I’m getting sick of the debt downgrade issue, so let’s shift to another topic.
The title to this post may seem like a joke, but Europe’s bizarre courts have decided to trample the property rights of landlords by ruling that tenants have a “right” to satellite TV and therefore cannot be barred from installing dishes.
Here are some excerpts from the Daily Mail’s report.
It is regarded as a luxury that allows people to watch top sport and blockbuster movies from the comfort of their armchairs. But owning a satellite dish is actually a human right, according to unelected European judges. In an extraordinary ruling, lawmakers in Strasbourg have warned that banning dishes on listed buildings, social housing and even private homes could breach the right to freedom of expression… The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Britain’s discrimination watchdog, has now published new guidance warning that landlords could be at risk of being sued if they try to stop their tenants putting up a satellite dish.
We should not be surprised by this odd decision. European courts already have ruled that free soccer broadcasts are a human right, so there’s obviously a pattern of inventing rights that require the violation of other people’s property rights.
To be fair, other government entities can be equally stupid when it comes to fabricating human rights. The Finish government, for instance, decided that there’s now a human right to broadband access.
And the Bolivian government has decided that there’s a human right to stolen property.
I wonder if the politicians and judges might rethink some of these decisions if people decided that they had a “human right” to rob the homes of the political elite?
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] that European courts that have ruled that there’s an entitlement to free soccer broadcasts and a right to satellite TV. About as nutty as the Finnish court that ruled there’s a right to broadband access, and as crazy […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
You pushed the argument too far, Dan.
From what I read from your quote up there, the judges only ruled that banning satellite dish was unconstitutional. They didn’t declare that everybody shall have one. They didn’t declare that government must provide them one.
They declared that installing one does not require permit from the government.
[…] Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right. […]
[…] It’s also at least as silly as the European courts that have ruled that there’s an entitlement to free soccer broadcasts and a right to satellite TV. […]
I’m not sure about Satellite TV, but the Finns have it right. Access to Pajamas Media, Instapundit, and danieljmitchell.wordpress.com should be a universal human right.
[…] Is Satellite TV Now a Human Right? […]
As a much younger man reading Ann Rand’s Atlas Shrugged & other publications, I concluded that she was OTT & somewhat contrived to make her point …now, maybe not so! Maybe she was a visionary!
Satellite dishes are one of the few ways people can tune into programming from Arabic speaking countries. Most people in Europe who have such dishes come from such countries. (Check out the balconies of immigrant neighborhoods in Brussels, Berlin, Paris). Just thinking that perhaps there are multiculturalist intents behind such legislation flying under the banner of ‘human rights’.
For quite a while now, it’s been a FCC regulation that HOA/landlords/etc. cannot interfere with the placement of a satellite dish and the like.
http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
I’d suggest that Florida, my state of Colorado, and any others are merely codifying locally what is required at the federal level.
Rooftop solar panels? I tried that at my former townhome complex in Colorado, and because the HOA was responsible for roof maintenance, it would not approve anything attaching to the roof. …seemed reasonable to me, given that rationale.
@Brian,
The difference is that Florida has decided that an outside entity (HOA’s) may not interfere with your ability to improve or modify your own property. As far as this writer is concerned outside parties should have no say in how ones own property is used, modified, or improved except within the very narrowly defined limits of public safety and sound engineering practice.
Florida has a law that no homeowner association can have a covenant against rooftop solar panels. C’est la meme chose
A right to entertainment, eh? Wasn’t there another world-dominating civilization that held that belief? I wonder what happened to them…
It gets even better. In Germany everybody has to pay for the “public TV”. Citizens as well as corporations. So if you run a small business from home you have to pay twice – once as a citizen, once as a business. It sums up to 220€ a year (so 440€ a year for those who pay twice). All in all 7bn € are coerced that way and funneled into a state run broadcasting network that is prone with corruption, full with politicians whose career is in a dead end and who need a well paying job (some of the top brass earn more than a State Governor!) and is of course rather leftist-liberal than anything else. If you are a welfare recipient it is part of the “minimum of existence” to pay your TV fees.