IE University backs defense of fundamental rights by signing up to #ForTheWeb

IE University is the first in Europe to sign up to #ForTheWeb, set up by the World Wide Web Foundation, the brainchild of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The initiative aims to guarantee free internet access around the world and to defend the basic rights and public freedoms of all internet users. Companies such as Google and Facebook, along with personalities such as Jonathan Zittrain and Richard Branson, have already signed up to #ForTheWeb, which launched in November and will run through 2019.

#ForTheWeb is bringing companies and institutions together to commit themselves to working on a series of principles to protect access to and navigation on an open web as a public good and a basic right for people everywhere.

The organizers have drawn up a contract based on a series of core principles proposing that companies, countries and individuals take action to make the internet accessible to all, promote respect for privacy and the treatment of personal data, and to implement technologies that support the development of humanity.

“Technology will humanize education. At IE University, we’re aware of the importance of guaranteeing fundamental rights on the internet and we think that the current evolution of the web could threaten rights such as privacy, image, or reputation, which is why we are signing up to this contract to carry out actions to provide broader and better access to the internet around the world", said Diego del Alcázar Silvela, founder and President of IE.

The latest report by the International Telecommunications Union, the UN body that works to improve internet access around the world, says that 51.2% of the planet’s population, some 3.9 billion people, will be connected to the internet by the end of 2018. The full Contract will #ForTheWeb will be presented in 2019. More than 100 companies, 70 civil society organizations, two governments and more than 5,000 individuals are working to build the #ForTheWeb contract.