A recent survey conducted by the BBC (pdf) found that the vast majority of users around the world consider access to the Internet to be a right. The speed at which Internet access has gone from a privilege, to a luxury, and now to a right is a testament to how transformative it has been.
Across all 26 countries, 79 percent of Internet and non-Internet users said that they felt that Internet access should be “the fundamental right of all people.” When isolated for people who already use the Internet, that number went up to 87 percent.
Almost universally (90 percent), respondents said that the Internet was a good place to learn and almost 80 percent said the Internet brought them greater freedom.
One of the top concerns was the ability to express opinions online safely—overall, respondents were split almost evenly over this issue, and users in South Korea, Germany, France, and Japan held the strongest beliefs that they could not safely express opinions while surfing. Other major areas of concern were fraud (leading at 32 percent) as well as violent or explicit content (27 percent) and threats to privacy (20 percent).
