Explain how the issue of Free Internet Access and the protection of Universal Moral and Human Rights appears in the following passage:
Human rights are based on basic [universal] interests that are essential for a minimally decent life. As James Nickel explains, ‘human rights are not ideals of the good life for humans; rather they are concerned with ensuring the conditions, negative and positive, of a minimally good life’. The basic interests encompass fundamental welfare concerns such as the means of subsistence, physical security, and shelter. . . . Minimal decency also requires important provisions for protecting people’s equal moral status (such as political and civil rights). Determining which human rights and provisions are needed for a minimally decent life requires ‘practical reasoning, backed up often by empirical inquiry’. The argument in this article is an example of such practical reasoning in that it argues that in our digital age, universal Internet access has become a sufficiently urgent interest to justify regarding it as a human right because such access is now necessary for securing important features of a minimally decent life.
