Qustion 5.2

Universal Declaration of the Digital Bill of Rights

As the name suggests, the Bill of Rights is universal, meaning that it applies to countries such as North Korea, Vietnam, China and Cuba and countries like them that do not have digital rights. The aim of the Digital Bill of Rights is to provide a comprehensive piece of legislation that all digital citizens can understand and adhere to.

Digital citizens have access to the following rights:

• The right to a free and uncensored Internet.
• The right to an open, unobstructed Internet.
• The right to equality on the Internet.
• The right to gather and participate in online activities.
• The right to create and collaborate on the Internet.
• The right to freely share their ideas.
• The right to access the Internet equally, regardless of who they are or where they are.
• The right to freely associate on the Internet.
• The right to privacy on the Internet.
• The right to benefit from what they create.  
• Companies have a right to promote themselves within the digital society

These rights are paired with responsibilities and they are as thus:

• The way in which digital citizens use  the Internet should not affect the society negatively
• Companies have a responsibility to be clear about product benefits and features, as well as the limitations of the products
• It is the consumers’ responsibility to ensure that the companies they support are ethical in their conduct and business practice.
• Digital citizens have the responsibility to ensure they use the information in a legal and ethical manner.
• It is the responsibility of the digital citizenship to search for information that is not harmful to them, to say things that will not harm them or their reputation and, to share things with others that will not hurt them in any form or manner.
• Digital citizens have the responsibility to protect copyrights of their digital content.

 

 

 Adapted from: http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/digital-bill-of-rights.html [Accessed on 15 September 2016]