| Magna Carta Debate
Assignment | | Dynamic Competition in Education |
| s99 Debate Position Statements |
The Magna
Carta
| ethics & invasion of
privacy | | property rights | | preamble
| | last
update |
The Magna Carta of 1215 guaranteed basic civil
rights and political rights that are the bedrock of Western Civilization. About five years
ago, some folks who have thought deeply about the future -- Esther
Dyson  , George Gilder, George Keyworth (more), Alvin Toffler  -- put together a magna carta for digital
civilization. It's similar to what many organizations do when they adopt a vision
statement.
We've included here the Preamble, but
you  must go to the Web
site to read the rest. The site, sponsored by Feed magazine, is especially
good because the text provides links to other experts who disagree completely and express
their disagreement very cogently.
The new Magna Carta addresses a couple of areas that affect
marketing:
(1) Marketing Ethics & Invasion of Privacy
We are at the end of a century dominated by
the mass institutions of the industrial age. The industrial age encouraged conformity and
relied on standardization. It was assumed that the
scarcity of knowledge (plus a scarcity of telecommunications capacity) made bureaucracies
and other elites better able to make decisions than the average person. And the institutions of the day --
corporate and government bureaucracies, huge civilian and military administrations,
schools of all types -- reflected these priorities. Individual
liberty suffered -- sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot:
In a Second Wave world, the one we grew up in, it
might make sense for government to:
 |
insist on the right to peer into every computer by requiring that each
contain a special "clipper chip" |
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assume ownership over the
broadcast spectrum and demand massive payments from citizens for the right
to use it |
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prohibit ("regulate")
entrepreneurs from entering new markets and providing new services |
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influence which political
viewpoints would be carried over the airwaves |
| These and literally thousands of other
infringements on individual rights now taken for granted make no sense at all in the Third
Wave, a global market made of bits traveling at
almost the speed of light. In a world of open content, such infringements disappear. In
the interim, however, i.e. until definitive standards are established, they must be
scrutinized for their adherence to commonly accepted ethical standards. |
Here's what Dr. Brian O'Connell, a lawyer and
computer science professor, has to say about the ethical implications of the new media:
"The study of ethics has been in existence for over 2,500 years. Its central
focus is the analysis and description of such basic concepts as what is right and wrong,
and how we go about judging the differences. An important dimension of this investigation
concerns the types of conduct that comprise ethical behavior. These tasks necessarily
involve the examination of rights, responsibilities, and obligations. Beyond theoretical
boundaries, ethical inquiry is studied at all levels of human interaction and often appear
as political, legal, and commercial issues. |
| "Modern technology presents a radical
challenge to marketing ethics as well as to those of other professions. The extent of this
challenge is perhaps best reflected in the revolutionary features of the computer itself.
When compared with other major technical advances such as the printing press, telephone,
or automobile, digital media are arguably unique in their capacity for speed, ubiquity,
and versatility. Computers represent the fastest growing form of communication and,
through the Internet and similar systems, forge global links of unprecedented proportion. |
| "These factors have created vacuums
in ethical policy. Although they do not directly challenge such general ideas as fairness
or honesty, digital processes and potentialities are so new that ethics, like many other
social endeavors, is only beginning to adapt itself to the Computer Revolution." Source: Strauss, Judy and Raymond Frost (1999),
"Marketing On the Internet: Principles of Online Marketing," Prentice Hall:
Upper Saddle River, NJ., pp. 33-4. |
| Currently, a number of critical issues are
confronting electronic environments, including the role of privacy in a virtual world
without locks, doors, or walls. The extent to which freedom of information should be
allowed, versus the right of the individual to personal privacy, are particularly at odds
in cyberspace. The fact that electronic space is global in nature only exacerbates the
difficulty in defining a compromise between our freedoms of information and privacy across
cultural and national boundaries. |
Ethics Statement
"Organizations have every right to
obtain information about users of digital space in order to improve their marketing
communications with such users."
|
| Savvy Sites* |
| Web Site & Address |
Importance to Net Marketers |
Cnet
www.cnet.com |
Provides general
information about computing and the Internet. |
Cybersolve
www.cybersolve.com |
A
"webzine" (web-based magazine) containing articles and online books about WWW
marketing. A great academic source of information. |
Wilson Internet
Services
www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/ |
Excellent site for
articles on Internet marketing gathered from a variety of publications. A highly
recommended bookmark. |
(2) Property Rights
Clear and enforceable property rights are
essential for markets to work. But in the new cyberspace environment, we find a new kind
of property. It's made out of bits rather than atoms.
