The world and Ukrainian trend of the 2010-s is full digitization. With the Internet access and devices whereby one can benefit the World Wide Web services becoming more affordable, online threats have increased. Where there are threats to civilians, the State very often and very quickly emerges and seeks to eliminate those threats. However, very often such attempts end up in their opposite and result in the violation of digital rights.
The Internet, as an environment for the realization of human rights, is also unclassified: in addition to the relationship between the State and the user, the role of such actors as Internet intermediaries is important. They may also violate human rights in their activities by unlawfully transmitting personal data to third parties, blocking users' access to websites, or not removing content containing a language of hostility. However, they are often beyond the reach of the State, because they are not under its jurisdiction.
The report "Internet freedom in Ukraine 2020" was created to initiate a tradition to hold an annual complex analysis of the state of regulation of the triangle system “State – User – Internet Intermediary” in Ukraine. We have tried to outline the current regulation of legal relations arising from Internet use in Ukrainian as a starting point for further research, as well as to describe the main trends of such regulation during 2020. To that end, we have analyzed draft legislative and governmental initiatives published during the year, adopted acts as well as case laws, and formulated recommendations to the responsible authorities, with the hope of implementing at least some of them in 2021.
The conclusion of our analysis is encouraging: despite the continuation of illegal practices of websites blocking, legislative spam with new proposed categories of illegal Internet content, as well as some major acts, aiming at comprehensively regulating certain issues (in the sphere of media, in the activities of the intelligence services, in the sphere of electronic communications, etc.), which contain threats to human rights, in 2020 a significant deterioration of the situation was avoided.
Despite this, the risks remain, and we can only hope that the 2021 report will not have to analyze the negative impact of bills that would have become laws.
Read the full version of the report here: https://bit.ly/3A2jjxT