Fifteen Eighty Four

For you reading this text on the Cambridge University Press blog, life without access to the internet has probably become unthinkable. We have become dependent on it for many things we do. But online access is not just a matter of convenience or doing things faster. Rather, without the internet, there would be no Fifteen Eighty Four blog or on-demand real-time information, and the world would not be a mouse click away. We have come to rely on the internet even for the exercise of many of our most fundamental interests – our human rights – for example those to free expression, free association, healthcare, education, social security, or work.

Yet, according to estimates of the United Nations Telecommunication Union (ITU), in 2023 a third of humanity (or 2.6 billion people) have never used the internet. Additionally, many of those counted among those already connected have never had meaningful internet access, as the ITU regards anyone as an internet user who has gone online at least once in the past three months. Even in the most affluent countries, internet access is not universal. It is especially the least well-off members of society that cannot (or struggle to) afford the costs of end devices and data services. In the UK, for example, the government’s telecommunications regulator Ofcom estimated that in 2023, 7 per cent of citizens above the age of sixteen did not have home internet access. A portion of these have voluntarily forgone internet use. But for many others, internet access is unaffordable.

Considering the importance the internet has assumed for those who can access it, and the high number of involuntary unconnected people, it is no surprise that the view that internet access is a human right has become increasingly popular. In the media and many academic publications, one regularly encounters the claim that internet access has already been recognised as a human right. Rights and human rights, though, normally entail some form of positive provisions to ensure that people can enjoy their entitlements. But the UN and other crucial international institutions have not yet recognised anything as demanding as a human right to internet access that includes guarantees to connectivity. At most, the UN has argued that rights that people have offline must also be respected online.

It is one thing to claim internet access to be a human right, it is quite another to provide an argument for this claim. This is what Free Internet Access as a Human Right does in its first part. It offers the first comprehensive philosophical justification for this idea and also provides arguments concerning what this novel human right would reasonably have to entail. Arguing for such a human right has to overcome several formidable obstacles. For example, one might deny that we can have something as fundamental as a human right to a technology that might well be superseded by different technologies in the future. Human rights, it might be argued, are reserved for those things that are most urgent, essential, and of universal and timeless importance for human beings – such as food, water, shelter, free speech, or political participation. One might also worry that declaring internet access a human right would unhelpfully inflate the entire category of human rights because if internet access is a human right – what else is as well? Or one might think that people’s interest in having online access is already sufficiently protected by existing human rights (e.g. free speech) so that there is no need for a new, standalone human right. There are therefore multiple difficult hurdles that the argument for a new human right to internet access must cross. One important purpose of Free Internet Access as a Human Right is to meet these justificatory challenges.

The book is a work in political philosophy. However, it uses an interdisciplinary approach to establish its core claim that internet access must be considered a human right, as without it people no longer have adequate opportunities to exercise their human rights in our increasingly digitalised world. Insights from various disciplines and a multitude of examples of internet use from around the world are presented to establish the plausibility of this claim. Beyond this, though, empirical examples and multidisciplinarity are essential for understanding what a new human right to internet access would reasonably entitle people to. In its second part, the book uses Henry Shue’s seminal work on rights as social guarantees against standard threats to spell out the content of this right. This is done by identifying those things that jeopardise the empowering potential of the internet, and which have unfortunately frequently made it an instrument for undermining human rights.

One of these standard threats, as mentioned above, is the inability of billions to afford the means of internet access. In response, building on the understanding of human rights as matters of international concern, Free Internet Access as a Human Right suggests a global standard of minimum connectivity and describes in detail the duties of international support to achieve universal connectivity. Other standard threats, though, require public institutions to protect a certain quality of internet access from misuse by those who wish to use the internet to oppress, exploit, or attack internet users. To be of empowering use and a means for the progress of mankind, the book argues, internet access must therefore be ‘free’ in two crucial senses: it must be provided for those unable to afford it, and it must be safeguarded against unjustifiable interferences by actors that can be expected to abuse the internet’s power for their own benefit and at the expense of everyone else. In this respect, the book focuses on governments, private corporations, and internet users themselves.

Concerning misuse of the internet by governments, it is staggering that – according to estimates of Freedom House – in 2022, more than 3/4 of those who had internet access lived in countries where people were arrested for posting political, social, or religious content online and almost 2/3 of all global internet users were subject to online censorship. Authoritarian regimes like Russia, and especially China, are perfecting ‘digital authoritarianism’ to control the information their subjects can access, to actively misinform their populations, and to identify and eliminate their opponents. But, as Edward Snowden revealed, also democratic states like the US or the UK have misused the internet to monitor the online activities of people in ways that are incompatible with human rights and that have been deemed unlawful by their own courts.

With respect to the standard threats to free internet access posed by private corporations, the book discusses ‘surveillance capitalism’ – the practice of some of the biggest businesses in the world to harvest maximal amounts of personal information of their customers. Free Internet Access as a Human Right argues that this business model in the way it currently operates is a violation of the human right to internet access and of our human right to privacy. The book also engages with the problems that the operations of the dominant social media platforms at present pose for the use of our human rights online. Moreover, the protection of the principle of net neutrality is identified as essential for free internet access and use because without it the exercise of our rights to free speech and free information are unjustly curtailed for the sake of maximising profits.

Finally, Free Internet Access as a Human Right addresses the standardly expectable threat that internet users pose to each other if people’s rights are not protected from abuse by other individuals online. Discussing this issue also requires considering online misinformation and whether the internet inevitably leads to political polarisation among democratic populations. This is because, if the internet necessarily would lead to individuals attacking each other and to dividing people politically because of the way that information circulates online (e.g. fake news, echo chambers, conspiracy theories), this would significantly limit the positive power that the internet could have for our human rights and political empowerment.

In its second part, the book discusses all these standard threats with a view to identifying protective obligations that public authorities can be said to have as part of recognising the human right to internet access. Without such protections, we can already see that the internet is becoming a ‘repression technology’ and a medium that is used to maximise profits for a few – rather than empowering the many and promoting human development. Ultimately, Free Internet Access as a Human Right provides a much-needed positive vision for the internet and its development. We are not going to abandon the internet and must therefore shape it in the right ways. This book offers a comprehensive vision of the internet as an empowering medium that promotes our human rights. It is a call to political action and a resource for all those who want to ensure that the internet is a force for the good in our digitalised world.