There's not a second Net for minorities, dissidents, or prisoners, and if there were, it wouldn't be as useful because it wouldn't be as big and interconnected as the Internet. If a group were to be banned completely from the Internet, its ability to flourish in future society would be seriously threatened. For this reason, the rights of minorities are even more important in cyberspace than in the physical world, where emigration is at least sometimes an option. The Net must be available to all who wish to use it, regardless of economic, social, political, linguistic, or cultural differences or disabilities. Any legislative or practical barriers that limit access to the Net will isolate those who are denied access while diminishing the value of the Net for all others, by limiting its ability to reflect the diversity of humanity.
People have the right to communicate.
It is predicated on the right of individuals to hold any belief, and to convey their ideas to others in any form they deem appropriate. Because everything that flows over the Net is information, every use of the Net is inherently an exercise of freedom of speech, to be restricted only at great peril to human liberty. Such free expression becomes virtually meaningless if access to that expression is not itself protected. The right to communicate includes the right to participate in communication through interacting, organizing, petitioning, mobilizing, assembling, collaborating, sharing, and publishing. It would be a tragic waste of the Net's potential if it were to be deployed and provisioned in such a way as to encourage most people to be only passive consumers of mass communication.