Review

Rating: 9

I came across this book as part of the required reading for a communications degree I’m studying. It’s been really helpful in understanding some of the issues surrounding social media and the regulatory pressures being applied by governments. Among the many interesting chapters, I found chapter 12 of particular interest “The techno-legal time-gap: can the law keep up with the digital revolution?”

Hirst & Harrison present some interesting questions that could potentially have impact on the activities of modern eMarketing teams and what we do. We know that Data Mining is key to understanding and building a profile of your prospects and clients, Hirst & Harrison see these activities as a mass invasion of privacy and go so far to coin the term the “Surveillance Economy” (p.323) a play on what the OECD called the “Security Economy“. They raise the question ‘Should government do more to protect online privacy?”. They say:

“The craven way both News Corp and Google have capitulated to demands for content restrictions in order to operate in China shows that freedom of expression is a principle that can be traded away if there is enough financial incentive.” (Hirst & Harrison p.288)

It seems we need to find a balance, one that provides prospects and clients with transparency around the data we’re gathering and how it’s used. It’s something to think about and probably worth some deeper discussion with your sales, marketing and legal teams.