By silicon.com, 1 October 2004 16:10
NEWS 01.10.1999: An international group of technology lawyers is meeting tomorrow in London to discuss the potential legal fall-out from Y2K.
Dubbed 'Lex Millenniale', the group consists of lawyers from 16 countries who will share information on Y2K litigation matters and make referrals if necessary.
Topics for discussion include Y2K insurance coverage, millennium bug software escrow, and the impact of Y2K on corporate and securities law.
01.10.2004: Well there wasn't much fall-out in the end because we're all still alive and the world didn't actually end at midnight on 31 December 1999 (or 31 December 2000 if you were one of those who knew we'd calculated the millennial clock incorrectly).
The 'Lex Millenniale' appears to have been nothing more than another one of the many talking shops in the build up to Y2K which managed to convince everyone that planes would be falling out of the sky, and that power cut-outs and all manner of other disasters because of the so-called millennium bug would mean many computers would not recognise the year 2000 and so cease to work.
Of course nothing much did actually happen, apart from people and businesses questioning why they'd been scared into spending so much money on fixing the Y2K bug. Others still argue that it was because of all the money spent that nothing bad did happen in the end.
Whatever the real answer, all it did was damage the credibility of the IT industry and increase cynicism and scepticism in the future claims of IT vendors – at least until the dot-com boom.
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