As this book makes plain, over the past five years there has been a steady rise of Internet
filtering practices from a handful of states in 2002 to over three dozen states in 2007. The
most extensive of these filtering regimes are found in states in the Middle East and North
Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The job of online censorship and surveillance is difficult for the state to manage itself, if not altogether
impossible.
To carry out these practices, states turn to private firms to provide the tools and services
necessary to effect the censorship and surveillance. Most of the high-profile incidents of this
type have involved well-known technology companies based in the United States and their
efforts to enter the Chinese markets. But this issue is about more than a few companies and
about more than one emerging market. Almost any business in the information technologies
or telecommunications space might find itself in this position. These private firms include
hardware manufacturers, software firms, online service providers, and local access providers,
among others.
The shareholders in large technology companies reasonably expect continued growth of
market volume or share, and improved profit margins. The pull of markets farther from home
is powerful. The shares in these firms are often publicly traded by investors in the state in
which they are chartered. In many instances, the social norms and conceptions of civil liberties in the new target market are dissonant with the norms and liberties enjoyed where the senior executives and most powerful shareholders of the corporation live. An everyday act of law
enforcement in an authoritarian market looks like a human rights violation to a more liberal
one. That act may in fact contravene international human rights standards—and some shareholders, concerned about matters beyond growth and profits, are starting to ask hard questions of corporations about their involvement in such practices.
The ethical problem arises when the corporation is asked to do something at odds with the
ethical framework of the corporation’s home state. Should a search engine agree to censor its
search results as a condition of doing business in a new place? Should an e-mail service provider turn over the names of its subscribers to the government of a foreign state without knowing what the person is said to have done wrong? Should a blog service provider code its
application so as to disallow someone from typing a banned term into a subject line?
These questions—prompted by the hard cases that lie between simple acts of law enforcement and clear violations of international norms—are not easily answered through legislation
or international treaty. Laws fashioned in this fast-moving environment to lay out what orders
corporations must resist in authoritarian states—really, laws about laws—may function as a
hopelessly trailing indicator. The firms involved in this quandary should not be seen as a
single bloc. They represent a range of levels and types of involvement in censorship and surveillance regimes.
In the context of the cyberlaw literature, these questions ask us to assess ‘‘second-order’’
regulation of the cyberenvironment. From a public policy angle, the question is not whether to
Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet
105
filtering practices from a handful of states in 2002 to over three dozen states in 2007. The
most extensive of these filtering regimes are found in states in the Middle East and North
Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The job of online censorship and surveillance is difficult for the state to manage itself, if not altogether
impossible.
To carry out these practices, states turn to private firms to provide the tools and services
necessary to effect the censorship and surveillance. Most of the high-profile incidents of this
type have involved well-known technology companies based in the United States and their
efforts to enter the Chinese markets. But this issue is about more than a few companies and
about more than one emerging market. Almost any business in the information technologies
or telecommunications space might find itself in this position. These private firms include
hardware manufacturers, software firms, online service providers, and local access providers,
among others.
The shareholders in large technology companies reasonably expect continued growth of
market volume or share, and improved profit margins. The pull of markets farther from home
is powerful. The shares in these firms are often publicly traded by investors in the state in
which they are chartered. In many instances, the social norms and conceptions of civil liberties in the new target market are dissonant with the norms and liberties enjoyed where the senior executives and most powerful shareholders of the corporation live. An everyday act of law
enforcement in an authoritarian market looks like a human rights violation to a more liberal
one. That act may in fact contravene international human rights standards—and some shareholders, concerned about matters beyond growth and profits, are starting to ask hard questions of corporations about their involvement in such practices.
The ethical problem arises when the corporation is asked to do something at odds with the
ethical framework of the corporation’s home state. Should a search engine agree to censor its
search results as a condition of doing business in a new place? Should an e-mail service provider turn over the names of its subscribers to the government of a foreign state without knowing what the person is said to have done wrong? Should a blog service provider code its
application so as to disallow someone from typing a banned term into a subject line?
These questions—prompted by the hard cases that lie between simple acts of law enforcement and clear violations of international norms—are not easily answered through legislation
or international treaty. Laws fashioned in this fast-moving environment to lay out what orders
corporations must resist in authoritarian states—really, laws about laws—may function as a
hopelessly trailing indicator. The firms involved in this quandary should not be seen as a
single bloc. They represent a range of levels and types of involvement in censorship and surveillance regimes.
In the context of the cyberlaw literature, these questions ask us to assess ‘‘second-order’’
regulation of the cyberenvironment. From a public policy angle, the question is not whether to
Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet
105