Re: consent

Hi Rigo and Shane,

My understanding was that the spec would specify what it meant to 
'express user preference'. In this spec, 'user preference' is expressed 
only by positive acts. But  it would be up to domestic legal regimes to 
determine whether this amounts to consent or not (or, alternatively, how 
this factors into 'fair' or 'unfair' trade practices).

Maybe I'm being overly trivial in this, but I feel this is a salient 
distinction to make: the term 'express user consent' is a term of art 
that already causes some confusion in (particularly smaller) online 
companies. Defining it this way in a standards doc may exacerbate this 
confusion. It could also be confusing for those users who take the time 
to read the spec (maybe there will not be many of these, but they will 
presumably be the ones most interested in asserting their rights -- we 
get calls from these on occasion, so I know they're out there). Also, 
given that this is an official standard with some level of legitimacy, 
it can have unfortunate and unwanted feedback into actual regulatory 
processes down the road (sadly, this is not unheard of).

On 6/6/2012 11:53 AM, Shane Wiley wrote:
>
> Tamir,
>
> I believe you may be reading too much into two common terms in the 
> English language -- these are not meant to relate to any specific 
> countries legal terms of art.  In this case "consent" simply means 
> "agreement to presented option" and "explicit" means "fully revealed 
> or expressed without vagueness".
>
> - Shane
>

On 6/6/2012 10:59 AM, Rigo Wenning wrote:
> Tamir,
>
> On Wednesday 06 June 2012 10:03:53 Tamir Israel wrote:
>> I understood the objective of the spec is to 'express user
>> preferences'  (this is not the same as consent, I get the
>> impression we are conflating the two).
> I changed the subject line, because this is a different topic. To
> help with the implementation of Art. 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive,
> we intend DNT to be recognized as an expression of consent in the
> sense of 5.3. Rob has already issued requirements for that.