- The Charter of Digital Rights aims to become a guide that can also orient future legal developments in this area.
Digital rights. What are they?
Digital rights are understood to be the adaptation and/or extension of fundamental rights to the environment of both digital technologies and the Internet, with the aim of ensuring that freedom of expression and thought, privacy and data protection, and non-discrimination also apply in the virtual world.
The aim is to protect individuals from possible abuse by ensuring fair and equitable digital participation and preventing discrimination.
In addition to the issues mentioned above, there are a number of other digital rights, such as universal access to the Internet, the right to be forgotten (understood as the right to request the removal of personal information) and the secrecy of communications, guaranteeing the confidentiality of digital communications.
We could therefore summarise digital rights as the set of fundamental rights that protect individuals in the digital environment, ensuring that the same protections and freedoms that exist in the physical world also apply in the virtual space.
Charter of Digital Rights
Without strictly being an example of digital regulation, there is the Charter of Digital Rights (in Spanish), a document presented in 2021 by the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation that establishes a frame of reference on this issue.
This charter was created to serve as a guide for businesses and public authorities, but it is not a binding law, although it also aims to be helpful in guiding future legal developments in this area.
Essentially, it is a document that seeks to put people at the centre of digital transformation and is divided into six main sections: rights of freedom; rights of equality; rights of participation and confirmation of public space; rights in the workplace and business environment; digital rights in specific environments; and guarantees and effectiveness.
However, as stated at the beginning of the document, ‘the rights and freedoms recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Spanish Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and the international treaties and agreements on the same subjects ratified by Spain are applicable in digital environments’.
Digital rights, towards a more humane coexistence with technology
The Telos Magazine dedicates its 128th issue, published in November 2025, precisely to digital rights.
In this publication by Fundación Telefónica, its president, Enrique Goñi, refers to the Charter of Digital Rights mentioned above, explaining that ‘it reminds us that technological progress cannot turn us into mere users subject to market logic or opaque systems of political control, but that we are, above all, citizens with rights that must also be projected onto new virtual realities.’
He concludes by saying that ‘it is a question of stimulating development by guiding it towards the principles that underpin our democratic coexistence’.
Similarly, Goñi explains that this edition of the magazine, which focuses on digital rights, ‘invites us to rethink digital governance from a humanistic perspective: the challenge is to build a transparent, secure and fair digital ecosystem, where the rules protect people both in their individual rights and in their collective rights.’
Digital rights at Telefónica
On its website, Telefónica explains that digital rights ‘take on a new dimension in the world of telecommunications, as technologies are used to collect and manage personal data, whether as personal, anonymous or aggregated information.’
For this reason, the operator is committed to ‘protecting and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals, in particular the privacy, data security and freedom of expression of our customers,’ to which must be added the work ‘every day to build a relationship of trust with all those with whom we are connected.’
