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Public Policy

Symantec participates in shaping public policy around the world with regard to issues that affect its industry, business, products, and customers. We partner with business and trade organizations and work with local, regional, and national, and international lawmakers and government agencies to influence policy and legislation. Our public policy involvement allows Symantec to better accomplish its mission to protect its customers and the integrity and unimpeded flow of the world’s information.

The public policy issues we face are broad and cover many aspects of consumer privacy, online safety, cyber security, and intellectual property protection. During the past year, we established Policy Advisory Teams to gather input from subject matter experts and other internal company stakeholders on our priority public policy issues. This input will help us better shape and align our public policy approaches and activities.

Key issues that we address around the world include: patent reform and IP protection; software assurance and supply chain integrity; cyber education and awareness; IT certification and standards; behavioral advertising; the environment, climate change, and green IT; healthcare reform and healthcare IT; innovation and competitiveness; and workforce and immigration. We currently have external position statements on some of these issues and are developing external position statements on the others. We will make these new position statements available within the next year.

Consumer Privacy
Protecting Consumers Against Cyberthreats
Safeguarding Intellectual Property
Political Engagement
Memberships

Consumer Privacy

Symantec believes that harmonized privacy legislation can create a simplified, uniform, but flexible legal framework to protect individuals and businesses. Effective regulation would provide protection for consumers from inappropriate collection and misuse of their personal information and also enable legitimate businesses to use information to promote economic and social value. In principle, such legislation would address:

businesses collecting personal information from consumers transparently, with appropriate notice;
providing consumers with meaningful choices regarding the use and disclosure of that information;
allowing consumers reasonable access to personal information they have provided;
protecting such information from misuse or unauthorized access; and
requiring organizations to provide notification of data breaches in a reasonable and timely manner.

We believe that countries without data protection laws should consider enacting such legislation to provide stronger protection for individuals’ personal information. This type of protection is especially important in our current digital age where vast amounts of information are processed and personal data is more valuable than ever before.

For more information about Symantec’s efforts to protect consumer and customer privacy, please visit our Privacy and Data Protection Web site.

Protecting Consumers Against Cyberthreats

Online Safety

Symantec continues to be a thought leader on the issue on online safety, and serves on the boards and taskforces of leading online safety organizations such as the U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance. We also participated in the Harvard Berkman Center Child Online Safety Task Force, which was set up by request from the U.S. State Attorneys General. We have supported awareness-raising activities in several countries in our EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and APJ (Asia Pacific and Japan) regions through private-public partnership initiatives and national campaigns such as national e-security awareness weeks. Read more about our activities on our online safety Web page.

Spyware

Symantec supports efforts to curb unwanted and illicit spyware. We believe that anti-spyware legislation must be carefully crafted in order to protect consumers yet still preserve legitimate technologies. In the United States, Symantec was active in efforts to ensure that anti-spyware legislation at the Federal and State level does not restrict certain features legitimately sought by Symantec consumers.

The issue of spyware is also an emerging international topic. Symantec briefed government officials and industry leaders on spyware at the first security seminar organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a multilateral organization comprising the leading global economies, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which represents the United States and Asia-Pacific rim economies.

Spam

Policymakers, particularly in the United States, continue to seek ways to address consumer complaints about unsolicited commercial email, known as spam. Symantec has worked closely with the U.S. Federal government and several states regarding anti-spam legislation. Symantec has also developed an anti-spam prosecution solution to help states collect, interpret, and present the necessary data for the successful prosecution of spammers.

On an international level, Symantec participated in the drafting of the OECD Anti-Spam “Toolkit” launched in 2006. The Anti-Spam “Toolkit” is the first step in a broader initiative to help policy makers, regulators, and industry players orient their policies relating to spam solutions and restore trust in the Internet and email. Additionally, we have been working with governments around the globe who have passed anti-spam legislation and are in the process of deploying enforcement programs or intend to pass legislation in this area (i.e. C-27/Electronic Commerce Protection Act legislation in Canada).

