If China someday gains a more fair, just, and accountable system of government, it will be due to the hard work and efforts of the Chinese people, not due to the inexorable workings of any particular technology. -Rebecca MacKinnon Technology
It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression and instead to address the much more urgent question of how digital technology can be structured, governed, and used to maximize the good and minimize the evil. -Rebecca MacKinnon Technology
Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib. -Rebecca MacKinnon Learning
Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
It becomes dangerous for somebody who doesn't want their boss to know their sexual preference to use online networks to push for laws supporting gay marriage or same-sex partner rights if they can't do so with a pseudonym. -Rebecca MacKinnon Marriage
Over time, if you want rights, you have to also show that you can use them responsibly and that you can build a positive world in the online space, and that's also very important. -Rebecca MacKinnon Positive
To have a .cn domain, you have to be a registered business. You have to prove your site is legal. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mechanism to hold authorities accountable for wrongdoing - at least sometimes - without any actual political or legal reforms having taken place. Major political power struggles and scandals are no longer kept within elite circles. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
Yahoo! had a choice. It chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, making itself subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction. It didn't have to do that. It could have provided a service hosted offshore only. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
If they lose their legal basis for owning a .cn domain, google.cn would cease to exist, or if it continued to exist, it would be illegal, and doing anything blatantly illegal in China puts their employees at serious risk. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their 'patriotism.' -Rebecca MacKinnon Patriotism
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the computer code that led to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1990, he did not try to patent or charge fees for the use of his technology. -Rebecca MacKinnon Technology
Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks. -Rebecca MacKinnon Society
There isn't much question that the person who obtained the WikiLeaks cables from a classified U.S. government network broke U.S. law and should expect to face the consequences. The legal rights of a website that publishes material acquired from that person, however, are much more controversial. -Rebecca MacKinnon Legal
The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age. -Rebecca MacKinnon Politics
Can companies just claim a total lack of political responsibility in how their technology is used in all instances? It's something that companies should be thinking about when they sell their technologies around the world. -Rebecca MacKinnon Technology
Each of us has a vital role to play in building a world in which the government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around. -Rebecca MacKinnon Technology
Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship. -Rebecca MacKinnon Relationship
