Internet Rights

The proposal of an Internet Bill of Rights was first conceived at the outset of the World Summit for Information Society, in Tunis, 2005. The consensus gathered around this proposal, encompassing governments, civil society and non-governmental organizations, led to the formation of a Dynamic Coalition, which held its first workshop during the 2006 IGF in Athens. In September 2007, the Italian Government organized a Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights, in Rome, to discuss in a multistakeholder environment the general concepts and methods that should guide this work. 

During the Rio IGF Meeting, as a result of the debate that took place in the workshop of the Dynamic Coalition, the Internet Bill of Rights has been defined as an on-going process that builds upon existing fundamental rights, promotes their enforcement, and fosters the recognition of emerging principles.

These rights and principles – deriving from Internet policy discussions – include, among others, privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, universal access, network neutrality, interoperability, global reachability of all Internet nodes, the use of open formats and standards, public access to knowledge, and the right to innovate, as well as market-oriented principles such as the right to a fair and competitive online market, and consumer rights in general.

In the framework of the IGF mandate and of the WSIS outcome, the discussion and realization of this Bill of Rights process is crucial. In this regard, we support the proposal made by the Dynamic Coalition that the debate on the framing and enforcement of Internet rights be one of the major themes in future IGF Meetings, starting from the next IGF Meeting in 2008.

The Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Bill of Rights is an informal, open group of organizations, companies, governments and individuals that feel the need to work together for a better definition of the rights and duties of the individual users of the Internet.

Rooted in the United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum, the effort aims at understanding how traditional human rights can be adapted and expanded in the new online environment, and how they could be formalized in one or more documents that could act as a reference and be adopted as a code of conduct on an opt-in basis.

If you share this battle, we ask you to support the campaign as individual or as organization; if you like, you can also join the mailing list to participate in the discussions, have your say, and help us reach this historical objective!

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