Global Information Summit 2000

Net Conference

Session 2 - "Electronic Commerce in the Digital Divide Era "

Start-Up 3
From: Dr. Erola Marja (21) About privacy issues please find enclosed two references
- a recent one by Commissioner Liikanen TRUST AND SECURITY IN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: THE EUROPEAN APPROACH at the conference Information Security Solutions Europe (ISSE 99)http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/liikanen/speeches/051099_en.htm - and an older one, by prof. George Metakides from the European Commission: Privacy in the Information Society: A European Perspective. This speech was the plenary keynote at the Sixth Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy organized by the MIT and the W3C. http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/projects/mac/cfp96/plenary-keynote.html I think those speeches show quite well what privacy means in practice and at the policy level. Even the speech from 1996 is still quite up-to-date, reflecting what is coming. Privacy is something where clear and transparent rules of the game, and also best practices are needed. Enterprises should understand at the strategy level what they are doing, what are their responsibilities when e.g. opening their customer interfaces and collecting all kind of data and utilizing that. Now a company can even publish of bought books for personnels from single companies, statistics related to enterprise names given in the Internet. There might be a clear difference between the US and the EU, as reflected in the text I referred in my first message, for Paul Timmers book. How European companies are more interested in trust and confidence - things very much based on security and privacy. Really, now companies are opening their customer interfaces in the Internet, at the same time using subcontracting and partnership etc to build, keep up and utilize those systems. Marketing and new media people are so enthusiastically discussing about rich media etc and how wonderful it is when finally in the history it's possible to collect exact information how people like advertisements, profile their behavior etc. That's of course understandable and fine, but if at the same time no one is interested in the responsibilities who knows if the result is acceptable any more. We cannot e.g. expect a new media enterprise creating homepages to give advice to a bigger enterprise which has ordered them what its general strategy in security and privacy should be. There are anyway different strategies and will be in the future as well, it depends on business sector etc etc. The enterprise itself, that is the owner of the system is surely fully responsible of its own strategic thinking, of course within the framework of laws and regulation. That shouldn't be forgotten and it cannot be outsourced.
From: Anthony M. Rutkowski (22) temporary theme
(21) Dr. Erola Marja in my first message, fro Paul Timmers book. How European companies are more interested in trust and confidence - things very much based on security and privacy. Is this assertion based on a poll among companies worldwide, or some other basis? I would think they would be more interested in their competitive position in the global economy, innovation, and effectiveness in discovering and providing products and support to customers. I don't mean to diminish the importance of fair rules of the road. However, the CEC has traditionally attempted to impose privacy positions that are based on political principal rather than business practicality and desires. Getting this "wrong" in an Internet economy could have severe adverse implications for a region's businesses.
From: Dr. Robert S. Fish (23) temporary theme
This is Rob Fish, I am director of Panasonic's Information Networking and Technologies Laboratory in Princeton, NJ, USA. I think, from what we have seen, that the media ecommerce scene will become much more diverse as lots of different business models and distribution technologies are tried out. There are technical solutions to ecommerce issues, but each solution creates a business model problem (or opportunity!) and the media companies are having a hard time keeping up. (17) Takashi Tanemura Can we start with the following topics? (2) Wolfgang Hennes - how are publishing and media houses dealing with free content in the net (mp3 etc.)? - is the payment/billing/accounting problem in the Internet really solved? The reason I picked these subjects to start off is that I believe the AOL/Time Warner merger has a lot to do with these problems. I think that AOL wants to become one of the major platform players when pay-contents becomes a norm. As a media company ourselves, we are having trouble with cannibalization and the free content everywhere on the web. We have to find our own content which is suited for the web and can make the difference between other sites, especially the portals. We also haven't solved the payment problem yet either. Our gutsy feeling is that we are not ready for a subscription based model yet. We have seen Dow Jones start a non-subscription site, DJ.com,even though the WSJ Interactive Edition was regarded as a success.
From: Bradley L. Bartz (24) presumption
I'm Bradley Bartz, President JMAIL.CO.JP KK. (7) William L. Schrader I'd like to know if anyone disagrees with my personal presumption that 80% of voice traffic will be VOIP by end of >2003, that 80% of all commerce will be ....... 80% is an easy number to believe will happen. by 2003. I also believe the 20% not covered will be the folks that decide not to participate. Notihng can stop the empowerment to the individual of the Internet and the viral growth that is causing. Governments that try and restrict growth so their companies/industries can catch up to the west are only digging their country's economic grave. My guess is that here in Japan the local companies have caught up and the individual Japanese are champing at the bit to have a piece of the Internet dream. I hope the leaders in Japan will allow for a free-for-all and deregulate all aspects of the Japanese Internet. Freedom of Capitalism is needed to grow and foster Internet economies. Then again, if countries continue to over regulate Internet activities we will have only a world of licensed and "localized" US software and systems.
From: Izumi Aizu (25) Self-Introduction
This is Izumi Aizu, working for ANR (Asia Network Research),　APIA (Asia Pacific Internet Association) and some other institutions. I have been living in Malaysia for about 3 years, just before the economic crisis hit Asia, observing the government-led, top-down projects such as MSC(Multimedia Super Corridor) here in Malaysia, or SingaporeONE. And I frequently commute to Japan where my family lives and my friends work. return to Start-Up 2　to Digital Divide 1