Synopses & Reviews
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. Facebooks 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 its time for us to demand that our rights and freedoms are respected and protected before theyre 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 innovationthe negotiated relationship between people with power and people whose interests and rights are affected by that powerneeds to center around the point of technological conception, experimentation, and early implementation.
The purpose of technologyand of the corporations that make itis to serve humanity, not the other way around. Its time to wake up and act before the reversal becomes permanent.
Review
James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic “For nearly 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.”Joi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab“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.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University“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.” Mary Robinson, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and President of Ireland“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.” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Future of Power“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.” Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
“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.” Kirkus Reviews
“An incisive overview of the global struggle for Internet freedom. . . . In her wide-ranging book, MacKinnon details the many ways in which governments, corporations and others are using the Internet—from empowering people to helping authoritarian dictators survive.”
Booklist “A vitally important analysis of Internet manipulation that should be read by anyone relying on the web for work or pleasure.”
Review
James Fallows, National Correspondent, The AtlanticFor nearly 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 todays 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.”
Joi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
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.”
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter 66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
Consent of the Networked is a must-read for anyone interested in freedom of personal and political expression in the 21st century. Its 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.”
Mary Robinson, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and President of Ireland
The Internet poses the most complex challenges and opportunities for human rights to have emerged over the last decade. Rebecca MacKinnons book is a clear-eyed guide through that complexity.”
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Future of Power
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.”
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
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 whats happening, successes and failures, whats next, and what needs to be done. Its the real deal.”
Kirkus Reviews
An incisive overview of the global struggle for Internet freedom.... In her wide-ranging book, MacKinnon details the many ways in which governments, corporations and others are using the Internetfrom empowering people to helping authoritarian dictators survive.”
Booklist
A vitally important analysis of Internet manipulation that should be read by anyone relying on the web for work or pleasure.”
Mother Jones
[A] sharp, sobering rebuttal [to] heady rhetoric, questioning and complicating our understandings of what it means to be free online. MacKinnons book presents a cogent picture of the many ways in which our lives, both online and off, are increasingly affected by regulators, politicians, and companies seeking to carve territories into the still-amorphous web.... [T]he books intention isnt to offer up a set of neat solutions, but to spur all of us to pay more attention to the threats lurking beneath the webs shiny baubles, and to exhort us to take a more active role in claiming and defending our digital power, rights, and freedoms. In that, Consent of the Networked succeeds admirably; it should be required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the webthat is, for all of us.”
Micah L. Sifriy, techPresident.com
Count me among those who are thoroughly convinced by MacKinnons reporting and arguments.... In many ways, MacKinnons book is the one Evgeny Morozov should have written, if he was more interested in building a sensible movement for Internet freedom rather than conducting scorched-earth warfare against people who believe the Internet can help strengthen democratic culture.... While Consent of the Networked offers netizens a workable roadmap to a real vision of internet freedom, the people who should most read this book arent the already aware, but folksespecially policy-makerswho see all the shiny devices and trendy social media and foolishly assume that the Internet will ultimately prevail. It might, but only if we understand what a lucky and unusual accident the Internet really is, and that to keep it open and free, we have to fight for it.”
Washington Times
Insightful and moving.... Ms. MacKinnons stories of the effort occurring worldwide as people harness the Internet, often with a political, socioeconomic or religious motivation, are discerning, harrowing and empowering. From Egypts record of torturing and jailing bloggers, Chinas system of corporate-level censorship and South Koreas strict requirements for real identification for online users, Ms. MacKinnon repeatedly strikes the appropriate balance between a technological discussion of the Net and the significance of human rights.... Packed with thorough and impeccable research and persuasive, eye-opening anecdotes from around the world, Consent of the Networked should spearhead a robust debate and join the handful of other books that successfully guide the reader through the land mines surrounding responsible use of the Internet.”
Boston Globe
Internet policy maven Rebecca MacKinnon warns in an important new book
that the liberating power of digital technology is under threat from corporations and governments alike.... [MacKinnon] argues that neither political action nor competitive pressure spawned by the free market will protect our rights, finally making a strong case for a third waya nongovernmental watchdog with sufficient clout to preserve freedom on the Internet.”
New York Journal of Books
Ms. MacKinnon provides expert reporting and analysis of Internet censorship and acts against individuals by authoritarian regimes around the world including China, Iran, and Egypt, among others. Communication doesnt move in a straight line, and more often than not, it occurs outside the lines of what we many people like.... [If] you are a Google user and dont understand their recently updated privacy policy, and are tired of trying to puzzle it out, then Consent of the Networked is for you.”
