Author: Charlotte Gill

The Internet of Things transforms the shopping experience

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

“We’re seeing increasingly, through a lot of the research that we have done at Millward Brown Digital, that when consumers go online to a retailer like Amazon, it’s a lot harder for brands to stand out in the endless aisle”, said Jason Caine, the group’s Vice President for Retail and Consumer Goods. In order to differentiate themselves from rivals, companies are under growing pressure to add complementary services and maximise functionality for customers.

The Internet of Things, a term that is gaining traction with each passing week, presents a whole host of new opportunities for business, and certainly retail. By linking home automation with e-commerce platforms, consumers are presented with tools that can make household management far easier.

79%

Of smartphone owners use their phone to shop

In line with this new technological offering, Amazon has recently unveiled Dash, a small button that enables customers to bypass traditional shopping routes. Some argue Dash will be a short-lived experiment, but Amazon is not alone in adopting interface-free shopping. In fact, recent consumer trends indicate a transition is currently taking place that heralds a new future for retail.

First to dash
For a fee of $4.99 Prime customers can receive an Amazon Dash Button, a tool that allows them to order a product with a simple touch, without the need to fire up a laptop and certainly eradicating any compulsion to visit an actual shop. Once configured with the individual’s payment details and shipping information, the small plastic button can be placed anywhere in the house.

At present, a small group of brands can boast their own Dash service, and consist mainly of household and personal items, such as Bounty paper towels and Huggies diapers. Presumably, the button is placed in correlation to the product it orders – inside a kitchen cupboard for Maxwell House coffee and affixed to a washing machine for Tide laundry detergent – in order to save the consumer precious seconds when moving around their home.

Once the button is pressed, a green light flashes to indicate the order has been processed and that the desired product is on its way. Fortunately, the mechanism only allows one order at a time in order to save parents the shock when 20 cases of Gatorade land on their doorstep, courtesy of their trigger-happy infants. But those seeking instant appeasement must be warned that delivery is not as prompt as they might assume: at present there is a mammoth waiting time of 48 hours.

While Amazon’s latest shopping aid screams laziness, its convenience does hold appeal, certainly for frequently used items that often run out before the next general shop. In contrast, however, to the Amazon ethos of unlimited choice, the Dash Buttons themselves are surprisingly restricted, not just in terms of the brands on offer, but also as only a small set of sub-categories is offered when first setting up the wireless mechanism. Furthermore, the options given with Dash lack the money saving options that are available online.

Buy now!
Amazon is not the only proponent of interface free shopping; neither is Dash Amazon’s first foray into the field. Unveiled in March, Amazon’s Dash Stick allows consumers to speak their grocery orders to a wand, which are promptly received in store. The company’s wireless speaker, Echo, acts as a virtual assistant that carries out a variety of tasks through voice demands – which of course can include orders on Amazon.

Google is the other formidable giant that has made a recent play at the zero interaction shopping experience with the ‘buy’ button it announced in July. The new feature, which appears at the top of an online search, allows a mobile phone user to purchase an item with pre-stored information, without even entering the retailer’s website or leaving the Google domain. Retailer concerns about losing out on direct communication with consumers have been somewhat eased by Google’s pledge to heavily feature the retailer’s branding on the product pages and provide recommendations from the company’s website. Google has also assured its retail partners that its buy button will increase conversion rates (i.e. more purchases will be made as a result of an online search).

Despite qualms from various retailers, Google’s move is crucial given current trends in mobile e-commerce. A 2013 report by the Google Shopper Marketing Agency Council stated “79 percent of smartphone owners are ‘smartphone shoppers’”, and that most consumers use their mobiles as a shopping assistant, even when actually in a store. Moreover, as mobile screens provide less ad space and cheaper ad rates than desktops, the mobile-friendly solutions will be increasingly important.

Path to purchase
Some may argue Google’s buy button and Amazon Dash are experimental ventures that are just the latest way to influence consumers to spend money, particularly as they lack the tangibility or the process of a conventional payment. Yet it is difficult to deny interface-free shopping indicates the way retail is heading. “It certainly seems like we’re moving in the direction where retail transactions are happening outside the walls of retailers”, said Caine.

Then there is Amazon’s upcoming Dash Replenishment Service (DRS), which takes a step even further than the Dash Buttons. Currently, household appliances, such as Britta’s water filter and Whirlpool’s washing machines, are undergoing an Amazon makeover so customers never run out of the complementary products needed to run the hardware. The DRS features either a physical button located on the appliance or an integrated system that can place orders when low levels, of say water filters or detergent, have been detected.

The convenience of DRS raises a number of possibilities for other products and services. “I think we’ve moved to a new phase where everybody in technology or retail is thinking about ways to change and disrupt a consumer’s path to purchase, to be at the right place at the right time”, Caine told The New Economy. As technology continues to infiltrate every interaction, the business sphere will increasingly use innovative tools that can encourage consumer activity and spending.

And, as Caine explained, interface-free shopping of the future may not be limited to the household: “Imagine opportunities where a consumer could just be walking down the aisle and buying products as they moved throughout the store, versus it being a single point of transaction prior to leaving.”

The future of retail is upon us: the technology exists, while the consumer attitudes and behaviours needed for this next step are at their peak. For those of an anti-capitalist sentiment, the way in which consumerism is changing us is a sorry tale, particularly as brands further permeate one’s home, urging money to be spent carelessly in split-second transactions. But for those who embrace change, technology, and above all convenience, Amazon Dash and Google buy buttons herald a new age in retail. One that saves mankind the one thing money cannot buy: time.

It’s time for Xiaomi to step outside China

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Founded in 2010, China’s leading smartphone maker was born of a belief that quality technology needn’t cost a fortune. It has been a short, sweet trip to the top; in the space of five years, Xiaomi has been crowned the country’s leading mobile vender, and only Apple and Samsung can boast a greater presence on the world stage. “In every conceivable benchmark, it’s almost unprecedented in terms of its speed of growth”, said Yuri Milner, an investor speaking to Bloomberg about the company’s December-time funding round.

“Xiaomi grew at an unprecedented rate, achieving more than 200 percent annual growth level in every quarter last year as it went on to become one of the top three leading brands in its home market”, said Neil Shah, Research Director of Devices and Ecosystems at Counterpoint Research. “However, the Chinese brand reached its peak shipments in Q4 last year in its domestic market.”

Recently the ‘Apple of China’ (tipped to reach a $100bn market cap by Milner) has fallen on hard times, and there are signs its hold on the market might be slipping.

