Internet access should be a human right.

Judge: whiteflame    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: DebatingMaster
Reasoning:
From the outset, Pro sets up a position that he never firmly defends. This debate is fundamentally about what is and is not a human right, and whether Internet access deserves to be admitted to what is. Pro doesn't spend much time arguing that. He spends most of his argument discussing the benefits of the Internet, but not relating those benefits to a human right. One can easily see how it would be beneficial for the Internet to be broadly available to everyone, but the resolution is not “Everyone should have Internet access,” and so much of these points are tangential to the debate.

I have a hard time seeing the connection being made here, and Con makes that blatantly clear to me throughout the debate. He gives me a definition, relates it to things both sides accept are human rights, and then challenges Pro to meet that definition. Pro simply never rises to the challenge. He continues to tell the same story about how good the Internet is without ever framing those benefits in the context of a basic human right. Con is very clear in how he views a human right – as a basic necessity for life – and yet I don't see a response to that. So when Pro admits that these issues are more important, he essentially concedes the debate. Con is telling me that these rights are making a very blatant threshold for what is and is not a human right, and without contesting that threshold, I'm forced to fully accept that that threshold is entirely reasonable. Maybe the Internet is something that people should have, but if it doesn't meet the threshold of a human right, then that ends the debate.

Much of Con's argumentation beyond this is just gravy, as the decision is made mainly based on Pro's inability to meet the resolution.

Feedback:
9spaceking – Know your resolution, and evaluate your burden before you go into a debate like this. If your opponent challenges your burden, as Con did here, be prepared to argue that your burden is different from what he says. I actually would have bought that the definition that he was giving was far too narrow if you had argued it well enough.

Beyond that, really take the time to explain the advantages of the Internet on a deeper level. Much of what I see here are just claims without any solid warrants or real impacts. For example, what does it mean to allow communication over very large distances in an instant? Why is that a necessary aspect of our lives? Why is access to the news the most important thing in a dynamic society? I'm surprised I didn't see any discussion on what access to information in general means to societies – essentially, the poor get limited or no access, while the rich get plenty. An argument could be made that it entrenches classism, and blocks the capacity of education to bring people out of poverty.

Lastly, note that simply saying that the UN views it as a human right doesn't make it a human right. You've got to go through and determine why the UN views it that way so that we can all appreciate it. Without that explanation, all I get here is an appeal to authority.

DebatingMaster – You hit the right points on the definition. I would have liked to have seen some of your offense earlier in the debate – it really only starts appearing in R3, and it should make an appearance early and often. With regards to those arguments, I'll give you some feedback on how well they would have worked.

You start by mentioning costs, stating that there are alternate uses. Pro could have easily rebutted this by pointing out that the debate is about whether it should be inducted as a human right, not how it should be implemented. I get that its induction means that there is some onus on the international community to then afford them access to that right, just as there is for food and water, but it's a secondary issue, and one that Pro could have gotten around if he had understood where his burdens lay.

The abuse argument is intriguing, but again, focuses strongly on implementation. It's more basic, in that it showcases a flaw in a very vague case from Pro and something much more fundamental to the discussion of extended access than just dollars and cents, but it could have been similarly dismissed as irrelevant to a discussion of what should and should not be a human right, at least for the most part. There is the deeper argument that taking away any Internet rights anywhere would be viewed as a very large crime and that, therefore, there would be a number of issues that legal systems would simply be unable to address. That probably needed to be better fleshed out, but it's a good start.

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2 users rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: admin    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: DebatingMaster