THE DISCUSSION IN preceding chapters about the operating context for information policies shows that much depends on how you see that context, both for an understanding of what information policies can do and for generating ideas about what they might do. The final examination of human rights in information also showed that where law brings them into existence information policies, both generally and in particular sectors, do exist and we must recognize them. Even if a country has no law about, say, intellectual property ownership, there is still that set of human rights principles that can be appealed to as an argument that morally and inherently such rights do exist and this can act as a spur to those who want to campaign for legislation. The focus on what exists, in the moral imagination or in enforceable laws, brings us back to consider what happens in particular sectors, and the debate about the effects of the current state of law and custom and its enforcement and how things should change, or can proceed.

In the following chapters we will look at four areas of activity: censorship and freedom of expression, privacy and data protection, freedom of information, and intellectual property. This is not an exhaustive list but it will serve us with examples that cover the points that need to be made about strategies and policy development. In examining individual sectors we will not be looking for comprehensive statements of the current state of law or practice; these are well covered in other excellent works that relate to particular jurisdictions.

The points that need to be uncovered here are those that indicate the range of possibilities, the history of practice, and the basis for arguments about what could or should be done. Knowing what an information policy should look like, what it should cover and contain, depends in part on understanding the operating context and the theoretical underpinnings that we have already considered, but it also depends on knowing the range of what is possible and what effects various policy instruments will have on daily life.