Transparent user notification: When local laws require the company to block access to
certain content, Microsoft will ensure that users know why that content was blocked, by
notifying them that access has been limited due to a government restriction.
8
Microsoft’s step to set forth these three commitments is laudable. And despite putting in
place these commitments, which sets the firm apart from most competitors, Microsoft’s executives have continued to exercise leadership in the industry in the effort to come up with a
common set of principles.
But as a policy matter, a firm-by-firm model of this sort, though potentially an expeditious
way forward, would suffer from the variation among approaches bound to ensue. Users would
be forced to sort through legalese, much as privacy policies and terms of use force the curious to do on today’s Internet, and to compare policies of the relevant firms—a task few
people are prepared to invest the time to undertake, and which would disadvantage those
who cannot easily parse fine print. And by not standing together, the firms would only have
as much leverage as each firm has to begin with.
The more promising route would be for one or more groups of industry members to come
up with a common, voluntary code of conduct that would govern the activities of individual
firms in regimes that carry out online censorship and surveillance. Such a process is underway, coordinated by the Center for Democracy and Technology and by Business for Social
Responsibility. Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, and Yahoo! are actively working together on a
code. This process profitably includes additional nonstate actors such as NGOs and academics, including the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Regulators with relevant expertise and authority have been
actively involved in the drafting process. The code is intended to set out common principles
with enough detail to inform users about what to expect, but without being so prescribed as to
make the code impossible to implement from firm to firm and from state to state. The code
might also provide a roadmap for when a firm might refuse to engage in regimes that put
them in a position where they cannot comply with both the code and with local laws.
If the industry itself does not succeed through such an approach, the likelihood increases
that an outside group will come up with a set of principles that will gain traction and place
pressure on the companies to act. The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontie `res have drafted
such a set of principles, as have a group of academics with their base at the University of California, Berkeley. An outsider’s code might be something to which firms could be encouraged
to subscribe, on the model of the Sullivan Principles and the Apartheid-era South Africa.
An institution might emerge to support the principles and the companies that subscribe to
them.
Whether drafted by industry members, outsiders, or a combination thereof, the elements of
such a code might either be general in nature—a set of core commitments such as transparency, rule of law, the rights of free expression and individual privacy, and so forth—or more
specific, according to a taxonomy of the second sort described earlier. The more specific the
Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet
115
certain content, Microsoft will ensure that users know why that content was blocked, by
notifying them that access has been limited due to a government restriction.
8
Microsoft’s step to set forth these three commitments is laudable. And despite putting in
place these commitments, which sets the firm apart from most competitors, Microsoft’s executives have continued to exercise leadership in the industry in the effort to come up with a
common set of principles.
But as a policy matter, a firm-by-firm model of this sort, though potentially an expeditious
way forward, would suffer from the variation among approaches bound to ensue. Users would
be forced to sort through legalese, much as privacy policies and terms of use force the curious to do on today’s Internet, and to compare policies of the relevant firms—a task few
people are prepared to invest the time to undertake, and which would disadvantage those
who cannot easily parse fine print. And by not standing together, the firms would only have
as much leverage as each firm has to begin with.
The more promising route would be for one or more groups of industry members to come
up with a common, voluntary code of conduct that would govern the activities of individual
firms in regimes that carry out online censorship and surveillance. Such a process is underway, coordinated by the Center for Democracy and Technology and by Business for Social
Responsibility. Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, and Yahoo! are actively working together on a
code. This process profitably includes additional nonstate actors such as NGOs and academics, including the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Regulators with relevant expertise and authority have been
actively involved in the drafting process. The code is intended to set out common principles
with enough detail to inform users about what to expect, but without being so prescribed as to
make the code impossible to implement from firm to firm and from state to state. The code
might also provide a roadmap for when a firm might refuse to engage in regimes that put
them in a position where they cannot comply with both the code and with local laws.
If the industry itself does not succeed through such an approach, the likelihood increases
that an outside group will come up with a set of principles that will gain traction and place
pressure on the companies to act. The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontie `res have drafted
such a set of principles, as have a group of academics with their base at the University of California, Berkeley. An outsider’s code might be something to which firms could be encouraged
to subscribe, on the model of the Sullivan Principles and the Apartheid-era South Africa.
An institution might emerge to support the principles and the companies that subscribe to
them.
Whether drafted by industry members, outsiders, or a combination thereof, the elements of
such a code might either be general in nature—a set of core commitments such as transparency, rule of law, the rights of free expression and individual privacy, and so forth—or more
specific, according to a taxonomy of the second sort described earlier. The more specific the
Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet
115