Digital Rights

A person should be able to understand and control the systems they own or rely upon. Software must not turn ownership into a temporary permission granted by a manufacturer, nor make ordinary use conditional on surveillance or remote approval.

Software freedom is central because effective control requires the ability to study, modify, replace, and share implementations. This does not eliminate security or responsibility; it makes restrictions visible and contestable.

Access to information should not depend on one browser, operating system, application, or provider. Open formats and protocols allow independent implementations, preserve competition, and reduce the risk that knowledge becomes inaccessible when a product disappears.

Interoperability is particularly important for public services and cultural or scientific information. A nominally public resource is not fully public if it can be reached only through proprietary software chosen by a third party.

Participation in modern life should not require continuous collection of personal data. Consent is weak when refusing surveillance means losing access to essential communication, employment, education, or administration.

Data minimisation, local processing, encryption, transparent decision systems, and meaningful alternatives are structural protections—not optional interface settings hidden behind a dozen menus.

Centralised services can be convenient and efficient, but they concentrate technical power, failure, and control. Decentralised and federated systems are valuable when they allow communities and individuals to operate independently while retaining interoperability.

Decentralisation is not automatically virtuous; it must be evaluated by the freedoms and resilience it actually provides.

Digital knowledge should survive changes in companies, platforms, licences, and software. Public works, scientific literature, technical documentation, and cultural archives require open formats, redundant preservation, and the legal ability to copy and migrate material.

These principles are expressed more formally in the Universal Declaration of Digital Human Rights. The text is a personal proposal intended for discussion and revision, not an enacted legal instrument.