Cited time and again as a shining example of what can be achieved with the right vision at the right time, many analysts are – for the first time – speculating that Xiaomi’s spell in the limelight is coming to an end. Perhaps the only Chinese company with the credentials to become the country’s first global consumer brand, its success depends on an ability to push on with the next phase of its growth story.

200%

Xiaomi’s annual growth rate, 2014

$100bn

Xiaomi’s predicted market cap

China mobile
Xiaomi was given a shot of momentum in 2012 when the Chinese smartphone market overtook the US’ to become the largest in the world, racking up 208 million units and accounting for a 21 percent share of the global market. Since then, no other country has come close, and, in a period when US and European markets have struggled with stalling sales, demand in China has skyrocketed. Smartphone sales in 2013 crossed the one billion mark, and climbed higher still in 2014, though signs started to emerge earlier this year that growth was beginning to fade.

“China has reached saturation – its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers”, said Anshul Gupta, Research Director at Gartner, writing in a press release. “Beyond the lower-end phone segment, the appeal of premium smartphones will be key for vendors to attract upgrades and to maintain or grow their market share in China.”

IDC statistics, meanwhile, indicated smartphone shipments in the first quarter were down four percent on the previous year, and suffered their first annual contraction in six years.

In this same quarter, Xiaomi slipped to second place behind Apple in terms of China sales, and smartphone sales for the first half of the year reached a disappointing 34.7 million, less than half the company’s annual forecast. Squeezed by competitors in the low to mid-range segment, the company’s report card eluded to the possibility that its dominance could be wearing thin.

The need for expansion
If it truly is to improve its standing, not just in China but internationally, Xiaomi must go far beyond emerging smartphone markets and make good on its potential as a global electronics brand. Plans to broach India and Brazil are in motion, and look on course to boost growth in the immediate future, but in order to compete alongside the likes of Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi must explore opportunities other than mobile.

“India and [South East] Asia are the fastest-growing [smartphone markets] in the world at present, so they will make for some of the easiest gains for Xiaomi”, said James Moar, Research Analyst at Juniper Research. “They are also the ones most driven by social media, which plays into Xiaomi’s current strategy. With Latin America tabled as the next area of expansion, Xiaomi doesn’t need to enter the fray of markets like North America and Europe – particularly when companies like ZTE and Huawei, who are trying similar ‘marketing-lite’ strategies (grassroots brand engagement, sport sponsorship deals, etc) aren’t getting stellar results. Xiaomi is certainly looking to these markets, particularly Europe, but they clearly aren’t in any rush.”

In contrast to its closest rivals, Xiaomi spends very little on advertising, chooses not to employ brick-and-mortar stores, and sells its devices at wafer thin margins – a far cry from Apple, which is famed for its showroom-style retail strategy and big-budget advertising. Xiaomi cannot simply be slapped with the copycat tag; it has gotten into the number-three position not because it has emulated the higher end of the market, but because it has capitalised on the underserved lower end.

However, now that the mobile opportunity in China – and internationally – is less, the company must build on its existing strengths and explore alternative ways to expand its product portfolio, and perhaps even consider that most unspeakable of strategies: an IPO.

Already, the company lists tablets, headphones, fitness bands and TV products on its online marketplace, and by supplementing its mobile business with non-core products, Xiaomi can bring a greater range of consumers on board. Questions remain about whether the company can replicate its success elsewhere, but steady sales in countries and categories other than the familiar could do a great deal to reassure investors about its credentials long-term.

“Xiaomi entered India – the next big mobile phone market – last year, but the overall smartphone volume contributions are miniscule to maintain higher growth at a global level”, said Shah. “As a result, slowness to expand outside China effectively, coupled with slowing growth in China, with intensifying competition from other domestic players, has stunted Xiaomi’s growth this year. We are seeing a long tail of ‘me too’ players adopting the ‘Xiaomian’ go-to-market strategy of e-commerce plus low-cost guerrilla marketing, and they are taking the limelight away from Xiaomi.”

“Emerging markets still present many growth opportunities, but they require different skill sets for Xiaomi to be successful”, added CK Lu, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. “[Its Mi brand] ecosystem is very Chinese-centric and it has to be localised to demonstrate value for consumers in emerging markets. Brand and channel building at [a local level] remain challenging for any Chinese vendors when expanding overseas.”

As a low margin business, it’s doubly important that Xiaomi takes seriously the prospect of one day becoming a diversified electronics company, and perhaps even the option of going public to that end. There is room for both Xiaomi and Apple in China, though the former’s low margin strategy might not do for those on higher incomes in mature economies. If its ambitions truly are as big as sources at the company say, expect the Chinese focus and wafer thin margins to fade as time wears on.

“Xiaomi sees markets beyond the smartphone as a way to extend its brand presence into new regions before beginning a full smartphone presence, and it also makes sense from a software point of view”, said Moar. “Xiaomi’s current revenue relies on monetising software, and so they will likely not want to ship phones to North America and Europe sporting Google Services. Getting users to buy hardware that connects to Xiaomi apps lays the groundwork for a fuller Xiaomi-based software experience further down the road. This means the introduction of a competing app store to Google Play (for example) would be less of a shock to the system for consumers who already know the brand and are familiar with the brand’s services.”

Already, local competitors Huawei, Vivo and Oppo are encroaching on Xiaomi’s leadership in the affordable smartphone space – indication enough that the company’s ambitions should lie elsewhere. True, Xiaomi’s success is due in great part to the neglected lower end of the market, but its future lies with pastures and products new. As the company continues to build its presence in countries away from China, and in products and services other than mobile, expect to see a new and improved brand that stands up to – and alongside even – the established titans of the industry.

New highways to charge electric cars as they drive

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

From Hayes to Romford, Watford to Purley, and everywhere in between, electric car charger stations are dotted across the streets of London. Numbering around 1,000, this sprawling collection of fuel stations for the environmentally conscious is the largest in Europe. Those who prefer their fuel non-combustible are able to recharge their right-on electric battery powered cars at their convenience, and be on their silent way.

A new trial by the British Department for Transport, however, could soon render these electric juice points obsolete. It was announced in August that the UK government would go ahead with an 18-month trial of highways that will be able to charge electrically powered cars as they drive along.

“What has been committed to is that by 2016 or 2017 we will hold off-road trials – in other words not on a public road”, Stuart Thompson, a spokesman for Highways England told the BBC. “It’s still very early days. Where exactly the trials will be has yet to be determined.”

So far £200,000 has been spent investigating the feasibility of the technology, while it is expected another £500,000 will be spent on the plan.

