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News in View: Ecommerce making governments obsolete

By Dominic Maher

Published: Tuesday 16 May 2000

The Internet and ecommerce are putting governments in an increasingly difficult position when it comes to drawing up legislation - as has been amply demonstrated by the debacle surrounding the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (RIP).

This week's News in View programme looks at the implications European governments have to face when making country-specific laws in a global economy.

Jim Norton, head of ecommerce at the Institute of Directors (IoD) said: "The impact is large, inexorable and gradually building up. The main losers here are the governments. Their ability to control on a national level what is happening globally on the Internet is quite small.

"We'll see their power transfer to individuals who are going to have to take a lot more care in the Internet world. We're going to see a great rise in the number of intermediaries acting on behalf of consumers and companies that fill this gap and create trust," Norton added.

But according to Simon Moores, chairman at The Research Group, the regulation of ecommerce could cause a bigger headache than the government realises.

Moores said: "The government at first embraced the idea of the Internet and certainly as far as our government is concerned, the PM is concerned with making Britain the best possible society for ecommerce. But one of the problems is the question of regulation because the Internet in some respects makes the government obsolescent or redundant because power can divest itself from the government to the individual and to companies, multinationals and corporations."

However, e-envoy Alex Allan defended the government's position. He said: "I think the government does have a role, it's very important that the regulation is appropriate and certainly the last thing the government wants to do is stifle ecommerce through inappropriate regulation."

The full version of this week's News in View can be seen in our Politics Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a37495 ).