The Bloor Perspective: The child porn-privacy row and more...

Thomas and Janice Reedy ran a website in Texas called Landslide. It was a paedophile's portal acting as a gateway to 5,700 websites, many containing child pornography. It was profitable to the tune of about $1m per month, until the US Postal Inspection Service paid a visit, arresting them and closing the site down.

The upshot was a 1,335 year prison sentence for Thomas Reedy and 14 years for his wife. The upshot for the customers was that their interest in child porn was revealed - the US authorities got their hands on the complete list of commercial transactions and hence the credit card details of all customers.

The US passed the list to Interpol which sent lists to individual countries. The UK list was 7,500 long and included aging rock star Pete Townsend and also 50 UK policemen. The whole affair has raised the noise level about privacy and the internet, with some maintaining that the internet is now rotten with surveillance and privacy is no longer possible.

The civil liberties champions long maintained that child pornography was the stalking horse for bringing the internet under government control and now some are expressing deep concern.

But the rhetoric has little to do with the underlying events. The information wasn't gathered from ISPs but from the Landslide database and could probably have been gathered from the records of Visa and MasterCard. As all good criminals know, if you don't want to be traced you deal in cash and you cannot do that on the internet. Consequently, the black economy never had much of a presence online even though crimes of other types flourished there.

Also, if you want to surf the internet anonymously, it has always been possible and still is. You simply go into a cyber café and pay cash. Cyber cafés are a constant source of nefarious internet activity for that reason.

Add to this the fact that the Data Protection Act is quite a good guarantee against data exploitation and its impact is growing. It looks to us as though the Landslide affair is just a matter of criminal activity being reined in, and rightly so. International co-operation is working effectively against international crime and the internet is clearly subject to the rule of law.

*Executive decisions*

The days of board members raking it in, whether the company they manage is doing well or not, looks set to change with the publication of an independent review of the role of directors.

For too long directors have been writing their own contracts, allocating themselves share options and setting their own agenda. They got away with it but then came WorldCom, Enron, Marconi et al and suddenly corporate affairs were on the front page. The UK government has now taken action with the commissioning of a report coupled with proposals to put a halt to abuse in the boardroom.

The report is widely expected to recommend that at least half of the board of any listed company should be non-executives with no day-to-day management responsibility. This could be followed with a recommendation that the chairman should be independent, when nominated, so they can act as an impartial link between the company and its shareholders.

The 'old boys' network', where senior company figureheads appoint friends and close colleagues to senior positions looks set to become a thing of the past. Directors who sit on multiple boards may be asked to limit the number of directorships they hold. Taking this approach means they will focus on the businesses they are meant to be helping run, rather than just spinning from one organisation to the next. It is estimated that at least 20 per cent of the FTSE 100 will fall foul of the central recommendations.

As if that wasn't enough, guidelines will be published on the behaviour of auditing committees that will recommend a more challenging relationship with executives, and the DTI is expected to unveil its review of lessons to be learnt from recent corporate scandals.

It looks as though Executives will have to work harder for their money and prove their worth before reaping the rewards. While the economy has been rocked by corporate scandal, at least some good appears to be coming of it all.

*Meta what?*

IBM's Xperanto, aimed at data integration, is much in the news. Put simply, it uses DB2, XML and a software layer to allow you to look across heterogeneous data sources and view the data thereon as if it existed on a single central platform.

So far, so good. Then it occurred to me to wonder whether, if Xperanto can be used for data integration, could it also be used for metadata integration? There seems to be no reason why not. But before getting excited I thought I'd better check what the repository vendors were planning. Sure enough, ASG (Allen Systems Group), the owner of Manager Products and Rochade, is planning a Virtual Repository.

How is this similar to Xperanto? The answer is that the Virtual Repository will support federated repositories in a similar way to Xperanto's support for federated databases, with a single central view across metadata that may be scattered in various locations.

Why is this important? Metadata is generally managed in isolated islands just like data was managed 30 years ago - there are multiple versions, multiple owners and no overall control. But, unlike databases, the use of r1epositories has not become widespread. This is because they are much more complex and require a major investment if you want to make them work.

So, with a few exceptions, repositories have been limited to use as embedded functionality within other products such as development tools and systems management products. Even security directories like LDAP are, effectively, repositories in their own right. So, you can see the problem - integrating all the metadata from these environments into a single monolithic installation would be a nightmare.

What the virtual repository will enable you to do is to leave metadata in situ but view it centrally. Management over all the different metadata elements out there may be some time coming, not least because not all vendors support the relevant standards, but at least there is the realistic prospect of some sort of inroads being made into the problem.

Repositories have not been sexy since IBM dropped AD/Cycle. But they fulfil a much needed function. Perhaps the advent of the virtual repository can re-kindle the flames of desire.

**Bloor Research is a leading independent analyst organisation in Europe. You can find out more at www.bloor-research.com or by emailing mail@bloor-research.com.