Current of history
The basic idea behind the electric highway is to lay electric cables under the road. These cables will give off an electromagnetic field. Cars equipped with the correct technology will, if all goes well, pick up the electricity emitted, providing them with power to continue driving along indefinitely – or at least until they veer off the electric highway for long enough.

£200k

Spent on the Electric Highways project

£500k

Planned additional spend

The concept itself can be traced back to the late 19th century, being one of the many ideas of the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. Patenting the idea in 1894, Tesla proposed a scheme for tramcars to be powered by electric currents emitted from the ground along their route of travel. As the patent itself noted, the idea was to provide tramcars with electricity currents “without the use of sliding or rolling contacts between the line conductor and the car motors”. The electricity supply, it continued, was intended to “convey these currents… run from the stationary source of supply along the line of travel and preferably through a conduit constructed between, or alongside of the tracks or rails”. As with so many of Tesla’s bold ambitions, however, it sadly never came to fruition.

Similar technologies do, however, now exist around the world. After years of testing, in 2013 the town of Gumi, South Korea opened a 15-mile route on which specially constructed buses draw their power from under-road cables. In 2014, the British city of Milton Keynes introduced a less technologically sophisticated version to charge its own bus fleet. Rather than bury the cables under the surface (which requires digging up and relaying the road), the city opted to lay electric plates on top of the road at certain points, where buses pick up the charge as they sit above them. This does, however, require the buses to remain stationary to be charged.

Red flags and range anxiety
One major obstacle to electric cars becoming more popular is that people feel they are not very practical. A perceived lack of ease in keeping electric cars charged and running puts people off considering one, while the lack of such vehicles makes creating an infrastructure for charging them seem pointless.

“When the UK government surveyed consumers and businesses, they found the chicken-and-egg problem that haunts [electric vehicles] elsewhere”, said the website Co.Exist. “Some consumers don’t want to buy an electric car without a full infrastructure for charging in place.”

In the UK, a trip to the petrol station is routine, but outside London, the infrastructure needed to support electric cars is all but non-existent. Even inside London, the charge-up station network is shoddy. In 2014, The Telegraph pointed out that many of the charging points in London do not work, with confusion over who is responsible for their repair leaving them offline. The website Source London tracks which points are online and available for use: the map is constantly changing, but a quick glance at any given time will show a large number flagged red as inoperable. As The Telegraph said: “[T]he London Borough of Camden admits that it’s struggling to keep more than 70 percent of its charging points operational at any one time, leaving significant holes in the network.”

One Financial Times journalist recounted: “On a recent weekday morning, I walked to the nearest charging point to my home in Camberwell, southeast London, but it was out of service. So was the next one I visited, around half a mile away”.

Motorists in the UK have become accustomed to the ready availability of fuel. The idea of being uncertain whether or not the source of petrol for one’s car will be available is particularly unappealing.

All of this creates ‘range anxiety’; another major reason people have an aversion to electric cars. No one wants to get caught short, half a mile from the nearest charging point. Not that drivers in petrol powered cars are not also prone to such problems, but people have become accustomed to gauging how far they can get on low petrol before they arrive at the next station, or at least have the comfort of knowing there is an emergency jerry can of petrol in their car boot. The electric highway, if widespread enough, could alleviate such fears.

Many of the newer models of electric cars have increased battery power, allowing vehicles to run longer, easing the mind of drivers. This does not mean electric highways would be redundant, as even the longest powered battery needs to be recharged. As the electric highways themselves would require major road works to lay the cables, the highways will initially cover only certain areas, or be gradually integrated road by road. At the same time, as the BBC noted: “Highways England is also committed to installing plug-in charging points every 20 miles… on its motorway network over the ‘longer-term’.”

China’s banks snoop on citizens to determine credit ratings

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Financial rating scores have a big impact on people’s lives, determining their access to credit and at what cost. In many Western nations, how these are determined are subject to strict rules, barring certain information being factored in. China, however, after the People’s Bank of China gave the green light to eight private firms to provide personal credit reference services earlier this year, certain information on citizens, from their purchasing habits, how they spend their leisure time, and even their political views, are being used to determine their credit scores. With the aim of these credit ratings being carried out by commercial companies is to form the basis for a national system by 2020, meaning the troubling direction they are taking now could be instituted nationwide.

People’s Bank of China gave the green light to eight private firms to provide personal credit reference services earlier this year

One such credit rating agency is Credit Sesame, a fermium app created by Alibaba and Tencent, China’s tech giants that run much of China’s social media. This app allows Chinese citizens to find out their credit rating score. With both firms having near complete access to everyone’s social network history and buying habits on Alibaba, such personal factors are incorporated into the score. According to Privacy Online News, what this means is that “If you’re buying things that the regime appreciates, like dishwashers and baby supplies, your credit score increases. If you’re buying videogames, your score takes a negative hit.” Posting out of kilter political statements on social media can also impact credit scores.

Further, friends on social media can also impact someone’s score. As China Daily notes, “Sesame Credit, however, also uses other data to calculate the scores, such as a person’s hobbies, interaction with friends, shopping habits and lifestyle.

The financial arm of Xiaomi, the phone manufacturer, has trialled one credit rating system based upon exercise and consistency. Taking data from a biometric wristband, those “who take up jogging and stick with it are likely to be creditworthy, it concludes, whereas those who exercise for a day or two and then stop again might be equally unreliable with their bills,” reports the Financial Times.

According to Matt Schulz, a senior analyst at CreditCards.com, “many businesses in the U.S. are trying to come up with ways to use everything from rent payment histories to social media profiles to determine the creditworthiness of someone with thin or no credit,” reports CBS MoneyWatch. Indeed, the technology to use someone’s social network of friends was patented in America by Facebook in August 2015. The idea was that the loan risk of a customer could be determined by the credit history of his or her friends on social media.

The worry is that the precedent for credit rating set by Credit Sesame will be adopted nationally, as a government-backed credit indicator in 2015; essentially meaning that the Chinese government would be able to cut off credit to those it deemed political suspect, or even not pursuing the correct healthy lifestyle. Yet despite these fears, many Chinese have been posting on social media their Sesame Credit scores, bragging about their scores.

The lithium market experiences heavy demand

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

The shift towards powering the car industry by electricity has sped up in recent years. Thanks in large part to a number of innovative new companies, electric cars are finally beginning to emerge as a genuine choice for the average car user.

And as transportation is increasingly electrified, the need for large numbers of batteries to store all that electricity has become apparent. As a result, demands on lithium deposits – the mineral used in most batteries – mean a boom for the commodity is set to occur. Indeed, according to the US Geological Survey, demand for lithium could triple by the middle of the century as a result of electric vehicles taking off in popularity.