Wall Street Journal
[M]any thinkers on the information-wants-to-be-free side of the debate present the same binary choice, seeing almost any state control of the Internet, or any government attempt to protect intellectual property, or even the attempts of private social networks to get people to log in with their real names, as affronts to democracy comparable with the worst excesses of repressive regimes. Luckily, Ms. MacKinnons analysis is more nuanced and balanced than that, and Consent of the Networked is an excellent survey of the Internets major fault lines.”
Observer (UK)
In her grand sweep of the worldwide struggle for internet freedom, Rebecca MacKinnon alights on the many dilemmas facing policy makers and corporate chiefs, and the many threats that cyberspace poses for individual liberty.... Thoroughly researched by one of the experts in the field, the book straddles the line between an academic and general audience. Mac Kinnon entreats internet users to see themselves as active citizensnot consumers or eyeballs. She harks back to Huxleys Brave New World
[and] ends with a rallying cry.”
L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal
Consent of the Networked describes how important its been for the Internet to develop outside of multinational organizations, with technology companies, engineering associations and civil society groups having as much influence as governments.... Applying the political-science notion of a social contract to the Web for consent of the networked is a novel approach. It recognizes that the Web is global, with an inherent ideology in favor of more transparency and greater access to information.”
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
It is an absolutely indispensable account of the way that technology both serves freedom and removes it. MacKinnon is co-founder of the Global Voices project, and a director of the Global Network Initiative, and is one of the best-informed, clearest commentators on issues of networks and freedom from a truly global perspective. MacKinnon does a fantastic job of tying her theory and analysis to real-world stories.”
Guardian (UK)
This timely, scholarly survey of global offences against freedom on the internet also points out that Facebook, Google and the like supply corporate rather than public spaces, whose users are subject to the unsophisticated moral diktats of their owners.”
Pop Matters
Fluent in Mandarin, MacKinnon spent nearly a decade as a CNN correspondent in Beijing, including several years as the bureau chief.... Her insight into how Western perception of the state of the Internet in China differs from the true situation on the ground is invaluable.”
Foreign Policy in Focus
Internet policy-making is fraught with contradiction, corruption, and colonialism. In Consent of the Networked, Rebecca MacKinnon has produced an incredibly well-researched account of these dilemmas, which is as deep as it is vast. She uses case studies from around the globe, illuminates essential human rights issues, and names key stakeholders and their positions.”
Synopsis
The future of your freedom depends on whether you assert your rights within the digital spaces you inhabit. But, as corporations and countries square off onand overthe internet, the likely losers are us.
Synopsis
The Internet was going to liberate us, but in truth it has not. For every story about the webs 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 freedombut without our consent. Yet the traditional solution to unaccountable corporate behaviorgovernment regulationcannot 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.
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 Universitys 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
Foreword to the Paperback EditionPreface
Introduction: After the Revolution
PART ONE: DISRUPTIONS
1. Consent and Sovereignty
Corporate Superpowers
Legitimacy
2. Rise of the Digital Commons
The Technical Commons
Activism
Balance of Power
PART TWO: CONTROL 2.0
3. Networked Authoritarianism
How Chinas Censorship Works
Authoritarian Deliberation
Western Fantasies Versus Reality
4. Variants and Permutations
Constitutional” Technology
Corporate Collaboration
Divide and Conquer
Digital Bonapartism
PART THREE: DEMOCRACYS CHALLENGES
5. Eroding Accountability
Surveillance
WikiLeaks and the Fate of Controversial Speech
6. Democratic Censorship
Intentions Versus Consequences
Saving the Children
7. Copywars
Shunning Due Process
Aiding Authoritarianism
Lobbynomics
PART FOUR: SOVEREIGNS OF CYBERSPACE
8. Corporate Censorship
Net Neutrality
Mobile Complications
Big Brother Apple
9. Do No Evil
Chinese Lessons
Flickr Fail
Buzz Bust
Privacy and Facebook
10. Facebookistan and Googledom
Double Edge
Inside the Leviathan
Google Governance
Implications
PART FIVE: WHAT I S TO BE DONE?
11. Trust, but Verify
The Regulation Problem
Shared Value
The Global Network Initiative
Lessons from Other Industries
12. In Search of Internet Freedom” Policy
Washington Squabbles
Goals and Methods
Democratic Discord
Civil Society Pushes Back
13. Global Internet Governance
The United Nations Problem
ICANN—Can You?
14. Building a Netizen-Centric Internet
Strengthening the Netizen Commons
Expanding the Technical Commons
Utopianism Versus Reality
Getting Political
Corporate Transparency and Netizen Engagement
Personal Responsibility
Afterword to the Paperback Edition
Notes
Index