What next for tech?
OUT-LAW Radio, 16/11/2006
We gaze into a crystal ball with a technology expert to see
which technologies will earn the big bucks, and talk to a man being
evicted because of a website.
A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who
for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew
Magee.
Hello and welcome to OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly podcast that
keeps you up to date on all the twists and turns in the world of
technology law.
Every week we bring you the latest news and in depth features
that help you to make sense of the ever-changing laws that govern
technology today.
My name is Matthew Magee, and coming up on this week's show we
do a bit of crystal ball gazing and look at what's next for the
technology industry. And we talk to the Glasgow man who faces
eviction over a website.
But first, the news.
- Married information thieves ordered to pay nearly £15,000
- Software patent refusal could go to House of Lords
- Phishing kits banned by new Fraud Act
A married couple has been convicted of stealing personal data
and selling it and has been ordered to pay £14,800 in fines and
costs. Between them the pair were convicted of 25 cases of
illegally obtaining and selling information.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which brought the
case, said that it has begun an investigation into organisations
which buy illegally-obtained information, which the Guardian
Newspaper reports are likely to be private detective agencies.
By phoning organisations and often posing as employees, the
couple were able to obtain bank account details, income tax
information and ex-directory telephone numbers of their
targets.
The businessman behind a patent application that failed on the
grounds of being a software program has applied to appeal the case
to the House of Lords.
Neal Macrossan is attempting to gain a UK patent for his
invention, which is an automatic system for collating the forms
needed to form a company.
Macrossan's application for a patent was refused by the Patent
Office and appeals to both the Patent Office and the High Court
failed.
The long-running case has been closely watched as a test of
whether or not the law on software patents would change in the
UK.
A new Anti-Fraud Bill has been passed into law for England and
Wales which will close a number of loopholes , including one
relating to phishing.
Currently, it is unlikely to be an offence to possess computer
files in preparation for launching a phishing attack. This is where
emails are sent in bulk, purporting to represent a well-known brand
in the hope of sending victims to a bogus website that tricks them
into disclosing bank account details. Phishing kits' have been
available on the internet but the people behind them have become
difficult to prosecute. It will become illegal to possess any
software or data for use in a fraud under the new regime.
It follows the passing last week of a law that makes it an
offence to launch a denial of service attack in the UK.
That was this week's OUT-LAW News.
These days, keeping up with the present is hard enough, but if
you're in the technology business, you have to be constantly making
informed guesses about the future. Are there viable business models
behind social networking? Are we in an investment bubble, with web
2.0 fever replacing dot.com madness? Is there a future for
traditional huge hunks of business software? And will Tesco topple
Microsoft?
One man brave enough to answer these questions for OUT-LAW Radio
and to make predictions as far ahead as 2010 is David Mitchell, an
Analyst with technology research firm Ovum. He has put together a
technology forecast, as Ovum does every year, predicting which of
the current trends will be this decade's Google, and which will be
its Netscape.
He started with the software market. He says that the market is
on a growth spurt, but only in particular places. If you're in IT
support, watch out.
DM: By end of the decade there will be a £6.44bn market for
software in the UK. Which is a really substantial market. So
you are getting close to doubling the market size within sort of 7
years. In terms of some of the key growth areas within
software, particularly the business applications area, is going to
stay growing. That is going to getting towards 9% growth all the
way through 2010. Largely driven by large manufacturers like
Oracle, SAP and Microsoft bringing out new sets of products. Some
of the areas that are growing less, so if we look at for example
the support service marketplace, that is really growing at around
3% per annum through to the end of the decade, which is relatively
flat. I mean if you subtract inflation from these figures, it is a
relatively static market.
MM: Is there anything that companies in the services field can
do, because there is a lot of them and some of them are quite
big?
DM: I think it is looked to diversity.
MM: Get into products?
DM: Get into products, get into other service regimes, create IP
and exploit IP.
Mitchell believes that the kind of convergence that sees Tesco
selling software, IT companies selling telecoms products and telcos
selling IT services is not going to take off. What will change the
landscape in the world of big business software, is serious
collaboration.
"Oracle versus SAP isn't Oracle versus SAP. It's the
Oracle ecosystem versus the SAP ecosystem and whatever collection
of companies together work most collaboratively will win out.
Tapping into an effective ecosystem is a really good way for the
next five years to make cash I think."
So what of the new new things, the web 2.0 businesses giving
twenty-something silicon valley dwellers something to crow about
for the first time since 2000. Is social networking a bust in the
making, or is there gold in those collaborative hills? Mitchell
says that when it comes to social networking companies, sometimes
the business models develop almost by accident.
"Something like LinkedIn, social networking site, now is being
used as a recruitment engine. The principal being most people like
to hire from people they know or through a personal recommendation.
If you have a six million subscriber database linked with
personal recommendations you would pay for that. A 30 day notice
for listing for something like 90 bucks. Very effective as a
recruitment vehicle. Don't think anyone spotted that at the time.