However, it’s not just electric cars that are placing greater demand on the lithium resources of the world. A report by investment bank Credit Suisse, published last year, said: “Driven by power storage demand (everything from power tools and handheld devices to electric vehicles), the global lithium industry should, we believe, enjoy a [compound annual growth rate] of roughly 12 percent through the end of the decade (starting in the mid/high single digits and accelerating afterwards as the electro voltaic (EV) market enjoys further penetration).”

Big backing
Until fairly recently, there has been plenty of supply to match the demand for lithium. However, with such a heavy demand coming from power-hungry new technologies, lithium is set to become one of the most sought after commodities in the world. Investors such as Warren Buffett have recently poured money into lithium mines, while tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has also poured huge sums of money into the market.

Gigafactory 1

$5bn

Cost of the factory

30%

Potential reduction in costs

$100bn

Economic benefit to Nevada

6,500

Employees

Musk’s electric car firm, Tesla Motors, is banking on lithium to power its vehicles, but he also has ambitions to revolutionise more than just personal transport. Earlier this year, Musk announced plans for a “home battery” he claimed would radically transform the “entire energy infrastructure of the world”. Dubbed ‘the Tesla Powerwall’, the battery can store power from solar panels as well as from the electricity grid. It could give homes a secure power source when there are outages, and potentially help many parts of the world that struggle with unreliable energy infrastructure.

The Powerwall has a 10kWh weekly cycle, and is part of the company’s Tesla Energy offering. Speaking at the launch in May, Musk was typically grandiose with his ambitions for the device and the company’s energy plans. He said: “The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world, to completely sustainable zero carbon.”

Much of Tesla Energy’s operations will come out of the $5bn Gigafactory 1 it is currently building in collaboration with Japan’s Panasonic. Announced last year, the Gigafactory 1 will be located in Nevada and will be operational within the next 18 months. When completed, it will be the world’s largest lithium-ion plant.

The aim behind the vast lithium-ion factory is to bring down the production cost of batteries for Tesla’s electric cars, as well as its Powerwall packs. The company hopes these costs could fall by as much as 30 percent as a result of producing them all in one place, and that it could deliver as much as 35GWh a year capacity in terms of fuel cells and 50GWh a year of Powerwall packs. This would, in turn, power around 500,000 Tesla cars each year.

The economic benefits to Nevada, according to the state’s Governor Brian Sandoval, could be as much as $100bn over the next two decades. Employing approximately 6,500 people, the Gigafactory 1 will become a major employer within the state.

Musk isn’t alone in his enthusiasm for lithium investments. Buffett has backed Chinese carmaker Build You Dreams (BYD), which is investing large sums of money in electric vehicles. It is reportedly set to open its own lithium-producing factory that will have 10GW of battery production capacity before the end of this year. BYD is also looking to build a similar size factory to Tesla’s Gigafactory in Brazil before the end of the decade.

Trouble with supplies
While a 2008 US Geological Survey study suggested there were around 13m tonnes of lithium deposits around the world, it has been suggested there is considerably more of the mineral buried in the ground. The largest deposits of lithium can be found throughout Latin America, and in particular across the Andes mountain range.

Chile is the biggest producer of lithium in the world, but a number of recent disputes have hampered its industry. Santiago-based Soc Quimica & Minera de Chile, the world’s third largest producer of lithium, has been beset by trouble as a result of tax evasion issues relating to its chairman, stock manipulation accusations against its directors, and a regulatory dispute over its operations in the Atacama Desert.

The supply ‘shortage’ does not mean there won’t be enough lithium to meet the needs of the EV industry

Argentina is the second largest producer of lithium, but foreign investors have been reticent about putting their money in the industry because of that country’s economic woes. Bolivia is thought to have as much as half of the world’s known reserves of lithium, and has been in discussions with many international firms over extracting it for years. Elsewhere, the US has a large number of lithium deposits, mostly around the Nevada desert.

Despite these deposits, surging demand is putting pressure on the industries in these countries. According to Credit Suisse, supply of lithium is likely to tighten before the end of the decade because of these new technologies demanding batteries. The report said: “There have been investor concerns about the supply side of the equation given a number of announced projects in the lithium industry. Upon a detailed review of the projects, we believe the risk is that demand will actually outstrip supply as we approach the later part of the decade, with demand potentially as high as 125 percent of total capacity (in an industry where 90-95 percent utilisation rates are considered full capacity).

“To be clear, the supply ‘shortage’ does not mean there won’t be enough lithium to meet the needs of the EV industry – there is plenty of lithium in the world. However, without significant incremental investment from the lower-cost producers (beyond the announced projects) pricing will need to push higher to facilitate investment in higher-cost projects/methods of lithium production (the way rising oil prices facilitated ultra-deep water and oil sand projects/investments).”

Increased demand on lithium deposits is set to heighten the race to find further sources. While much of this attention is likely to centre on areas surrounding the existing known deposits in Latin America, there are other parts of the world that are proving of interest to investors. Afghanistan reportedly has huge deposits of lithium, which could be worth up to $1trn. However, extracting that lithium in a country so troubled will inevitably prove difficult for most mining firms.

However, it’s safe to say that, if such respected investors as Musk and Buffett are backing lithium-based projects, the industry will pick up many other financial speculators looking to piggyback on their strategies. If that happens, lithium could prove to be the world’s most valuable commodity in the not-too-distant future.

Immuno-oncology provides hope to cancer patients

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Cancer survival rates have improved considerably in recent decades thanks to ongoing research and recent advances; in the UK for example, they have doubled in the past 40 years, according to NGO Cancer Research UK. That being said, the disease still affects millions of people around the world each year, regardless of age, ethnicity and economic standing. There are various well-known methods for treating patients, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, as well as other hopeful new types of medication. While such treatments are effective in their own ways, each presents its own challenges via harmful side effects that can be as dangerous as the disease itself.

But now there is an alternative method: one that combats cancer in a completely different way from its predecessors and potentially heralds a revolutionary era in treatment. First conceived in the 1970s, immuno-oncology uses the body’s natural defence mechanisms to fight cancer, without causing harm to healthy cells. So far, immunotherapy drugs have brought about remission in inoperable cancers and an impressive extension of life expectancy for terminally ill patients. Given their effectiveness, the entire pharmaceutical sector has taken note, from private investors to multinational firms that can afford the pricey studies.

Natural defence mechanism
Over the last decade, there has been a significant improvement in the cancer medication that is available on the market. Newer drugs are far better at targeting tumours, providing greater efficacy while also reducing the assault on healthy cells, thereby causing fewer damaging side effects for patients. Although ‘targeted drugs’ showed promise as a miracle breakthrough when first unveiled, they have since disappointed due to the persistent adaptation of cancerous cells and their ability to build drug resistance.

