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Mike Dent wrote:
> 
> Sorry I had to come back in on this.
> 
> The Internet was developed by universities and military to provide a means of communication between their sites, I am sure you all know that.

This is a very simplistic perspective on a series of complicated
convergences of factors (from Greek poetry, Roman rhetoric and medieval
mystics, through Babbage, to phone systems, information theory and so
on), the most important one of which, perhaps, is the development of the
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (http - or the World Wide Web), which was
very explicitly crafted for freedom of use (this is not equal to
gratis!): http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/06/7127.ars

Read Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web for his own story of the last leg.

See also this comprehensive article about network neutrality:
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?70+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+51+(spring+2007)

> Since when did that infrastructure become something that should be free
> and we should have a right to use? Or, have I got the whole thing wrong and you guys do not expect it to be your right to use those networks for free?

There is no such thing as a free lunch anyway - however, this is a
matter of freedom. So far we all pay for a hole into the internet by
giving money to Richard Branson or someone like that.

You have an odd approach to the issue of "rights". I have already
spelled it out, but here goes again: rights don't drop from the sky,
they are not something you "have" unless you fight for them. If not
hundreds of thousands of people had died for the rights you enjoy now,
you wouldnt have them. This also includes the right to private property
of which I imagine you are an supporter. The middle classes, no matter
what one might think about the bourgeoise/capitalist revolution, secured
the rights you enjoy to live, if you do, in your own house and
accumulate wealth under your roof and in the bank.

Also, once gained, rights still have to be maintained. They can be
eroded very quickly; for instance most privacy rights gained in
processes that began a bit more than a hundred years ago are
disappearing through such draconian laws as the UK Terrorism Act 2000.
More background on privacy here:
https://knowledgelab.org.uk/Privacy&Surveillance

Rights and civil liberties struggles in general are inter-generational
processes. You fight today for your children's rights tomorrow, but with
your attitude there won't be any, since you neither seem to want any,
nor to realise that they are not given or naturally correct/incorrect.
They are social constructions - we choose to make them or we don't. If
you prefer to have a closed down Internet I can't for the life of me
understand where you are coming from, unless you just want to provoke
mindlessly.

> When did it get the fluffy name Cyberspace or cloud or such things, does that make it easier to claim our rights on it?

Cyberspace as a term predates the web. However, reification and myth
making are crucial tools in the historical struggles for civil liberties
and freedoms. For sure.

> It is a network of wires and routers/switches that people own. Do we not have to pay for the use of that equipment or pay for the power to run it all, the manpower to install it?

You miss the entire point here. It is not a question of payment - so
Richard is right, it seems: you have the wrong end of the beer/speech
stick. I refer to previous post for clarification about what is at
stake. That said, I do think it should be free to use, like the library.
In fact it is a library.

> Perhaps in future we will have a internet tax licence to pay, every time your packets need access to another country you will have to pay tax on for that country before they proceed, kind of funny but I guess it could happen :)

That is pretty much what is on the cards - but I fail to see the funny
part?!

-m