David Rowan
Editor, Wired magazine
Being cut off from your broadband isn’t the same as being whisked to Guantánamo; I see it more as a consumer right and a citizen’s right. Nobody says you have to shop online at Tesco, but it is convenient. What is more than simple convenience is to be able to interact with the Government as it now demands, which is increasingly through the internet. We are expected to do everything from paying taxes, to finding out about local planning decisions and renewing driving licences online, so the state must do all it can to enable everyone to connect to the network.

Sam Barratt
Head of Media for Oxfam
In our view, easy access to technology and information is a growing human right. Whether it’s mobile phone banking in the slums of Nairobi or people in Bangladesh getting warning of humanitarian crises by text, the world needs to step up and give everyone this invaluable tool for information and transaction. For Oxfam it will help us not only to deliver clean water but to allow poor people to complain where that right is being denied.

Dr Matilda Blyth
Curator of Computing at the Science Museum
There should be universal access to the internet for everybody. You are at a disadvantage in society if you don’t have it — you can’t buy things, you can’t retrieve information from the Government or council, you can’t communicate with others in the same way as those who are connected. So you end up with the “digital divide”, the idea that to an extent you are excluded from society if you don’t have access to the internet.

But when it comes to file-sharing, there are also the rights of copyright owners who have a human right to earn money from their creativity. Ultimately this should come down to the responsibility of users to behave according to agreed ethical codes. It is a human right to walk down the street, but that doesn’t mean you can snatch someone’s bag.

Adam Hildreth
Founder of Crisp Thinking, the online child protection company
If you’d asked me whether access to the internet was a human right a few years ago I’d have said no, because it was more of a medium for entertainment. But now, I would say it’s something everyone should have a right to. Just flying to America now, you have to go online to enter your passenger number — it’s the only way to do it. The internet has become something you need.

Lord Mandelson has lost touch with reality. Cutting off access to the internet would affect a lot of people’s lives dramatically, especially young people, who are the ones most likely to be caught illegally downloading and not really understanding what they’re doing.

Padraig Reidy
Index on Censorship
As the internet becomes a prime conduit for information, it would seem that yes, access is a right. Increasingly it is merely another public space in which we interact and learn; a public space in which we are still learning how to conduct ourselves. The idea of barring people from that public space is detrimental to liberty and equality.

Kosta Grammatis
Internet developer
Access to information is a human right. Being able to make informed decisions is central to a free and self-determined life. Everyone should have that opportunity. The net should be as available in rural areas of Africa and Asia as in the developed world. If the amount of effort put into the fruitless pursuit of illegal downloaders was devoted to providing internet access to everyone, the rewards would be substantial.

Explore Tech & Web

• Personal Tech

• The Web

• Gadgets & Gaming