This document discusses corporate social responsibility and its importance for internet companies. It defines CSR as companies being responsible socially, ethically, and environmentally. While some argue internet companies struggle with CSR, the document advocates holding companies accountable through innovative methods and helping shape their products and services to minimize human rights violations. It also describes initiatives like the Global Network Initiative that aim to help companies uphold users' rights to expression and privacy globally.

1. The Internet and Corporate
Social Responsibility
By: Connor O’Halleran

2. Corporate social responsibility
 Definition: The corporate belief that a company needs
to be responsible for its actions socially, ethically and
environmentally

3. The benefit of practicing CSR
 Corporate responsibility is directly correlated to
sustainable business
 Expected of companies by consumers, investors, and
legislators that businesses operate in ways that respect
the environment, their workforces, and the quality of
life and basic human rights of the communities in which
they operate.
 Companies are now becoming more conscious of how
important CSR is, strategizing to implement it in their
business planning

4. Shared Value
 Term theorized Michael Porter and Mark Kramer of
Harvard Business School
 Definition: When a business brings its operations and
business strategies into direct alignment with society’s
broader aspirations and values, it maximizes its own
ability to “drive the next wave of innovation and
productivity growth in the global economy.”
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vK3cxnP6I4

5. Internet companies & CSR
 Problem: “Companies must also be convinced that
respecting and protecting their users’ universally
recognized human rights is in their long-term
commercial self-interest–-a proposition that continues
to puzzle or elude too may Internet companies, in
contrast to longer established technology companies
and others in virtually every other industry.” –Mackinnon
 Unlike companies like Nike, the value proposition of
Internet-related companies relates directly to the
empowerment of citizens.
 Internet as a human right

6. Cisco & China
 Routers are used as a part of China’s “great firewall”
 Cisco has also done business with Chinese police
departments- further contributing to censorship of the
Internet
 Denial of claims
 Senior VP Mark Chandler argued that his company sells the
same equipment worldwide and “does not customize, or
develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities, in
order to enable different regimes to block access to
information.”

7. Global Network Initiative

Dedicated to helping Internet and telecommunications companies uphold their users’
and customers’ right to freedom of expression and privacy around the world in ways that
are credible and accountable

Challenges

Every country’s legal and political system is different

Every Internet platform, equipment vendor, and telecomm. Company is different

Every company conducts business differently in every country it operates in
 Point is to minimize harm while maximizing the benefits that information
technology offers
 Members of GNI: human rights organizations, socially responsible investors, and
academic specialists
 Human Rights Audit: assessment that GNI members conduct by identifying if
companies are meeting the standards of the GNI and members work with
companies to make improvements
 Criticism of GNI

8. What we should do (according to Mackinnon)
 “First, we must come up with more innovative ways to
hold companies accountable for the human rights
implications of their business, software, and
engineering choices.”
 “Second, people and organizations need to work more
creatively and aggressively to help companies shape
their products and services in a way that will minimize
the likelihood that their business will violate or
facilitate the violation of human rights and civil
liberties, and maximize the chances that their business
will genuinely improve the world.”

9. Questions
 How conscious are you that the products you consume
are made ethically?
 In what ways can we hold Internet and technology based
companies accountable when there is a breach of social
responsibility? Will this problem get worse?

10. Sources

http://globalnetworkinitiative.org/participants/index.php?page=3

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/is-internet-the-next-fundamental-human-right

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/cisco-china-sales-vulnerable-as-mediaurge-domestic-shift.html

http://iis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/6349/MacKinnon_Libtech.pdf

Consent of the Networked, Rebecca Mackinnon