Until now, advancements in information and communication technologies have largely been perceived as threats to privacy and have often led policymakers to seek, and citizens and consumers to demand, additional privacy safeguards in the legal and regulatory arenas. But over the decades, the adoption of new technologies across varying socio-economic contexts has periodically culminated in critical inflection points that offered individuals and society opportunities to re-examine and advance the notion of privacy itself. The chapter argues that it is time for such a shift.

This chapter is interested in one specific cross-cutting dimension of what might be labelled as the 'rethinking privacy' discourse. It asks whether and how the interplay between technology and privacy law – both systems that govern information flows – can be reimagined and organized in mutually productive ways.

The chapter proceeds in four steps: (1) explaining some of the dynamics that motivate a rethinking of privacy in the modern moment; (2) developing a historical understanding of the dominant patterns connecting the evolutions of law and technology; (3) examining a potential way to reimagine the dynamic between these elements moving forward; and (4) sketching elements of a pathway towards ‘re-coding’ privacy law.

The Internet has changed the ways in which we create, access, and use information, knowledge, and entertainment. In turn, these tectonic shifts have led to the emergence of a new type of networked public sphere that has the potential to alter the dynamics of political communication in general and election campaigns in particular. When compared with traditional media, Web 2.0 and new media appear to be well-suited tools for use by political candidates to tap into a broad range of voters. Perhaps the most prominent example of these changes in the information environment is the Obama presidential campaign in the United States, in which the Internet played a significant role as a communication, mobilization, and fundraising tool. Examples from other parts of the world, where citizen journalism, participatory news media, and the blogosphere have had a remarkable influence on the outcome of elections, including in the Ukraine and South Korea, have gained much attention from scholars and the public at large. More recently, the so-called Twitter revolution in Iran and the role that social media played in the political turmoil in Egypt in early 2011 are complex cases of online mobilization, in which not only locals but also users from all over the world participated.

The consensus among European scholars is that U.S. campaign communication tactics generally influence those used in other global regions, including Europe. Considering these trends against the backdrop of a largely U.S.-centric body of (qualitative and quantitative) research aimed at investigating the Internet's impact on political communication and campaigning, this chapter explores the role of the Internet in recent campaigns in the German-speaking regions of Europe; in particular, it contrasts developments in these countries to those in the United States.

Introduction

This chapter approaches the question of corporate social responsibility for acts and omissions of business entities outside the ownership sphere but possibly within the ‘sphere of influence’ from a law and regulation perspective. Here, the term ‘regulation’ is used in the broad sense of the New Chicago School and includes soft law-oriented forms of regulation such as internal corporate policies, best practice principles and purely aspirational guidelines. Within this thematic context, the chapter addresses four issues. The first section provides a sketch of the genesis of the ‘sphere of influence’ concept, provides in a nutshell a summary of the current state of the debate regarding its concretization and specification, and comments on its legal status and relevance under current law. The second section briefly identifies – against the backdrop of the current debate – some of the characteristics that make it particularly challenging to define the notion of ‘sphere of influence’. The third section of the paper then outlines two basic strategies to overcome the definitional problem: a ‘top-down’ approach where the criteria to decide whether or not an act or omission is within a company’s sphere of influence is decided authoritatively – focusing on third-party liability as the furthest reaches of indirect liability; and a ‘bottom-up’ approach that looks at companies’ human rights policies in order to explore their actual reach and potential for taking effective measures. The fourth and final section offers some reflections on the question of the virtue of the ‘sphere of influence’ concept – despite its relative vagueness.

Genesis of the ‘sphere of influence’ concept

The ‘sphere of influence’ concept evolved in the political environment. It was introduced into the corporate social responsibility discourse by the UN Global Compact Nine Principles in July 2000 and gained importance through the adoption of the ‘Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights’ on 13 August 2003 by the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.