Mr Big Brother leaps to Phorm's defence

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 12 Mar 2009 at 08:57

Phorm - the advertising service Sir Tim Berners-Lee accused of "snooping" on its customers - has found a rather ironic ally: the man who brought Big Brother to British TV.

Peter Bazalgette, the former chairman of Endemol, the company that produces Big Brother in the UK, launched a staunch defence of Phorm and its like at yesterday's debate in the House of Commons.

He stood up and accused the panel of internet experts of narrowly focusing on the privacy implications of such a scheme, and failing to see the commercial benefit it could offer ISPs and the media.

Speaking to PC Pro late last night, Bazalgette remained unrepentant. "I've spent 30 years in the content industry, and I'm asking myself how are we going to pay for content in the future?"

"Quite a lot of content in the future is going to have to be paid for like it was in the past - by advertising. But advertising online is going to be done in a different way.

"And when I hear all these privacy guys talk about privacy, I never hear them mention the importance of commerce online. All I hear them talk about is their rights.

"I get very irritable with these people - and I did this morning - sitting around, droning on about privacy, which is one issues that's very important, without ever acknowledging the importance of commerce."

Phorm endorsement?

Bazalgette - who has sprung to the defence of Phorm in magazine columns in the past - denies he has any vested interest in the advertising company, although PC Pro did see him leaving the event with Phorm CEO Kent Ertugrul.

Phorm also denies that Bazalgette has any link with the company, although it does concede it approached the former Endemol man after he wrote a column in favour of Phorm.

"I have a personal, financial interest in one or two companies [not Phorm] and therefore I'm interested generally and specifically in how we can kickstart the online economy," Bazalgette told PC Pro.

However, he stopped short of an outright endorsement of Phorm. "If Phorm's doing anything wrong, let's get it out in the open and make it work," he said.

"At the moment, I see Phorm discussed as if everybody's on the barricades pelting each other. It's just ridiculous. We should be enabling companies like that."

"I came across Phrom when I was looking at the whole thing and I was quite interested in what it was doing. And broadly speaking, I think what it is doing is good."

Google competition

Bazalgette claims Phorm could provide some much-needed competition for Google. "One of the things about advertising being potentially crystalised at the ISP level is that it's going to create genuine competition," he said. "At the moment, it's dominated by Google. Healthy economies have competition in them. What the Phorm technology allows ISPs and even small websites to do is derive commercial revenue, rather than being dumb pipes."