Question:
there is a difference between the US and Europe with regard to the relative primacy of free speech and individual privacy which impacts companies and consumers. How do the US and Europe differ? How might these differences impact companies that operate in both markets?
Lack of cultural study can severely affect business when considering globalization. Distinguishing the cultural background between European and U.S., as mentioned, I realized that the most European countries prefer the civil law, and the United States look for the common law. Besides, European people pursue individual privacy, and vice versa, the United States desire the freedom of speech. Without knowing the cultural difference between these two countries, operating the business in the opposite country would face the challenge. For instance, based on European cultures, people intend not shared with privacy with others. Thus, delivering the financial privacy data to individuals would be illegal under the "EU privacy rule". However, in the U.S., it is common for firms to deliver the w-2 form, bank statement, or investing report to consumers. If American applies the cultural attitude into the European, they might involve in the litigation. Typically, the law in the European countries such as Germany culturally applies the civil law that prefers the case by case study when lawsuits arose. Conclusively, under this circumstance, when doing business in any country, firms must take a carefulness on each step on the preliminary work.
Freedom of Speech vs. Privacy
COLLAPSE
As the lecture points out, the legal system differs from one country to another. Many factors play a role into how and why one country does things differently versus another. For the United States, we value our right to free speech. However, in Europe, they value the right to privacy more. Companies that are planning (if not already) to operate in both the US and Europe needs to understand what these two markets value in regards to freedom of speech and privacy and how to incorporate that into doing business. In the US, for example, financial investors are allow to receive notifications to opt-out certain things being released and social media channels and search engines can post the bad or good of certain individuals. That is not the case in Europe, where you are to OPT-IN to things and uploading certain video clips and individual's information can lead to a court case. For the companies that wish to expand to Europe, this can be an issue when it comes to deciding to what extent can a US company post about its products/services and the customers on social media and other channels. Or even to what extent can they share/use personal information of its consumers. And the opposite issue will be true European companies trying to expand in the US - will they be able to share more than they are willing and so on.
I think that the views on both these topics are different on either continents. In the United States, freedom of speech rules the land. The people see freedom of speech as their sword to battle others, as well as their shield to protect them. In the European countries, the value is placed more on privacy. They believe an individual has a right to share and not share details about their personal lives. One example of this is the "right to be forgotten" principle. Other students have brought this up, but this principl follows to the idea that people can control what is shared about them. For example, Europeans believe that they have the right to ask Google to delete any search results that come up about them that they do not want others to see. In the United States, this works a little differently. If the personal information is legally distributed and is not illegal in manner too, it can be shared without the consent of the person is pertains to. This is where freedom of speech trumps privacy in the United States, because it is the freedom of speech principle that sometimes allows other people's privacy to be forgone.
In terms of the relative primacy of free speech and individual privacy there are ways the US differs from Europe. In Europe there is more emphasis on the right to privacy than in the US. In the US, the right to free speech is consider more important, which is protected by the first amendment. It is important to understand this when entering one of these markets, because it could result in loss of revenue. For instance, in the case of Google when they lost a court case due to an issue of privacy. Companies will have to be knowledgeable of the differences in the two countries to be the most successful.
In the United States, freedom of speech is a basic human right and one we hold paramount to all others. In Europe, the right to privacy comes first. The New York Times article quoted Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence."
Liptak argues that Americans like privacy too, but they think about it in a different way as an aspect of liberty and protection against government overreaching, particularly into the home. This is why when John Snowden blew the Whistle on the U.S. "spying" on people all over the world, people were outraged over it, especially those in Europe.
The Google case was extremely interesting to read about. It's hard to say Google was wrong in this case, especially because once someone filed a formal complaint about it, the video was immediately removed. But it is not that Google acting as a mere "a conduit for other peoples information." I like how Liptak brought in that issues over privacy truly arise when Google is the one gathering and disseminating the information, like they do in the StreetView service. While I don't have issues with Google taking ground-level panoramas, it definitely is a culture thing and is understandable why other nations would feel this is an invasion of their privacy.
Working in a global company, we are faced with tons of regulations and rules when dealing with the rest of the world and especially Europe. When I create emails promoting our products, each country in Europe has different laws and rules that determine how we communicate with people in the country. In Spain for example, all emails we create have to be distributed through the Consortium there; banning us from emailing them directly. For every email that is sent to Spain directly we face the chance of facing heavy monetary penalties.. In addition to that, certain footers with "opt in" call to actions need to be added to the bottom of prospecting emails that go in Europe.
In general the freedom of speech and individual privacy laws in the United States and the United Kingdom are fairly similar. In essentials they are the same; citizens are given immunity from repercussions stemming from something they might say, barring some exemptions. The big difference between these two nations is that in the United States, freedom of speech is considered a hard and fast rule without loopholes, even in wartime the courts are loathe to curtail the rights of the American people or go against the constitution. In the United Kingdom things are a little bit more fluid. Parliament may change the law by making exceptions to the rule as they deem necessary. This could create an addendum to the idea of 'freedom of speech' to no longer include people speaking out against cheese, for example, in the freedom of speech law if for some reason the British government decided that people speaking about cheese were a danger to the nation. In general these augmentations of the law are not seen by U.K. citizens as power hungry or unnecessary, but I believe that this sort of executive action would not go over well in the U.S. where our constitutional rights are vehemently championed. This difference in law making effects multinational corporations in a very significant way. Because of the fluidity of the laws in the U.K., a company operating there could run into some trouble. Say a company has been investing a lot of time and energy into a large ad campaign and brand reinvention all centered around cheese, and the British Parliament decides to roll out the aforementioned cheese exception example. The MNC would have wasted lots of money and time on a campaign that could no longer be used. This is just one of the many ways in which a legal system that has more opportunity for change and updates could affect a company. While significant changes to the law are few and far between it is still something that every MNC should keep in mind when operating in the United Kingdom.