Magna Carta of the Internet: Consent of the Networked

”Consent of the Networked,” will be published by Basic Books in January 2012. This is a book by Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet scholar at the New America Foundation, who argues that private corporations are exerting excessive power over the Internet and should have that power checked. Just as the English barons crafted the original Magna Carta in 1215 to constrain the power of the unpopular King John, she says, Internet users should organize and push back against the companies.

The control that companies exert over the Internet in areas ranging from banking to freedom of speech has raised increasing levels of concern, especially in the wake of the controversial WikiLeaks release of State Department cables last year. Several companies constrained WikiLeaks, including Amazon, which kicked WikiLeaks off its servers after pressure from American lawmakers; PayPal, which suspended WikiLeaks’ account; and credit card companies, which refused to take donations for it.

Governments at this point rarely act directly to constrain the Internet; instead, their policies are mediated through privately owned and operated services, Ms. MacKinnon said. This is true of China, which maintains the famed Great Firewall that blocks sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook in favor of local services. But domestically, every year the Chinese government gives out “China Internet Self-Discipline Awards” to honor companies that voluntarily cooperate with its censorship policies. Baidu, which had been Google’s rival in China before the search giant redirected China users to its uncensored Hong Kong site in 2010, has been among the honorees.

One company that has drawn attention is Apple, whose market power allows its review process for iPhone applications to become a de facto censor in many countries. In China, the company has restricted access to Dalai Lama-related iPhone applications, and earlier this year it removed a Palestinian protest iPhone application called ThirdIntifada in response to the Israeli government’s complaints. Even in the United States, Apple banned an iPhone app from a political cartoonist in 2009 because it ridiculed public figures, a decision that was reversed after the cartoonist won a Pulitzer Prize.

Companies should start thinking of their users more as constituents who have a voice in the policy making, she said. Also, good corporate governance policies, like the ones that have become standard for clothing manufacturing companies, could become more widespread. Google, for example, regularly releases a transparency report, which lists how many requests for information it receives from each government. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have helped develop a code of conduct around Internet freedom through the Global Network Initiative. However, , limiting the impact of the code.

She says that at this moment, we have not figured out how to achieve, define and opearationalize the consent of the networked, buTwitter and Facebook have not joined int it is time to start.

(Excerpts and links from New York Times)

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