21%

Of patients were alive three years after treatment with ipilimumab

$150,000

Cost of a checkpoint inhibitor per patient per year

$20-30bn

Potential annual cost of checkpoint inhibitors by 2025

To combat this impediment to remission, research continued on harnessing the immune system to fight cancer. Although vaccines again showed disappointing results, they prompted a pivotal breakthrough. “This [research] led to the discovery that cancer cells use a ‘checkpoint’ signal to fool the immune system into thinking that they are healthy cells, so the immune system won’t kill them”, said Stephen Dunn, Senior Managing Director of Research for LifeTech Capital. In the early 1990s, scientists in Japan discovered the molecule on T-cells (a type of white blood cell) that enables cancer cells to ‘hide’ from attack. Naming the molecule ‘programmed death 1’ (PD-1), they began research on how to disrupt the mechanism. “The newest immuno-oncology drugs that have been making headlines are designed to block this immune checkpoint signal – [they] are called ‘checkpoint inhibitors’”, Dunn added. “The impact of this new mechanism is not just evolutionary, it’s revolutionary”.

By blocking checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapy drugs can eliminate the very problem that has limited success in cancer research thus far. “It turns out that our immune system is quite effective in killing cancer cells once the brake is released”, said Dunn. “The result is not only an entirely new mechanism of action against cancer cells, it opens the door for even more efficacy when used in combination with existing drugs to perhaps make them work even better.”

New immunotherapy drugs are also far better than traditional counterparts at providing a long-term memory. This means that, as cancer cells adapt over time, the immune system will continue to attack, providing a long-lasting, durable response, even after remission.

Research carried out so far also shows immuno-oncology drugs are effective against the more difficult-to-treat and inoperable cancers, such as melanoma, a type of skin cancer that can spread to other organs in the body.

“The immune system is programmed to recognise danger from the outside world”, said Peter Johnson, Professor of Medical Oncology at the Cancer Research UK Centre in Southampton General Hospital. “The most heavily mutated cancers appear different from normal cells because they give off more danger signals than cancers with fewer mutations. Paradoxically, this makes the most difficult cancers to treat with things such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy much more susceptible to immune treatments.”

Captivating investment
First to receive FDA approval for immunotherapy drugs in treating metastatic melanoma was Bristol Myers Squibb with Yervoy (ipilimumab) and Opdivo (nivolumab). One study has shown 21 percent of 4,846 patients analysed were still alive three years after treatment with ipilimumab, despite previous predictions they would not survive otherwise. Opdivo, a PD-1 blocker, has had exciting results in terms of shrinking tumours; in March, it was also approved for the treatment of advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a significant step given lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, according to the Cancer Research Institute. The next step that is expected to further boost sales of Opdivo is FDA approval for the less common type of lung cancer, non-squamous NSCLC.

Small biotechnology firms are making headway in immuno-oncology research

Although the two drugs have shown promising outcomes separately, when they are used together as part of a combined therapy course the results have been exceptional. According to a press release published by Bristol Myers Squibb, in one trial the combined regimen achieved a 61 objective response rate. “The two drugs work better in combination because they disinhibit the immune system at different places in the process, so the effect is to release the immune response much more completely”, Professor Johnson explained. Another Bristol Myers Squibb study showed a median of 945 patients lived for 11.5 months without the disease progressing, in comparison with 6.9 months for Opdivo alone and 2.9 months for Yervoy.

Bristol Myers Squibb may be leading the way in immuno-oncology at present, but it is not alone in its recent ventures. Pharmaceutical giant Merck also has its own version of the Opdivo drug called Keytruda, which has received FDA approval for melanoma, with NSCLC treatment currently under review.

Considering the mammoth cost of investment and research required to carry out the studies and tests needed for the sector, it is mostly restricted to the biggest players in the pharmaceutical industry. That being said, various small biotechnology firms are making headway in immuno-oncology research. Maryland-based Northwest Biotherapeutics, for example, is running trials with its DCVax vaccine, a platform technology that uses dendritic cells to educate the entire immune system to attack cancerous ones.

The cost of the treatment has sent waves through the investment market for both positive and negative reasons. Dunn said: “At the present time, the pricing for a checkpoint inhibitor is approximately $150,000 per year per patient in the US, so the financial impact for the companies (as well as healthcare costs) is expected to be significant, perhaps $20bn to $30bn annually by 2025. Those numbers are large enough to ‘move the needle’ for even the largest pharmaceutical companies and have investors excited.”

As a result of the recent surge in immuno-oncology investment, the sector now has its own stock index: the Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy Index (LCINDX), named after founder and owner Brad Loncar. The equal-weighted index currently contains 30 companies, ranging from large pharmaceutical corporations to smaller growth biotechnology firms. All firms included in the index have a high focus on immuno-oncology and, as LCINDX provides a metric for their progress, it gives investors a more focused understanding of a sector that is expected to expand considerably over the next decade.

As quantified by Dunn, the potential is huge. However, the extraordinary prices could also be the downfall for this promising new sector. Such expensive treatment will undoubtedly be out of reach for many patients, particularly in countries such as the US, while in countries where there is a national health service, immuno-oncology treatment may be denied due to restrictions on the state budget.

Just the start
Melanoma and lung cancer are just the beginning. “We anticipate that these treatments may be effective in cancers such as oesophageal, bladder, head and neck, renal, and some types of bowel cancer in particular”, said Professor Johnson. “They are also very active against Hodgkin lymphoma, although they may be working in a different way there, by disrupting the signalling between the malignant cells and their surroundings.”

Ludwig Cancer Research, a leader in the field having helped lay the foundations of immuno-oncology, is currently undertaking a number of innovative studies across the globe. “Various Ludwig researchers at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and in Brussels, New York and Chicago (and other places) are involved in the full spectrum of research related to immuno-oncology, from identifying new molecular and immune cell targets to assessing new therapeutic strategies that include immunotherapies”, said Jonathan Skipper, Executive Director of Technology Development at Ludwig. “A new Branch [of] Ludwig [that] just launched in Lausanne is going to be almost exclusively involved in developing novel immunotherapies, with a special emphasis on developing individualised, cell-based therapies and the processes required to put such therapies to routine use”.

