Mixed signals emerge from ecommerce summit

NEWS Reports that EU and US officials fell out over guidelines for data protection at last week'a OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) ecommerce summit have been slammed by the organisation's deputy secretary general, Joanna Shelton, in an exclusive interview with Silicon.com. The summit - attended by 1,000 of the world's leaders and Internet players - was organised by the OECD to overcome some of the barriers to global ecommerce. These include Internet taxation, copyright problems and consumer data protection. It is on this last matter that there was alleged disagreement. The US is all in favour of business self-regulation while the EU is bringing in legislation at the end of this month that will constrain businesses use of consumer data obtained through the Internet. The Financial Times reported that the meeting failed to resolve this gap in policy. But Shelton said: "The report severely overstates the degree of difference between the two organisations." She exclusively revealed the details of a conversation she had at the summit with Senator Daley, the US secretary of commerce, where she was told that "discussions are going very well between EU and US administrations". Shelton said that overall, the summit was "successful almost beyond our expectations". She said it's the first time all the relevant people have been in one place to address the issues. Apparently, a coalition between the five groups of global businesses that attended the summit has been formed. Representatives of this coalition will go out to other businesses to advise on ecommerce guidelines decided on at the summit.