Consent of the Networked

by Mackinnon, Rebecca

• ISBN13: 9780465024421
• ISBN10: 0465024424
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-01-31
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

Google has a history of censoring at the behest of Communist China. Research in Motion happily opens up the BlackBerry to such stalwarts of liberty as Saudi Arabia. Yahoo has betrayed the email accounts of dissidents to the PRC. Facebook's obsession with personal transparency has revealed the identities of protestors to governments. For all the overheated rhetoric of liberty and cyber-utopia, it is clear that the corporations that rule cyberspace are making decisions that show little or no concern for their impact on political freedom. In Consent of the Networked, internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that it's time for us to demand that our rights and freedoms are respected and protected before they're sold, legislated, programmed, and engineered away. The challenge is that building accountability into the fabric of cyberspace demands radical thinking in a completely new dimension. The corporations that build and operate the technologies that create and shape our digital world are fundamentally different from the Chevrons, Nikes, and Nabiscos whose behavior and standards can be regulated quite effectively by laws, courts, and bureaucracies answerable to voters. The public revolt against the sovereigns of cyberspace will be useless if it focuses downstream at the point of law and regulation, long after the software code has already been written, shipped, and embedded itself into the lives of millions of people. The revolution must be focused upstream at the source of the problem. Political innovation--the negotiated relationship between people with power and people whose interests and rights are affected by that power--needs to center around the point of technological conception, experimentation, and early implementation. The purpose of technology--and of the corporations that make it--is to serve humanity, not the other way around. It's time to wake up and act before the reversal becomes permanent.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Introduction: After the Revolution	p. xix
Disruptions
Consent and Sovereignty	p. 3
Corporate Superpowers	p. 6
Legitimacy	p. 12
Rise of the Digital Commons	p. 15
The Technical Commons	p. 17
Activism	p. 21
Balance of Power	p. 25
Control 2.0
Networked Authoritarianism	p. 31
How China's Censorship Works	p. 34
Authoritarian Deliberation	p. 40
Western Fantasies Versus Reality	p. 47
Variants and Permutations	p. 51
"Constitutional" Technology	p. 53
Corporate Collaboration	p. 56
Divide and Conquer	p. 62
Digital Bonapartism	p. 66
Democracy's Challenges
Eroding Accountability	p. 75
Surveillance	p. 76
WikiLeaks and the Fate of Controversial Speech	p. 82
Democratic Censorship	p. 87
Intentions Versus Consequences	p. 88
Saving the Children	p. 94
Copywars	p. 99
Shunning Due Process	p. 101
Aiding Authoritarianism	p. 104
Lobbynomics	p. 108
Sovereigns of Cyberspace
Corporate Censorship	p. 115
Net Neutrality	p. 116
Mobile Complications	p. 122
Big Brother Apple	p. 126
Do No Evil	p. 131
Chinese Lessons	p. 133
Flickr Fail	p. 139
Buzz Bust	p. 141
Privacy and Facebook	p. 144
Facebookistan and Googledom	p. 149
Double Edge	p. 151
Inside the Leviathan	p. 153
Google Governance	p. 159
Implications	p. 164
What is to Be Done?
Trust, but Verify	p. 169
The Regulation Problem	p. 173
Shared Value	p. 175
The Global Network Initiative	p. 179
Lessons from Other Industries	p. 182
In Search of "Internet Freedom" Policy	p. 187
Washington Squabbles	p. 188
Goals and Methods	p. 191
Democratic Discord	p. 196
Civil Society Pushes Back	p. 200
Global Internet Governance	p. 203
The United Nations Problem	p. 204
ICANN-Can You?	p. 209
Building a Netizen-Centric Internet	p. 221
Strengthening the Netizen Commons	p. 223
Expanding the Technical Commons	p. 227
Utopianism Versus Reality	p. 232
Getting Political	p. 237
Corporate Transparency and Netizen Engagement	p. 243
Personal Responsibility	p. 248
Notes	p. 251
Index	p. 283
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