5
Reluctant Gatekeepers: Corporate Ethics on a
Filtered Internet
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey
Introduction
Picture a corporate boardroom in the headquarters of a large information technology company in the north of Europe. The chief business development executive has just made a pitch
to the board: the company should offer its Internet-based service, delivered over a variety of
devices, in east Asia. Her plan is that the firm should start with the white-hot Chinese market
and then turn to Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Each of these new markets promises
enormous growth.
In each case, the plan calls for a strategy of first entering into joint ventures with local Internet companies, then seeking local investors to set up a stand-alone subsidiary once each trial
is successful. Competitors, she argues, will not be far behind. The company might well find
itself in the posture of the follower if it does not move quickly. Several board members, each
of them outside investors, sound a note of approval.
The general counsel, though, has a few words of warning before the board takes a vote on
the proposal. He is concerned about the regulatory requirements that the corporation will face
in these new markets. The company needs to be prepared to censor the content it is offering,
to disallow users to publish certain information through the service, and to turn over information about the identities of its subscribers upon demand. These are typical requirements when
operating almost anywhere—even liberal democracies identify information to be removed,
such as that which infringes copyright, or meets some test of obscenity. They require help
identifying users at times, and some impose blanket data retention requirements for these
purposes.
But in more authoritarian places like China the practices have extra bite. The information the
government seeks to censor can relate to civic dialogue and freedom, and the people they
seek to identify might be political dissidents or religious practitioners. Often, the requirements
to redact or block will be stated or implied only generally without specific requests for individual cases, which means that the company must be prepared to operate in something of a
gray zone, trying to divine what the regulators have in mind—and act to censor without explicit
orders to do so.
Reluctant Gatekeepers: Corporate Ethics on a
Filtered Internet
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey
Introduction
Picture a corporate boardroom in the headquarters of a large information technology company in the north of Europe. The chief business development executive has just made a pitch
to the board: the company should offer its Internet-based service, delivered over a variety of
devices, in east Asia. Her plan is that the firm should start with the white-hot Chinese market
and then turn to Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Each of these new markets promises
enormous growth.
In each case, the plan calls for a strategy of first entering into joint ventures with local Internet companies, then seeking local investors to set up a stand-alone subsidiary once each trial
is successful. Competitors, she argues, will not be far behind. The company might well find
itself in the posture of the follower if it does not move quickly. Several board members, each
of them outside investors, sound a note of approval.
The general counsel, though, has a few words of warning before the board takes a vote on
the proposal. He is concerned about the regulatory requirements that the corporation will face
in these new markets. The company needs to be prepared to censor the content it is offering,
to disallow users to publish certain information through the service, and to turn over information about the identities of its subscribers upon demand. These are typical requirements when
operating almost anywhere—even liberal democracies identify information to be removed,
such as that which infringes copyright, or meets some test of obscenity. They require help
identifying users at times, and some impose blanket data retention requirements for these
purposes.
But in more authoritarian places like China the practices have extra bite. The information the
government seeks to censor can relate to civic dialogue and freedom, and the people they
seek to identify might be political dissidents or religious practitioners. Often, the requirements
to redact or block will be stated or implied only generally without specific requests for individual cases, which means that the company must be prepared to operate in something of a
gray zone, trying to divine what the regulators have in mind—and act to censor without explicit
orders to do so.