Should access to the Internet be considered a fundamental right?