Time for a Universal Online Code of Conduct

Is there anyone who feels we don't need a Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC)for the internet? Probably. But those are most likely people who make a point of facilitating the abuse of others. Almost every civil society, community protection, civil rights or anti-hate group has considered, drafted or published such a thing. Many government agencies have created such documents and even some companies have policies stated as universal across their services.

These policy statements go by various names; Terms of Service, Code of Conduct, User Agreement, and Community Guideline. With minor variations, it all boils down to the same concept; an agreement on what the companies, users, community and government can expect from each other - or it should.


All the groups, agencies and companies who build such agreements do it from a highly subjective and self serving perspective.  Everyone has an agenda. This immediately compromises any hope of creating an agreement with parity. Understandably, no one is readily willing to accept a Code of Conduct they had no hand in crafting.  Despite the ultimate advantage of a combined effort, there will always be companies, people, groups or governments who will never accept anything but their own concept of free speech. That is ironically, an example of free speech too.

There are companies ready and willing to cooperate and experiment in collaboration on a UCoC. Let's call them Tier 1 companies. The next group of companies agrees that some form of standards for on-line behavior is needed, but have reservations about anyone but them defining those limits on their platform. Then there are the Tier 3 companies who don't feel such a UCoC applies to them or object to such an overreaching policy on principals of free speech and freedom of choice. Ultimately companies are businesses and only responsible for acting within the law, but they also need keep to customers in order to stay in business

Communities need to stay aware of the power they have over companies and the responsibility that power contains. Enough users and public sentiment can make of break an on-line company. Any company. Consumers can push companies to mold policy in a desired direction. The trap is pushing a company to where their service is no longer competitive or the policies are so restrictive as to be unmanageable. Unprofitable businesses have a habit of closing.

Terms of Service as a contract has never been successfully tested in court. The companies don't want to lose and find the that ToS or other term are legally enforceable. Civil agencies and consumers don't want to lose and find that ToS are meaningless.  Odds are a court challenge is just a matter of time.

It is a far better idea for a congress of involved parties to establish an agreed, mutual UCOC than to wait for some disaster to push us there.