United Nations Human Rights Council has issued a document on human rights protection on the Internet. The UN charter has ruled that people's rights should be protected online as well as offline, notably freedom of expression.
The resolution states that the UN Human Rights Council "affirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice". Also, the Council "recognizes the global and open nature of the Internet as a driving force in accelerating progress towards development in its various forms". The Human Rights Council has called upon all states "to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at the development of media and information and communications facilities in all countries".
This week many of Russia's resources — among them Russian Wikipedia, LiveJournal and Russia's most popular social network, VKontakte — have objected to the new Internet blacklist bill. The bill № 84917-6 ("On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information") has currently been passed with certain amendments, allowing Russian government to create an Internet blacklist for "illegal" websites related to child abuse, drug use, "extremist" propaganda or other illegal content.
UN Human Rights Council's resolution can be found at UN's official website.
