Digital Rights and Freedoms: A Framework for Surveying Users and Analyzing Policies

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework of ten Internet user rights, assesses their stability through surveys, and compares existing policies to identify gaps and priorities in digital rights discourse.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive set of user rights principles and analyzes their stability and relevance, highlighting overlooked freedoms related to software platforms.

Findings

User rights principles are stable across surveys

Freedoms to participate in platform design are viewed as less essential

Existing policies often omit platform-related freedoms

Abstract

Interest has been revived in the creation of a "bill of rights" for Internet users. This paper analyzes users' rights into ten broad principles, as a basis for assessing what users regard as important and for comparing different multi-issue Internet policy proposals. Stability of the principles is demonstrated in an experimental survey, which also shows that freedoms of users to participate in the design and coding of platforms appear to be viewed as inessential relative to other rights. An analysis of users' rights frameworks that have emerged over the past twenty years similarly shows that such proposals tend to leave out freedoms related to software platforms, as opposed to user data or public networks. Evaluating policy frameworks in a comparative analysis based on prior principles may help people to see what is missing and what is important as the future of the Internet continues to be debated.