Italy’s Declaration of Internet Rights
Posted on:: November 8th, 2014

An ad hoc study commission of the Italian Chamber of Deputies has published a draft “Declaration of Internet Rights” that should be cause for cheers and cheer. It’s currently open for public comment at the Civici Platform — which by itself is pretty cool.

TechPresident explains that this came about

    thanks to the initiative of the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, a dedicated Committee of experts and members of the Parliament from the Committee on Internet Rights and Duties. The bill aims to inform the debate about online civil liberties and fundamental freedoms during the Italian semester of the European Union presidency…

I like the document a lot. A lot a lot. The principles are based on a genuine understanding of the value that the Net brings and what enables the Net to bring that value. This is crucial because so often those who seek to govern the Net do so because they see it primarily as a threat to order or a challenge to their power.

The Declaration focuses on the rights of individuals, taking the implicit stance (or so I read it) that the threat to those rights comes not only from Internet malefactors and giant Internet conglomerates run amok, but also from those who seek to govern the Net. It includes as rights not only access to the Net, but access to education about how to use the Net, a point too often forgotten. (Not by Eszter Hargittai, though, who has done the seminal work in showing that Internet skills are not as easily acquired as we often assume.)

[…]

Continua qui: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2014/11/08/italys-declaration-of-internet-rights/