Professor Joe Carthy:

I concur completely with the Deputy's comments. It is ridiculous that any software provider in the world can produce a new application, launch it on the Internet and allow people to use it without any measure of its safety or of how it protects the data of the people involved. Software designers are allowed to make their software do whatever they want with impunity. We do not allow such practice in the aviation or automobile industry. Definite controls are needed in that regard. The Deputy is correct that billion-dollar companies make billions of dollars every year. There is a cost of doing business and the cost for the automobile industry is that its cars must be safe, adhere to pollution standards and so on.

I would argue that there is a cost of doing business in this space, namely, people should regulate the content and ensure it is legal in whatever way that is defined by countries. There is no technological reason for not doing so. I would argue that it is a legislative matter. The automobile industry offers an excellent example. Although this situation is not something that we can fix quickly, we have been dealing with automobile legislation for 100 years and every year we tweak it a little. We need to do the same in this context, but we need to start somewhere. We probably will not get the legislation right initially, but we need to keep tweaking it over the years. I agree with the Deputy.