The Right to Access the Internet: Its Legal Content and the Mechanism of Implementation

The article presents the authors' position on the right to access the Internet. According to the authors, this right can be considered as a human right. Nevertheless, this right is not fundamental; it can be derived from internationally recognized human rights and freedoms. Proving this thesis, the authors analyze the legal content of the right as well as the legal mechanism of its enjoyment by individuals. The authors come to the conclusion that all legal possibilities covered by the right to access the Internet are guaranteed by the existing fundamental rights. According to the authors, the right to access the Internet has a multi-component legal mechanism of enjoyment involving the elements of mechanisms provided by other human rights and freedoms. In this regard, the system of guarantees of this right includes both negative guarantees (aimed at ensuring personal freedom, autonomy of individuals and non-interference in their private life), and positive ones (requiring the states’ active actions to create conditions for providing equal opportunities for getting access to the global computer network without discrimination and at a reasonable price). The authors argue that exercising the right to access the Internet by individuals lead to the result that does not repeat the results of enjoyment of other rights and freedoms. This result is not a mere expansion of the tools for searching, receiving and disseminating information. It consists in involving an individual to the global information society, which opens up wide opportunities for enjoying many other rights and freedoms, at a qualitatively new level. The article also provides an analysis of the main international documents in the field of providing access to the Internet and regulating this issue at the national level. Based on a comparative legal study of the regulation of Internet access in various countries, the authors come to the conclusion that at present it is impossible to formulate a uniform approach to determining the content of the right and the mechanisms for its enjoyment, which would be sufficiently universal and would be satisfactory from the point of view of both international law and national legal systems. In this, the authors of the article see the need for further doctrinal development of the right to access the Internet and elaboration of international standards in this field.

Keywords: Internet, access to the Internet, the right to access the Internet, human rights, subjective rights, the global information society, the right to information, freedom of expression, human rights guarantees