The following appeal was developed for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis and was endorsed by many eminent personalities [listed below]. It can be considered the founding document of the IRP coalition.

All the countries of the world will be meeting in November, in Tunis, under the aegis of the United Nations, for the World Summit on Information Society. It is a great opportunity. The conclusion of this meeting should be a document ushering in a new era: a Charter of the Rights of the Net.

The Internet is the widest public space that mankind has ever known. A space where everybody can have their say, acquire knowledge, create ideas and not just information, exercise their right to criticize, to discuss, to take part in the broader political life, and thus to build a different world of which everybody can claim to be an equal citizen.

But the internet is also causing a new, big redistribution of power; that's why it is continuously under threat. In the name of security, liberties are restricted. In the name of a short-sighted market approach, chances of a fair access to knowledge are limited. Alliances between corporations and authoritarian States try to impose new forms of censorship. The Internet must not become an instrument to better control the millions of people who use it, to grab personal information from people against their will, to seal the new forms of knowledge behind proprietary fences.

To avert these dangers we cannot just be confident that the Internet will show its natural resiliency. It is due time to state some principles as part of the new planetary citizenship: freedom of access, freedom of use, right to knowledge, respect of privacy, recognition of new common goods. Only the full respect of these constitutional rights will allow us to find the correct democratic balance with the needs of security, of the market, of intellectual property.

It is time for these principles to be recognized by a Bill of Rights. We ask all men and women being part of the "People of the Net" to take part in this project with their freedom and creativity, and to let their voice be heard by their governments to support it.

Initial signatories