Protecting Consumers Against Cyberthreats

Safeguarding Intellectual Property

Every year, billions of dollars are lost to software piracy, which is the illegal distribution and/or copying of software for personal and/or business use. The harmful effects of software piracy reach far beyond the software publisher. While companies suffer a direct loss of sales, consumers also suffer because companies are often forced to raise prices or cut research and development funding to make up for revenue shortfalls due to piracy. According to industry estimates, in 2007 the global market value of software piracy climbed to an astonishing $40 billion. While piracy rates around the world have fallen modestly, the total dollar value of pirated software continues to rise. Click here to learn more about Symantec’s anti-piracy efforts.

Symantec works closely with governments around the world to strengthen copyright protection for software, both in digital and physical form. In the United States, Symantec is an active member of a patent reform coalition that is asking Congress to pass comprehensive patent reform legislation. Globally, Symantec is a Worldwide member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an organization formed in 1988 that spans 65 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The mission of BSA is to advance free and open world trade for legitimate business software by advocating strong protection of intellectual property.

Our best information about software pirates comes from our consumers. If you know of or suspect an organization or an individual of committing software piracy, either through conventional distribution or over the Internet (Web or ftp site), please let us know. You can fill out a report at our anti-piracy Web site.

Political Engagement

Symantec is engaged in the political processes of the countries in which we make and sell our products. The following examples highlight just a few of our ongoing global privacy and protection-oriented public policy efforts.

IP Protection: IP theft and copyright infringement have a significant impact on the software industry. These effects can be mitigated through a combination of appropriate legislation and technical measures.
Cybercrime (Spyware and Phishing): Symantec urges governments to enact laws that provide strong criminal penalties for entities that distribute crimeware to consumers’ computers.
Critical Information Infrastructure Protection: Symantec believes that governments should establish frameworks to protect their nations’ critical information infrastructure across industry sectors from cyberthreats. Countries also need to protect themselves against large-scale attacks on such infrastructure, as witnessed by global incidents in recent years. National and public-sector information-assurance policies should be technology-neutral and aligned to international best practices.
Data Protection: Symantec urges governments to enact data protection and data breach notification laws to provide comprehensive protection for individuals’ personal information.
Education, Awareness, and Family Online Safety: Symantec is working with governments globally to demo the new OnlineFamily.Norton beta product and promote its capabilities. We will also work to ensure that any policy or legislative approach to family or child online safety is reasonable and does not mandate specific technologies.
Environment/Climate Change/Green IT: Symantec is pursuing many environmental and green IT projects and initiatives. We have tied in a policy and legislative component to this work by, among other activities, becoming a member of BICEP and actively supporting the Waxman-Markey Climate Change legislation. Symantec President and CEO, Enrique Salem, recently attended a meeting at the White House on this topic and will continue to work with the Administration, Congress, other global public policy officials, and industry on climate change and energy issues.
e-Healthcare Reform: In the past year, Symantec increased its efforts in the healthcare reform/health IT space from both a business as well as a policy and standards perspective. We engaged through several trade groups and government initiatives to help promote a reasonable approach to healthcare reform and the creation of a Health IT infrastructure that addresses privacy, security, and the interoperability of medial records and data.
Tax Reform: With a new administration in the United States, and various tax proposals currently on the table, Symantec is developing a tax position paper and will be devoting more attention to issues of corporate tax reform.

In the United States, Symantec’s political action committee (PAC) makes contributions to candidates at the State and Federal levels. The PAC is funded by voluntary donations made by senior-level Symantec employees and company shareholders. Symantec evaluates potential recipients of PAC funds based on their support and understanding of our key public policy issues such as intellectual property protection, data security, privacy, and e-commerce and trade. Total PAC contributions in recent years have not exceeded $100,000 per election cycle; FY09 contributions totaled $48,409.66. A complete list of candidates that have received Symantec PAC contributions can be found online.

Memberships

Symantec partners with and supports the efforts of various organizations that engage in shaping public policy around online safety, privacy, intellectual property, and other challenging issues.

* Denotes organizations in which Symantec employees participate directly (board or task force representation)

For more information on Symantec government relations please visit our Web site