It doesn’t end there: iTeos, a Ludwig spin-off is focusing on the development of small molecule drugs that block a key metabolic mechanism that usually silences the immune response in tumours. “In partnership with the Cancer Research Institute, Ludwig is also evaluating an immunotherapy for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive adult brain cancer”, said Dr Jedd Wolchok, a member of Ludwig at MSK. “Another trial in this partnership will be looking at combining PD-1 blockade and CTLA-4 blockade for a variety of solid tumours, including those of ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, cervical cancer and kidney cancer. But all this is only the beginning of what I believe will be a very exciting era for oncology.”

Medical revolution
Immuno-oncology is still evolving, with many questions yet to be answered, such as understanding why the treatment works in some patients, but is not effective in others.

The single biggest cause of cancers – smoking – also results in the most dramatically mutated genomes

“As might be expected, people whose cancers express PD-1’s binding partner, PD-L1, respond more frequently to PD-1 blockade than those whose tumours do not”, said Dr Wolchok. “We and other researchers have also found rather consistently that, in the case of checkpoint blockade at least, patients with more mutated cancer genomes are more likely to respond to the treatments. This is very exciting, since the single biggest cause of cancers – smoking – also results in the most dramatically mutated genomes.

“We are also focusing on what particular mutational signatures in tumours elicit robust therapeutic responses with these therapies. Another Ludwig researcher at Johns Hopkins recently showed that tumours in which the genes for DNA repair are mutated respond dramatically to checkpoint blockade. But this work is just beginning, and we can expect a lot of very interesting information to come out of such research in the next few years.”

There is also a great deal of research to be carried out into using immunotherapy for other types of cancer, not to mention the various regulatory hurdles before they can reach the market. “We are just at the beginning of this field. We have much to learn about what affects susceptibility to immunotherapy, and how we can increase the effectiveness by combining antibodies, vaccines, small molecule immune-modulators and other types of treatment”, Professor Johnson explained.

Greater understanding is needed urgently to explain why serious side effects – which can be so bad they require the cessation of treatment – can occur. For Opdivo, they include fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, musculoskeletal pain and constipation, according to the FDA. But they can also be far more serious: in one patient who suffered from advanced melanoma, treatment with Yervoy resulted in “off the chart” presence of an enzyme that can cause grave damage to muscles, leading to his hospitalisation for possible kidney failure. Moreover, although combining Yervoy and Opdivo improves the response of the immune system, together they can also cause more potent side effects.

“A clearer understanding of who benefits from immunotherapy combinations may allow for a better risk-benefit profile, especially as combination therapies have more frequent, yet generally reversible toxicities”, said Dr Wolchok. “In the area of individualised, cell-based immunotherapy, which has great potential, we have to figure out how such treatments can be standardised, streamlined and made affordable for general clinical deployment. That will not be easy.”

While there are still challenges and hurdles to overcome, as with any advancement in medicine and particularly one as complex as this, immuno-oncology is still hailed by many as the long-awaited breakthrough in cancer treatment.

“I expect the immuno-oncology field to ultimately revolutionise treatment for cancer patients, both in terms of survival and quality of life”, said Dunn. “While it is making headlines now, I believe the greatest discoveries still lie ahead in combination with other drugs that work in conjunction with the patient’s immune system.”

And Dunn is not alone in this thinking. Dr Wolchok said: “I think we have, for the first time, good reason to be optimistic that we’ve found in immunotherapy a way to durably control many types of cancer that have historically been invariably and swiftly lethal.”

By identifying how cancer cells adapt and hide from the body’s defence mechanisms, scientists are finally able to unlock the missing link that has eluded researchers for decades. This key opens up a whole new world of possibilities for cancer treatment. With investors lining up to participate in the sector and given the enthusiasm shown by research centres and pharmaceutical companies both large and small, the rate of new discoveries in immuno-oncology could be exponential. As Dunn said: “While perhaps not yet a cancer cure, we may be able to turn cancer from being a terminal disease into just a chronic disease, like diabetes or arthritis. The best is yet to come.”

Google+ is being quietly euthanised

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

When it launched, Google+ was hailed by enthusiasts as the true rival to Facebook; the real challenger to Mark Zuckerberg’s market-dominating social network. People loved to hate Facebook, but, four years later, Google+ hasn’t even managed to get that sort of attention. Instead of people complaining that they’re really going to delete their accounts while uploading yet more cat pictures, Google+ elicits little more than a shrug. Now, the social network is slowly being ‘reimagined’ by Google (by which it means ‘quietly euthanised’).

Nobody seemed to know exactly why they should leave Facebook for Google+

Google’s desire to enter the social networking market was based, as ever, on the extremely valuable information it could get from its users. While Google had collected a great deal of information from email addresses, YouTube accounts and so on, Facebook had accumulated the dates of birth, photo collections, friend networks and news interests of 500 million users. All this information gave Facebook a hugely valuable insight into demographics it could then sell on to advertisers for targeted messages.

Nobody wants to be my friend
Having managed to secure many millions of users on its various web services, Google decided its social network would be the glue that tied them all together. Instead of allowing people to opt in, however, it forced them onto Google+. YouTube comments quickly required a Google+ account, and it incorporated many of its other services – including Google Talk and photo site Picasa – under its new banner. But despite automatically having many tens of millions of users, very few of them were actually interacting with the service.

The trouble Google+ found was that nobody seemed to know exactly what it was for, or why they should leave Facebook for it. Indeed, as most Facebook users had spent many years building up their profiles, photo libraries and friend lists, the idea of doing it all again on a new site probably made them weep.

One former Google+ employee, Paul Adams (who now works at Facebook), described the platform’s problems in poaching users from its rival. “It’s like you have this grungy night club and people are having a good time and you build something next door that’s shiny and new, and technically better in some ways, but who wants to leave? People didn’t need another version of Facebook.”

Many of Google+’s features came across as poorly designed and rushed, such as its Circles contact grouping system. The idea behind the Circles seemed sound – and was quickly copied by Facebook in response to enthusiastic reviews from users – but using the system was a pretty annoying experience. A new user was automatically presented with not just existing Google+ users to add to their Circles, but also every single person they had ever emailed from their Gmail accounts. Sifting through all those people – many of whom were unlikely to have even heard of Google+, let alone properly set up an account – quickly became an arduous and tiresome task that was quickly abandoned. It was also confusing, often leading to the wrong people being put in the wrong Circles; the CEO of your company could end up in a Circle intended purely for moaning about how much you hated your job.

Circle of hell
Since Google+ launched, Facebook has grown its user base to around 1.4 billion people. That’s partly because of the aggressive acquisitions it has made of WhatsApp and Instagram; two firms it kept as separate entities, unlike Google’s policy (until recently) of putting everything under one roof.

