This book is for anyone who is curious about the Internet and how it relates to the world around them, and to human rights. Curiosity can be both rewarding and punishing. Even a brief look at the news can lead to the conclusion that the Internet is out of control: some kind of wild, dangerous world where there are no rules and no place for human rights. Yet, like our human rights, which are universal, the Internet was designed to be for everyone, everywhere. This book is a story of how these two separate things, our human rights and the Internet, became inextricably linked. I offer it now, with all its imperfections, because I know that the remarkable successes of Internet and human rights communities were not achieved by chance. This book is for those who are curious about how this process happened, and where it might lead: Internet users, civil society organisations, policymakers, business or technical experts and lawyers.

This book is not written exclusively for lawyers. However, as a human rights lawyer, I know that the history and accomplishments of human rights are, rightly, the subject of fierce debate. For all its high moral promise, the international human rights system is fraught with imperfections. Some commentators, such as Makay Mutua or Samuel Moyn, question whether the time of human rights is over; if, indeed, it ever really began. It is impossible to deny, and equally impossible to do full justice to, these contested views in the short space of this book. But this book is not a philosophical treatise on the theoretical meaning of law, or a technical jurisprudential academic analysis. My goal is more pragmatic: to tell some of the story of the evolution of the Internet and human rights.

For now, then, all I can do is acknowledge that, for some people at least, the legitimacy of human rights is not well-settled, and that these contested views influence discussion about human rights today, including the struggle to have human rights recognised in our online lives. Is the Internet the ultimate expression of human freedom, without government, rules or borders? Or is the Internet a public place where the human rights of everyone must be respected and protected?