The United States and the European Union are converging on a common vision for the future of the Internet

At a time when the threat of authoritarian governments and systemic censorship is rampant, the prospect of two major world powers, the United States and the European Union, agreeing on a plan to protect long-term freedom of expression can only be gratifying. .

With a pompous name – A Declaration on the Future of the Internet, this is in fact a three-page document, but it sets out a number of rules that could prove essential to the protection of democracy, the rule of law, peace, human rights and fundamental freedoms. citizens of the signatory countries. Signatories include the United States, the European Union and 32 other non-EU countries, including the United Kingdom and Japan.

Thus, through the non-binding declaration, liberal democracies around the world unite behind a free internet for all, taking responsibility for guaranteeing and protecting this ideal.

Specifically, the document represents the commitment of the parties to work for a common vision of the Internet as “a single interconnected communication system for all humanity”.

The first goal is in stark contrast to what has become, in fact, the Internet in many autocratic countries, which have turned government intervention and total censorship into everyday practices. At the top of the list, but now easily challenged by Russia, China has gained notoriety for its extensive regulation of the Internet through the so-called Great Firewall, an ultra-sophisticated censorship system that also uses artificial intelligence technologies. Russia, in a much more primitive way, imposes its own agenda for controlling access to information sources, but based on terror and the complete blocking of inconvenient sources of information, rather than the use of sophisticated technologies.

The declaration by which democratic nations are committed to guaranteeing the right of Internet users to free and unrestricted information appears as a strengthening of the freedoms already guaranteed by the signatory countries’ constitutions, aiming at the right to free expression and information.

The commitments made include “supporting an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable and secure internet” for all. However, the commitments made do not preclude the possibility of reasonable regulation of the Internet, aimed at blocking and stopping dangerous practices.