Info/Law

Activists and policy wonks who work with environmental issues take it for granted that private corporate activities and markets lie at the center of both the problems and the potential solutions (like this and this) to issues such as water pollution, global warming, and habitat destruction. Organizations like Ceres work with businesses to help them change their practices. The most successful preach (I think correctly) that strong environmental practices are consistent with economic profitability and even enhance long-term shareholder value.

Until recently, the same was not true for info/law issues. The problems were often seen as based almost entirely on some combination of legal regulation and technological architecture. Tech companies were regarded as ideals by many socially responsible investors — they had low environmental impacts, typically they had progressive employment policies and benefits, and their supply chains did not involve the sorts of entanglements with corrupt regimes and human rights problems that beset industries from oil to global agriculture.

Until recently, I said. Then came this and this and this, and lots more of the same sort.

We already heard long ago from Larry Lessig about the regulatory role of markets in info/law, and from James Boyle promoting an ethos of “cultural environmentalism” that learned lessons from the success and struggle of the environmental movement. And now, at last, there are signs of serious attention to the role of corporations and their investors in preserving values such as privacy, data security, free speech, and open access to content.

As Derek noted previously in this space, an industry-wide initiative is forming to help companies develop ethical business standards for promoting free expression and privacy online. The Berkman Center is one of the leaders of the effort, along with a wide range of investors, civil society groups, academic institutions, and, of course, companies operating in this space. One of the investors really thinking about these issues is F&C Asset Management, a London-based manager of over $200 billion. The F&C Governance & Sustainable Investment Team recently released a thoughtful report directed at managers in companies who need to think about access, security, and privacy issues in the digital environment. [Disclosure: my wife works on the F&C GSI Team, though she wasn't really involved in this report.] Because it’s written on behalf of investors and directed at corporate managers, its tone is different from some of the advocacy you see elsewhere — which is exactly the point. Investor dialogue will be one of the keys to helping companies contribute to solutions in these areas. Law is important too, but not the only component. We are learning, once again, from environmentalism.

Filed under: Anonymity, Berkman, Digital Media, Filtering, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, NSA, Network Neutrality, Privacy, Security, Spam, international