Fundamental rights

Earlier this week, I was reading Lysiane Gagnon in La Presse. She was talking about the fact that the French three strikes law on piracy had been overturn by the Supreme Court since its harshest penalty (banishment from the Internet) was deemed too strong, denying a fundamental right.

Now whether or not Internet access is a fundamental right or not is an interesting discussion but is not the point of this post. One of Mrs. Gagnon's arguments was that because of internet penetration is far from 100% in France, it made no sense to have it as a fundamental right. Therefore, it couldn't be a right because everyone doesn't have it already?

A fundamental right is based on a society's morals, not on the practicality of it. If you say that health is a right, then you find a way to make everyone have access to health care. At one point in history, every single fundamental right that we have was not available to everyone and our societies worked hard to achieve their universality. The same can be done with the Internet.