By Polly Raymond, 27 July 1999 00:30
NEWS Leading IT company, Sun Microsystems, has broken ranks with the rest of the vendor community to attack the government over its draft ecommerce Bill. Rivals Intel, IBM and Microsoft have fallen over themselves to welcome the draft Electronic Communications Bill, which was released last Friday. The legislation sets out proposals for policies covering the legal implications of electronic signatures, encryption controls and trusted third party services. In an official statement, Microsoft's UK chairman, David Svendsen, described it as a "golden opportunity" for the UK to become an ecommerce hub in Europe. But a spokesman for Sun was far from satisfied, stating: "We're pleased it's finally here after so many delays but with no timescales and no e-envoy named, things are going to be too slow. It seems to me they're still not working on Internet time." According to the spokesman, many timescales refer towards 2008, which he described as "a lifetime away". He added that a further problem is that each ministry responsible for different legislative elements has independent jurisdiction over when things should be implemented. To read the draft Electronic Communications Bill see http://www.dti.gov.uk/cii/elec/ecbill.html If you have an opinion about Bill please email the editorial department on editorial@silicon.com
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