In the digital era, human rights can be divided into the substantive digital rights and the digital sequencing of rights. The former describes human rights numerically, while the latter reflects the intensified protection of human rights from potential destruction and threat by digital mode. The challenges posed by the digital age to human rights in present world can be analyzed in two fields as follows:

 

First, the digital age has given new expression to traditional human rights, which is most obviously embodied in the mode of the definition and protection of digital property. The well-known dispute of domain name can be interpreted and comprehended in the framework of traditional rights. The academic circles in China mainly focus on the right to privacy and the intellectual property, which is within the scope of traditional rights. However, some new problems arise in the digital environment, which requires traditional laws to be enlarged. Online means are adopted to settle disputes, safeguard rights and so on.

 

Second, the new legal problems arise with the advent of the digital age, i.e., how to define the relationship between people and things in a virtual world that does not correspond directly to the real world. For example, how to identify the nature of the attack on the Internet, whether it is a transnational hacker attack or a domestic virus attack, and whether existing laws can be applied to such systems with different ways of cognition and operation. For these new problems, new legal departments should be set up, and new concepts take shape.

 

On the whole, the humanistic thinking should be adopted in terms of digital sovereignty, digital human rights and digital governance to effectively solve the problems of human rights in the digital era, so as to achieve the ultimate goal of human-oriented science and technology to service the human beings.