The Privacy Mission

CHAPTER 5Corporations

When it comes to the corporate world, there are two areas in particular that should concern us the most (although there are several others that I also explore in this chapter). These are, first and foremost, the monopolistic nature of many large corporations within the tech space and elsewhere. In relation to the big tech corporations, my biggest concerns lie in their willingness to do the work of nation‐state actors (refer back to the previous chapter for more details of Snowden's disclosure of PRISM); and their aggressive activity to take over and buy out smaller, up‐and‐coming companies. You do not have to look hard to see that these huge corporations aggressively take over organisations that might present (1) a threat to their business model or (2) an attractive and viable alternative to what they are doing.

If you are reading this as a small business owner who has ambitions of growing in the tech space, or disrupting in any industry for that matter, this is certainly something to carefully consider.

To understand how we have reached the point we are at today, with the big corporations having such unwieldy power (particularly where intellectual property [IP] is concerned), it is important to understand when, why and how these companies started to rein in people's free access to information. I would like to start this chapter by going back to the late 1990s and the rise of the first dot‐com bubble.

Nothing Comes for Free …

If you were alive (and old ...