Internet Marketing And Freedom Issues

Here in the "free world" of western culture, internet marketing seems pretty straightforward; some company blasts internet ads at you and you try to ignore them, the same as on television. Even if you recognize the necessity of advertising, you might not think, as you close yet another annoying popup window, that marketing like this could be tied to censorship and online access in other countries. But the politics and economics of this and other types of marketing are becoming ever more intertwined.

Politics and business often go hand-in-glove, and as the internet gradually changes, internet marketing issues and political ones are becoming equally intertwined. Here, however, their relationship is still potentially more adversarial than cooperative. Many people are trying to link marketing freedom with freedom of speech and freedom from censorship. Much of this linkage is directed at China, in ways that aren't at all subtle. But the Chinese government thus far is ignoring external pressures.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is one of the people who explicitly links internet marketing with internet freedom and even political freedom. She has given two speeches on the topic of internet freedom within the past year, in fact. One linked the open internet with freedom of religion, a value promoted in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The other explained the Obama administration's belief that an open net leads to the ability to acquire knowledge and improve one's position through potential market opportunities. So Clinton urges that world governments open up the internet to allow their people these opportunities.

Of course, this is a very American capitalist move, tying marketing on the internet to fundamental human rights. This could raise some eyebrows, and not every country agrees that the two automatically correlate. Most people are aware that Google pulled its Chinese operations, after experiencing massive cyber attacks from Chinese hackers and then quarrelling with the government about censorship. Some cynics, though, remind people that Google had agreed to censorship up to that point. But the Chinese government is developing its own search engines and other capabilities, and the attacks seemed aimed to steal Google's technological secrets. So Google's move was perhaps based more on economics rather than other nobler motives.

The formation of internet policy, for any specific government, is actually a three-sided problem. To begin with, every government injects its own political viewpoint into its policies. But then it must deal with questions of whether the wider culture is more accustomed to a top-down form of government, or is based on an individualistic philosophy. And after these considerations come questions of how business matters are or should be handled in that culture. All three considerations will determine the type of online access people have in the society.

Other countries' differing views stem partly from differences in culture as well as political philosophy. In Canada, free speech is a core belief, yet speech promoting hatred of identifiable groups is limited and sometimes even banned, since it is considered a type of harmful, verbal violence. Canada's interest in "peace, order, and good government" is their equivalent of America's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And concern with the peacefulness and good governance of the wider society leads to an internet policy that might remove hate speech where American laws might leave it. This is not "oppression" or "totalitarianism," but stems from a different view of what best serves the wider society.

The problem is that other cultures don't always see things the American way, and their internet policy is created according to their own cultural values rather than American ones. Sometimes the government is undeniably authoritarian and oppressive, opposing the needs and desires of its own citizens, as seems frequently to be the case in Iran in recent years. Others, like Canada, might have slightly different policies for their network services, not because they don't value individual freedom but because they believe that freedom can only be exercised in a more structured framework.

Foreign governments can point out, quite correctly, that in most cases it is they who are expected to bend for the sake of US corporations doing internet marketing, rather than the other way around. They might be forgiven for a degree of cynicism about this seemingly American-made, one-way "solution" to questions about free speech and an open, uncensored internet. It may be that hopes for openness are in fact doomed, as long as this openness is linked to such a typically American approach to markets.

By: Andrew Wilson

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Andrew Wilson has been working in marketing for about 20 years and working with new internet marketers since 2005. He invites you to check out Marketers College where each week we publish new training to help you learn internet marketing If you want to learn how to succeed in your online business then check out Andrew Wilson's free internet marketing training videos and courses at marketerscollege.com