Gundotra left Google in 2014, naturally using Google+ to make the announcement. His replacement, Bradley Horowitz, has set about spinning off the network’s services, such as Photos and Hangouts, into their own apps, while YouTube comments no longer require a Google+ account. It seems likely that, within a few months, Google+ will have been quietly ‘reimagined’ out of existence.

Shale gas could transform Britain’s economy

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Onshore oil and gas exploration, and indeed fracking, in the UK is not new – it has been going on for around 150 years in the recovery of conventional onshore oil and gas. In that time, 2,000 wells have been drilled, of which around 10 percent have been hydraulically fractured. In the UK today, there are 120 sites with 250 operating wells producing around 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

The main difference between recovering conventional oil and gas reserves (which are trapped in reservoirs under impervious rock formations), and shale gas (which is both produced and trapped within shale rock itself) is that the former can be relatively easily extracted by drilling alone. To release shale gas, however, it is necessary to stimulate the flow of the gas by hydraulically fracturing (fracking) the rock using high-pressure fluids. It is primarily around the fracking process and its perceived consequences where most of the public concerns lie.

US and UK industries
The US has led on the technology and extraction of shale gas. Some of the statistics and projections quoted are impressive, though there is an ongoing debate as to how sustainable the sector is in the longer term. An IHS Global Insight study found shale gas production supported more than 600,000 jobs in 2010, contributed $76.9bn to the economy and is projected to triple its contribution to $231bn by 2035. As well as financial benefits, shale gas has also reduced the dependency on energy imports with annual net imports of natural gas falling by around 49 percent between 2007 and 2011. The IHS report also stated that, over the next 25 years, the shale gas industry will generate more than $933bn in tax revenues for local, state and federal governments, and will give an annual average addition of $926 to each household between 2012 and 2015.

2,000

Oil and gas wells in the UK

10%

Have been hydraulically fractured

120

Sites in the UK today

250

Operating wells

20,000

Barrels of oil equivalent produced per day

There is currently no commercial shale gas production in the UK, with activities limited to exploratory drilling by a small number of companies. However, shale gas may be attractive as an emerging energy resource for the UK, depending on geological conditions and improvements in the technology of extraction. In particular, it could be a potential replacement for North Sea oil and gas production, which has reduced over the last two decades. In 2000, the UK was exporting gas equivalent to 14 percent of UK gas demand: by 2011, it was importing 45 percent of UK demand, and, by 2030, this is expected to increase to more than 70 percent. This poses a threat to UK energy security if it is not replaced by other energy sources.

The study of the UK’s Bowland-Hodder Shale resource by the British Geological Survey in 2013 estimated the total resources of the entire Bowland Shale layer were between 23trn and 65trn m3, higher than previously thought. A more accurate estimate won’t be available until drilling and analysis has taken place, but it is likely the amount of gas in this area could provide the UK with decades of natural gas.

The Institute of Directors presented a scenario where UK shale gas production could attract investment of £33bn and boost employment by supporting up to 74,000 jobs. Similar conclusions were drawn in a report by Ernst & Young, which focused on the viability and benefits of developing a UK supply chain for the shale gas industry, estimating around 65,000 jobs could be created across the UK economy. However, these estimates depend critically on the cost of extraction in the geological conditions in the shale deposits in the UK.

Innovate UK’s review
Innovation has been, and will continue to be, a key driver of UK growth, productivity and economic prosperity, accounting for up to 70 per cent of economic growth in the long term. It enhances health and welfare and helps us address key challenges facing society, such as ensuring clean and sustainable energy, and food security, and responding to demographic change. The challenges posed by shale gas are therefore ripe for innovative solutions.

The majority of papers, reviews and reports published about UK shale gas have focused on estimating the available resource, the economic benefits, impact on the UK’s energy mix, and its environmental impact. There has been little focus on the role innovation might play in helping unlock this potential multibillion pound emerging market and assisting it in overcoming barriers to implementation and growth in the UK.

That’s why the experts at Innovate UK stepped in. Building on the UK’s recognised history of innovation in the conventional oil and gas sector, we commissioned an independent review of the opportunities. The review provided evidence that identified and quantified the role innovation could play in overcoming barriers faced by shale gas exploitation and how UK businesses might benefit in both a national and global market.

In consultation with industry, government and key academics, the review provided a detailed analysis of the accessible UK and global market for shale gas, the role of innovation in accessing that market, and identified where the UK has, or could gain, a significant competitive advantage.

The independent review set out and prioritised a number of areas where UK business could benefit through developing innovative technologies and tackling the main barriers to market. In particular, it highlighted that encouraging innovation in system monitoring and environmental management would be important to increase confidence in shale gas exploitation in the UK.

Innovation in both these areas will help allay public concerns over fracking. They could, for example, include technologies that could minimise the amount of water used in the fracking process, minimise noise and light, and even provide open-access, online data to the public so the local communities can get live information from fracking sites.

Current projects
Based on this independent report, Innovate UK, along with the UK Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Natural Environment Research Council, set about encouraging innovation in the sector. We ran a £2m competition that supported 19 feasibility studies into technologies that could support a UK shale gas sector and drive forward innovation.

Some of these projects are already attracting interest from developers and putting British businesses one step ahead of the game. Equipment supplier Trolex, working with Durham University, is developing a model to be used by developers to measure emission levels from shale gas sites to improve systems and minimise environmental impact.

Similarly, Slough-based Smartreamer, is developing its SmartFrac method to identify and locate natural fractures in the rock. This will make is easier and more efficient to recover shale gas while minimising fluid use.

Another project, led by surface solutions provider Keronite, is developing novel water purification treatments to ensure the fracking process is as safe as possible. Waste treatment firm Kemartek Technologies is developing a mobile water treatment plant that may remove the need for wastewater to be transported to large treatment sites and reduce transport movements.

Thanks to this programme, innovation will help ensure that shale gas can be exploited in the safest way possible, improve public understanding, enhance our security of energy supply and provide economic growth to local communities and the UK.

By supporting this work, and other companies in the sector, Innovate UK is thinking about the future and making sure it is home-grown businesses that will benefit from this potential multibillion-pound market.

The struggle to police zero-day exploits

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Zero-day exploits are created when developers make a mistake while programming software. The more blunders a programmer makes, the more vulnerabilities there are to exploit. These holes in the software are problematic, not just because they leave the door wide open for those interested in breaching the program’s security and lifting things like credit card information, but also because the owner of the software is unaware of the structural weakness until a hacker finds it. Once the exploit is identified, the hacker can do one of three things: altruistically alert the vendor of the vulnerability; sell the exploit to the company that owns the software for a fee; or list the zero-day for auction anonymously on the Dark Web.

