Law

I am in the process of moving house so my posts will be infrequent for the next 2 months. :(

Anyway I have complained before to companies who put me on their email marketing list without my consent and surprise surprise a new study has come out stating that email marketing abuse is rife. Basically firms are not following the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications by asking for customers to opt-in and not sending out unsolicited mail to non-customers.

Another new law that has come to my attention is the UK government's Amendments to the Companies Act that makes it clear that from January 2007 every company is required to list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its web site, order forms and other electronic business letters.

I have not checked how many UK companies are complying with the new law that I deal with but due to the rushed nature of the Act I reckon lots of companies are breaching it.


Technorati Tags: law, Computers, technology

Average Salaries And The Data Protection Act

Average salaries are always worked out differently. At school I was taught when to use the median, the mean and the mode however it seems that some articles always use the mean.

For example The National Office of Statistics UK UK uses the median value to calculate the average wage. Unfortunately articles such as this one by the Evening Standard newspaper use the mean.

Using the mean for something like salaries means that the average wage looks higher than it actually is because extreme values are taken into account. The current average salary for a permanent Java Developer in London is approx. £45,000. This is a mean value as most adverts advertise either much below this value i.e. £25,000 - £30,000 or above this value i.e. £60,000+. The finiancial industry pays the highest salaries while other industry sectors such as telecoms pay below this.

Today I informed a recruitment consultant that he had breached the Data Protection Act 1998 in an email by sharing information about other people with me, and my information with other people. His response was to ring me up and shout at me down the phone saying I was hassling him. I have now contacted the Data Controller of the company and will see what occurs from there. My final resort is to report the company to the Information Commissioner.

Technorati Tags: average, salary, law

Denial of Service Attacks & Copying CDs

A few days ago denial of service attacks became illegal in the UK. It took a long time to get the Computer Misuse Law updated simply because MP's don't understand how important computers are to everyday businesses.

Now the BPI is pushing (about 30 years to late) to make it legal to copy pre-recorded music that you have in one media form to another for personal use. Since the days of tapes people have been copying their own music to play on a walkman and this has never been entirely legal.


Technorati Tags: Law, Computer, technology, legal

Age Discrimination

1st October 2006 marked the introduction of the Age Discrimination Laws in the UK. This means that employers can no longer discriminate against people because of their age as long as they are under the retirement age stated in the contract of employment.

In theory this is a good law, however in practise like sex, race and disability discrimination laws employers will find ways around it by simply looking at the dates of education of the person then once the potential employee comes in, they will give the excuse that their were more suitable candidates. For example I've been asked in the past "How do I feel working in a male envirnoment?" or "Do you have any dependents?" which due to the way it has been asked is an euphemism for we don't employ women here because they don't fit in with our culture or will get pregnant and demand maternity leave/flexible working. Before you think this is my misinterpretation any business that has ever employed me, here or abroad, has never asked those sorts of questions.

This law should affect the IT industry greatly but all that will happen is:
1. Employers will continue to set their rates of pay too low for the experience required to do the job thus claiming there is a skills shortage to allow a foriegn (cheaper and potentially easier to exploit) worker to do the job.
2. There will be more short term contracts. The fact is most IT employees move on within a 1-2 years of being on the job so giving someone a short term contract with no benefits such as pension will save the employer money.


Technorati Tags: Java,UK, Age Discrimination, law