Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom

by Rebecca MacKinnon
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom

by Rebecca MacKinnon

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Overview

The Internet was going to liberate us, but in truth it has not. For every story about the web's empowering role in events such as the Arab Spring, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments using the same digital technologies we have come to depend upon. In Consent of the Networked, journalist and Internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that it is time to fight for our rights before they are sold, legislated, programmed, and engineered away. Every day, the corporate sovereigns of cyberspace (Google and Facebook, among others) make decisions that affect our physical freedom -- but without our consent. Yet the traditional solution to unaccountable corporate behavior -- government regulation -- cannot stop the abuse of digital power on its own, and sometimes even contributes to it.

A clarion call to action, Consent of the Networked shows that it is time to stop arguing over whether the Internet empowers people, and address the urgent question of how technology should be governed to support the rights and liberties of users around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780465029297
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 01/31/2012
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
File size: 421 KB
Age Range: 13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Rebecca MacKinnon works on global internet policy as a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. She is co-founder of Global Voices Online, a global citizen media network that amplifies online citizen voices from around the world. She is also on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and worked for CNN in Beijing for nine years.

Recently, she was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. MacKinnon is frequently interviewed by major media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Financial Times, National Public Radio, BBC, and other news outlets. She lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Introduction: After the Revolution xix

Part 1 Disruptions

1 Consent and Sovereignty 3

Corporate Superpowers 6

Legitimacy 12

2 Rise of the Digital Commons 15

The Technical Commons 17

Activism 21

Balance of Power 25

Part 2 Control 2.0

3 Networked Authoritarianism 31

How China's Censorship Works 34

Authoritarian Deliberation 40

Western Fantasies Versus Reality 47

4 Variants and Permutations 51

"Constitutional" Technology 53

Corporate Collaboration 56

Divide and Conquer 62

Digital Bonapartism 66

Part 3 Democracy's Challenges

5 Eroding Accountability 75

Surveillance 76

WikiLeaks and the Fate of Controversial Speech 82

6 Democratic Censorship 87

Intentions Versus Consequences 88

Saving the Children 94

7 Copywars 99

Shunning Due Process 101

Aiding Authoritarianism 104

Lobbynomics 108

Part 4 Sovereigns of Cyberspace

8 Corporate Censorship 115

Net Neutrality 116

Mobile Complications 122

Big Brother Apple 126

9 Do No Evil 131

Chinese Lessons 133

Flickr Fail 139

Buzz Bust 141

Privacy and Facebook 144

10 Facebookistan and Googledom 149

Double Edge 151

Inside the Leviathan 153

Google Governance 159

Implications 164

Part 5 What is to Be Done?

11 Trust, but Verify 169

The Regulation Problem 173

Shared Value 175

The Global Network Initiative 179

Lessons from Other Industries 182

12 In Search of "Internet Freedom" Policy 187

Washington Squabbles 188

Goals and Methods 191

Democratic Discord 196

Civil Society Pushes Back 200

13 Global Internet Governance 203

The United Nations Problem 204

ICANN-Can You? 209

14 Building a Netizen-Centric Internet 221

Strengthening the Netizen Commons 223

Expanding the Technical Commons 227

Utopianism Versus Reality 232

Getting Political 237

Corporate Transparency and Netizen Engagement 243

Personal Responsibility 248

Notes 251

Index 283

What People are Saying About This

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Consent of the Networked is a must-read for anyone interested in freedom of personal and political expression in the 21st century. It's accessible, engaging, and periodically hair-raising. It should have the same impact on public awareness of the vital issues surrounding Internet freedom that 'An Inconvenient Truth' had with regard to climate change. (Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University)

James Fallows

For more than a decade, Rebecca MacKinnon has been at the center of evolving debates about how the Internet will affect democracy, privacy, individual liberties, and the other values free societies want to defend. Here she makes a persuasive and important case that, as with other technological revolutions through history, the effects of today's new communications systems, for human liberation or for oppression, will depend not on the technologies themselves but rather on the resolve of citizens to shape the way in which they are used. (James Fallows, The Atlantic)

Joi Ito

Consent of the Networked will become the seminal book firmly establishing the responsibility of those who control the architecture and the politics of the network to the citizens who inhabit our new digital world. Consent of the Networked should be required reading for all of those involved in building our networked future as well as those who live in it. (Joi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab)

Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Cyber power and governance of the internet is one of the great unsolved problems of the 21st century. Rebecca MacKinnon has written a wonderfully lively and illuminating account of the issues we face in this contentious area. It is well worth reading. (Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Future of Power)

Mary Robinson

The Internet poses the most complex challenges and opportunities for human rights to have emerged over the last decade. Rebecca MacKinnon's book is a clear-eyed guide through that complexity. (Mary Robinson, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and President of Ireland)

Craig Newmark

A growing number of people throughout the world are counting on the Internet to move their countries in a more democratic direction. Consent of the Networked describes what's happening, successes and failures, what's next, and what needs to be done. It's the real deal. (Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist)

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