| The property that
makes up cyberspace comes in several forms: |
|
atoms |
wires, cables,
computers, routers, and other hardware |
|
forces |
the electromagnetic
spectrum |
|
bits |
intellectual property --
the knowledge that dwells in and defines cyberspace |
| Atoms
can be in only one place at a time, so possession, if not ownership, is clear. But bits
are different. Again, Dr. Brian O'Connell has something to say on this subject: |
| "Law
is similar to ethics in the sense that it, too, is an ancient expression of values. Unlike
ethics, though, it is always intended to apply to entire nations or states. (Law)... is a
public endeavor. This is reflected in the fact that law is often a result of political and
social compromise. Additionally, law attempts to be consistent in both time and place so
that citizens will be familiar with their rights and obligations. |
| "A
primary function of law is to define ownership, and here the goal of consistency is
currently being challenged by digital technology. Traditionally, the law has protected
intangible or intellectual property... Copyright
addresses the realm of ideas -- specifically, the right to publish or duplicate the
expressions of these ideas. |
| "Computer-based
communication has posed particularly difficult problems for intellectual property...The
current law of intellectual property is understandably in flux. At this early stage, it
appears that copyright has been established as the primary means of protecting most
written material on the Internet, including text and other data... |
| "The
desire for certainty in electronic transactions is providing a great motivation for the
production of laws that are specific to digital environments." Source: Strauss, Judy and Raymond Frost (1999),
"Marketing On the Internet: Principles of Online Marketing," Prentice Hall:
Upper Saddle River, NJ., pp. 75-6. |
Intellectual
Property Rights Statement
"Information made of bits should be
free."
|
| Savvy Sites* |
| Web Site & Address |
Importance to Net Marketers |
Commercenet
www.commerce.net |
Commercenet, in
conjunction with Nielsen media Research, provides excellent Net user demographic
information with insightful graphs and charts. |
Computerworld's
Emmerce
www.computerworld.com |
Features
cutting-edge news stories about issues affecting electronic commerce. |
Forrester Research
www.forrester.com |
Some free
information about information technology issues can be found here. |
International Data
Corporation (IDC)
www.idcresearch.com |
Some very useful and
free information. Topics include information technology and data analysis, in addition to
a global perspective on IT trends. |
Project 2000 at
Vanderbilt University
www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu |
Produced at the Owen
School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Devoted to topics about Internet marketing.
Plenty of excellent scholarly publications, and an assortment of relevant links with
descriptions. |
| * Source: Strauss, Judy and Raymond Frost (1999), "Marketing On
the Internet: Principles of Online Marketing," Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ.
|
Preamble
The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of
matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth -- in the form of
physical resources -- has been losing value and significance. The powers of mind are
everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.
 |
In a First Wave economy,
land and farm labor are the main "factors of production." |
|
In a Second Wave economy,
the land remains valuable while the "labor" becomes massed around machines and
larger industries. |
|
In a Third Wave economy,
the central resource -- a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images,
symbols, culture, ideology, and values -- is actionable knowledge. |
The industrial age is not fully over. In fact,
classic Second Wave sectors (oil, steel, auto-production) have learned how to benefit from
Third Wave technological breakthroughs -- just as the First Wave's agricultural
productivity benefited exponentially from the Second Wave's farm-mechanization.
But the Third Wave, and the Knowledge Age it has opened, will not deliver on its potential
unless it adds social and political dominance to its accelerating technological and
economic strength. This means repealing Second Wave laws and
retiring Second Wave attitudes. It also gives to leaders of the advanced
democracies a special responsibility -- to facilitate, hasten, and explain the transition.
As humankind explores this new "electronic
frontier" of knowledge, it must confront again the most profound questions of how to
organize itself for the common good. The meaning of freedom, structures of
self-government, definition of property, nature of competition, conditions for
cooperation, sense of community and nature of progress will each be redefined for the
Knowledge Age -- just as they were redefined for a new age of industry some 250 years ago.
What our 20th-century countrymen came to think of as the "American dream," and
what resonant thinkers referred to as "the promise of American life" or
"the American Idea," emerged from the turmoil of 19th-century industrialization.
Now it's our turn: The knowledge revolution, and the Third Wave of historical change it
powers, summon us to renew the dream and enhance the promise.
 "Information Wants
to Be Free"
Stewart Brand is generally credited with this
elegant statement of the obvious, which recognizes both the natural desire of secrets to
be told and the fact that they might be capable of possessing something like a
"desire" in the first place.
English biologist and philosopher Richard Dawkins proposed
the idea of "memes,"
self-replicating patterns of information that propagate themselves across the ecologies of
mind, a pattern of reproduction much like that of life forms.
I believe they are life forms in every respect but their
freedom from the carbon atom. They self-reproduce, they interact with their surroundings
and adapt to them, they mutate, they persist. They evolve to fill the empty niches of
their local environments, which are, in this case the surrounding belief systems and
cultures of their hosts, namely, us.
Indeed, sociobiologists like Dawkins make a plausible case
that carbon-based life forms are information as well, that, as the chicken is an egg's way
of making another egg, the entire biological spectacle is just the DNA molecule's means of
copying out more information strings exactly like itself.
excerpt from "The Economy of Ideas"
in WIRED 2.03
by John Perry Barlow
co-founder and executive chair
Electronic Frontier Foundation |
 |
Are these guys blowing smoke? Or is this
actually happening? To the extent that it does happen, what will it mean for your job? If
you knew for certain that it was going to happen, how would you educate your children
differently? |
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