Now when that was created nobody publicly though this was a threat
to the recruitment industry. You can imagine similar threats coming
up say if you get accountancy communities that are self supporting
for finance managers, does that have an impact on the accounting
profession? If you get lawyers on-line, is it a threat to the legal
profession? I think it has got most potential impact on some of the
professions."
The sums being paid for firms, though, beggars belief. Youtube
was sold for $1.65 billion of Google stock after only 18 months in
business. Venture capital spending is higher than ever. Are we in
another investment bubble?
DM: I think it's got some similarities in the late 1990s in that
some of the dot.com deals people didn't know how quite to value
them. Therefore there was some very high valuations because
valuation principles were unknown. Some of these ones are equally
difficult to value. Actually I think some of these could prove not
to be overpaid but they will need very careful engineering to make
sure that the benefits come out. It does have some of the
uncertainty of the late 90s but I don't think that it's got quite
the silliness that late 90s had yet.
MM: But are you seeing much evidence of the financial community
looking harder at deals than they did because that was a great
failure the last time, was that the people that we looked to be
experts in this lost ahead. Are we seeing the financial community
look any harder this time round?
DM: A bit, I mean I was out in sort of Silicon Valley not last
week but the week before and the week before that and if you are
looking at putting together a tier one VC base deal at the moment
if you mention the words software as a service and web 2.0 that's a
good entry criteria. So I think there is a potential to have an
amount of silliness crop in, there is a danger that that goes too
far."
There are all sorts of ways that you can be sanctioned for what
you write or publish on a website. You can be sued for libel,
copyright infringement or prosecuted for incitement to racial
hatred. One Glasgow man is facing an altogether different fate: he
could be evicted because of a website he used to run.
John Quinn is a tenant of North Glasgow Housing Association. He
used to run a website which carried some pretty stiff criticism of
the Housing Association's activities. Six months ago he agreed to
stop running the website, but now faces an eviction notice from the
Housing Association because the site causes its staff distress.
JQ: The Housing Association are saying this website is
anti-social behaviour. They are saying it is a threat to their
staff and it is causing them distress. Now the website is a
community website. It is about the problems in the community, and
now they have actually threatened myself who is a tenant of the
Association for speaking to the website and they have actually
threatened to make me homeless. Now if they think it is defamatory
then they should take a defamation action and not an eviction
action. To make someone homeless because what they are saying
material is defamatory is wrong."
The Housing Association declined to speak to OUT-LAW, but issued
a statement that said "We have taken appropriate action against
this individual on grounds of harassment and anti-social behaviour.
We have a duty to protect the rights of other tenants, committee
members and staff who have been subjected to a continuous campaign
of vexatious and unreasonable behaviour.
Quinn is active in his local community in trying to get the
authorities, including the Housing Association, to combat
anti-social behaviour, yet it is exactly this that he stands
accused of.
JQ: I really find it astonishing. I mean I have reported quite a
number of our tenants for anti-social behaviour for drug dealing,
for putting baseball bats over people's heads and the Association
have done nothing, yet because they see something on the internet,
they want to make me homeless.
The site is still active, and Quinn says he long ago passed
control of it to other residents. He still provides it with
information, which he says he has every right to do.
JQ: I have met some individuals and I did offer them if they
wanted to take it and I am happy to give them my person letters,
continue to give them my stories but because the Housing
Association have seen the website back up again, and they have seen
my personal letters up there. It was upto the website if they
wanted to publish it or not so it wasn't as if what I was saying
was going directly on the internet, it was edited and it was really
up to the editors of the website to decide that. So really the
Housing Association just wanted me to shut up, it was as simple as
that. They knew I was one of their vocal critics and there is one
thing the Housing Association doesn't like is critics and as you
can see they are trying to make me homeless because of this. I mean
I think I'm entitled to speak to who I want to. I mean I'm speaking
to you today at OUT-LAW, I've spoken to the BBC and there is
really, you can't shut someone up. If they want to speak to someone
that's their right.
The case is suspended while Quinn, who is represented by the
Govan Law Centre, applies for Legal Aid to pay for Advocates. His
defence is likely to centre on his rights under the Human Rights
Act.
"This sets a precedent I think for freedom of speech and I think
it could actually do something to the Human Rights law as a whole.
I mean we are supposed to have one of the best Human Rights Law in
the World. But I mean if a Housing Association can throw you out on
the street because of what you have said on a website. I mean where
does it stop? I think it is really an abusive of power."
John Quinn there.
Well, that's it for this week. Thanks very much for
listening.
Why not get in touch with OUT-LAW Radio? We'd love to hear from
you on radio@out-law.com
Make sure you tune in next week; for now, goodbye.
OUT-LAW Radio was produced and presented by Matthew
Magee for international law firm Pinsent Masons.
