He cited an opinion editorial from Vint Cerf<\/a><\/strong>, one of the fathers of the Internet, where he argued that the Internet was an enabler of civil and human rights.<\/p>\n Louw also cited a recent amendment to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which now includes mention of the Internet under the article dealing with freedom of speech.<\/p>\n Just because freedom of speech on the Internet must be protected, it does not mean someone must provide you with free airtime or data, said Louw.<\/p>\n Similarly, the Bill of Rights in South Africa provides for freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of access to information to exercise or protect any rights.<\/p>\n As with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this does not mean tools used to exercise your rights must be free or their pricing regulated.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want cheap and free everything and data is no different,\u201d said Louw.<\/p>\n If there are things that need to be made cheap and free, data is behind several far more important ones, he said.<\/p>\n Louw warned that\u00a0flawed arguments<\/strong><\/a> have been made in favour of cutting the price of data.<\/p>\n Among these is that data is overpriced in South Africa, using simplistic comparisons.<\/p>\n Sophisticated pricing comparison that use gross national income (GNI) as a factor are also flawed, as they ignore issues such as input costs and other regional variances.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy not do that [use GNI] for anything else?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cT-shirts, peanut butter, soccer tickets, or train, bus, and taxi fares?\u201d<\/p>\n Another example of a flawed assumption is that the poor must not pay more for data.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not true of anything else, which is why we have welfare. Must building contractors lower the cost of housing because the poor can\u2019t afford it?\u201d<\/p>\n One of the reasons the Free Market Foundation got\u00a0involved in the wake of the #DataMustFall movement is it believes there is a danger of counterproductive intervention from the government.<\/p>\n Louw said there is a lack of facts amidst the rhetoric and reckless demands that could cause damage if acted on.<\/p>\n Even with the best of intentions, such policies could be destructive.<\/p>\n “Beware policies that have good intentions, and support policies that give good results,” he said.<\/p>\n The founder of the Free Market Foundation has argued that Internet access is not a human right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":105971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16900,35,13619],"class_list":["post-187415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","tag-free-market-foundation","tag-headline","tag-leon-louw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187417,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187415\/revisions\/187417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cheap and free everything<\/h3>\n
Government intervention based on wrong data<\/h3>\n
![\"Leon](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Leon-Louw-640x430.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNow read: Be careful what you wish for with #DataMustFall<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"