Four in five believe internet access is a fundamental right

Four in five people around the word believe that web access is a fundamental human right, according to a new survey.

Seventy-eight per cent of the web users polled believe that the web offers them greater freedom.

The poll, which collated the answers from more than 27,000 people across 26 countries and was conducted on behalf of the BBC World Service, found that 87 per cent of intent users felt that web access should be a basic right. More than 70 per cent of non-users felt they should have access to the net.

In Japan, Mexico and Russia, nearly 75 per cent of respondents said they could not cope without their internet connection. Ninety per cent of those polled in Turkey believed web access was a fundamental human right, making it the strongest supporter of the widely held sentiment.

 

"The right to communicate cannot be ignored," Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.
"The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created."
He said that governments must "regard the internet as basic infrastructure - just like roads, waste and water".
Seventy-eight per cent pollsters believe that the web gave them greater levels of freedom. This belief was most popular with the US respondents, who were also the respondents that were the most confident to express their opinions openly online.
However, many web users expressed concerns about the dangers of hacking, fraud and privacy. A majority of internet users in Japan, Germany, France, China and South Korea were not confident about expressing their opinions online.
But government regulation was not viewed as the correct method to solve these issues, with over half of the 27,000 respondents agreeing that that internet “should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere”.
Participants in South Korea, Nigeria and Mexico heavily agreed with this statement – however the belief was less popularly expressed by respondents in Turkey, Pakistan and China. Only 16 per cent of the Chinese respondents agreed with the need to ensure that governments refrain from regulating the web. China’s government has faced increasing scrutiny after Google, the largest search engine, threaten to leave the world’s biggest web market earlier this year, because of the country’s strict censorship rules and suspicions of untoward hacking.
"Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the internet as their fundamental right," said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan which conducted the survey. "They think the web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it."