Such exploits were once relatively rare, with many malware security companies identifying only a few vulnerabilities each month. Nowadays, however, more and more holes are being found. The primary cause of this surge is the expansion of the software sector, but it’s also partly down to the rising demand for and increasing ease with which these exploits can be bought and sold on the Dark Web. This trend is driven by government intelligence agencies, criminal networks, terrorist organisations, and potentially other private companies looking to crush competitors.

A lot of these companies rely on security
by obscurity

While a market for zero-day exploits has existed for many years, a new online bazaar recently sprang up on the dark net, referring to itself as the ‘TheRealDeal Market’. Its purpose is to act as a perverse form of eBay; brokering deals between the hackers holding highly valuable vulnerabilities and those looking to exploit them. What is more, the anonymity afforded through the use of services such as the Tor network and the decentralised digital currency of Bitcoin make it almost impossible to track this illicit trade.

While a number of other sites on the Dark Web sell relatively modest hacking tools and the stolen financial information of individual users, this new marketplace is looking to attract the ‘higher end’ of the market, appealing to sellers of highly prized source code and zero-hour exploits that have the capability to expose vendors and entire user bases to the mercy of those with the necessary capital to purchase them. The rise of TheRealDeal Market raises a number of legal and ethical issues that, for the time being, appear impossible to resolve.

TheRealDeal Market
The online news site DeepDotWeb claimed to have conducted a short interview with one of TheRealDeal Market’s administrators. “We have a lot of experience dealing in the clearnet when it comes to zero day exploit code, databases and so on… But the problem is that 90 percent of these dealers are scammers”, said the anonymous interviewee. “People with a lot of experience can always do their best to determine if what they are buying is real based on technical information and demos, but some of these ‘vendors’ are very clever and very sneaky. We decided it would be much better if there was a place where people can trade such pieces of information and code, combined with a system that will prevent fraud and also provide high anonymity.”

But it isn’t just zero-day exploits and access to high-level hacking tools that are for sale. According to the website Wired, the TheRealDeal Market is also home to “a variety of money laundering services, stolen accounts and drugs”. It appears to be a one-stop shop for a plethora of illegal goods and services, and yet another successor to the Silk Road, which was seized in a joint operation by the FBI, Homeland Security, Europol and Eurojust two years ago. Despite this, the administrator of TheRealDeal Market claimed, in the interview with DeepDotWeb, they were looking to remove these items from their site.

The expectation that any aspect of the Dark Web economy, which, through high-levels of anonymity, is able to offer a market that is not constrained by laws and regulation, will exhibit morals and ethics is asking a lot. But not everyone is so concerned about the moral ambiguity shown by those on the Dark Web.

“I think, in one way or another, these things have always existed”, said Andrew Hilton, Chief Technology Officer of Boomf. “Be it from the innocence of something like the Magic Circle, to general espionage that has been happening for hundreds of years. I see it as nothing more than an evolution of these things into the digital space.”

Ethics of exploits
Though there is something inherently ugly about zero-day exploits being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the individuals with the necessary capital and desire to purchase them are likely to be the very companies whose software has been compromised in the first place. Those selling the exploits are effectively holding these private entities to ransom over their own software’s exposed vulnerabilities. But, rather than feel too much pity for the companies that fall prey to such exploits, Hilton argues the hackers are providing a valuable service.

“Generally, a lot of these companies do not open their source code for inspection, and rely on security by obscurity”, he said. “While this may have worked in the past, I do not believe it does now. Bug bounties and programmes that reward people that find vulnerabilities seem to work much better, as too does open source software with many eyes on it.

“Personally I would prefer the companies to get bitten than my privacy; their job is to build secure products. If they have succeeded, they do not have much to worry about.”

More must be done to compensate ‘white hat’ hackers, as without reward systems and open ways of reporting bugs, the companies that control such vast amounts of data are at risk, and so are their users. Without these markets, there is less incentive for tech companies and governments around the world to ensure the information they hold is adequately protected.

“People have been cracking software since the Enigma”, said Hilton. “The anonymity of the internet just makes it easier to expose it to the public. I think the real question is: ‘Now that they are more in the open, should the public care?’ I would say no. These cat and mouse games have always been there, they are just evolving, and, because it is easier to hide in plain sight, people are finally starting to learn about their existence.”

Successors to the Silk Road share a striking resemblance to Napster – decentralising power and democratising information and goods in a manner of which many could never have dreamed, let alone comprehended how to control. Whenever new tools for informational freedom are built, it seems some will misuse them. In the end, critics and advocates of the Dark Web economy must accept the genie is out of the bottle.

European Court of Justice rules Safe Harbour agreement invalid

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

The judgement has no doubt left many US companies fearful of facing a bureaucratic nightmare, with them forced to comply with individual member states data regulators now that Safe Harbour agreement has been ruled invalid.

Luckily for them, the EU Commission remains optimistic that data transfers between the two countries will continue.

“Today’s judgment by the Court is an important step towards upholding Europeans’ fundamental rights to data protection,” explained the First Vice-President Frans Timmermans during a press conference. “The Court confirms the need of having robust data protection safeguards in place before transferring citizens’ data. I see this as a confirmation of the European Commission’s approach for the renegotiation of the Safe Harbour.

Despite the ruling, the EU Commission emphasised its commitment to data transfers with the US

“We have already been working with the American authorities to make data transfers safer for European citizens. In the light of the ruling, we will continue this work towards a renewed and safe framework for the transfer of personal data across the Atlantic.

“In the meantime, transatlantic data flows between companies can continue using other mechanisms for international transfers of personal data available under EU data protection law,” he added.

For now, the EU Commission has pledged that it will work with member state data protection authorities in order to find a way of dealing with data transfer requests to the US, now that the ECJ has ruled the Safe Harbour agreement invalid.

This should, for the time being at least, provide EU citizens with the necessary protection they need, while avoiding compliance issues for US companies.

“We have three priorities,” said EU Commissioner Vera Jourová. “First, we have to guarantee that EU citizens’ data are protected by sufficient safeguards when they are transferred. Then, it is important that transatlantic data flows can continue, as they are the backbone of our economy. Finally, we will work together guidance with national Data protection authorities to ensure a coordinated response on alternative ways to transfer data. This is important for European businesses.”

“We will also continue our discussions with the US. Let me remind you that following the Snowden revelations in 2013, the Commission had identified the shortcomings of the Safe Harbour arrangement and had made 13 concrete recommendations on how to make the Safe Harbour safer,” he added.

Despite the ruling, the EU Commission emphasised its commitment to data transfers with the US and is working to outline the shortcomings of the Safe Harbour agreement.