Re: Proposed Text for Local Law and Public Purpose

On 10/24/12 8:20 AM, Walter van Holst wrote:
> On 10/24/12 1:56 PM, David Wainberg wrote:
> !
>>> I am sorry David, but we're dealing here with fundamental human rights.
>>> To take a horrible historical analogy: there was much resistance against
>>> abolition of slavery in the Southern US states for economic reasons.
>> You're comparing online advertising to the enslavement and brutal abuse
>> of a race of people? With respect, I think hyperbole overshadows your
>> point, and some may even find it offensive. Perhaps you can think of a
>> more apt analogy.
> The core point stands: mere economic interest does not trump fundamental
> rights. And a society in which every thing you do, read and watch is
> monitored and registered, be it by private or government entities, is as
> close to a perfect prison as you can get. And I am not comparing online
> advertisement with enslavement, I am comparing the collection of every
> little piece of behaviour one can exhibit on in the online context for
> any purpose, be it advertising or something else, to enslavement.
And DNT, as conceived here, doesn't do anything to solve this problem.
> Online
> advertising was flourishing before behavioural advertising came along.
On what is this opinion based? Third party behavioral advertising is the 
only way it is economic to support small- or mid-size ad-supported 
content and services -- things like niche blogs, or independently 
developed mobile apps. Take away, or substantially reduce, third party 
behavioral and many of these things go away. They'll have to charge 
fees, and if that doesn't earn enough, they will fail. This will reduce 
the diversity of content available, and will reduce access to 
information for those who cannot afford to pay the fees.
>> Aside from whether this point is hyperbole as well, it is irrelevant.
>> DNT as conceived by this working group will have little to no impact on
>> any Orwellian data collection. First parties online, all sorts of
>> parties offline, and more importantly, governments everywhere will
>> continue to have the ability to collect large amounts of data about all
>> of our behavior online and off. If that's the problem we're trying to
>> solve, we're way off base. Constraining the uses that 3rd parties are
>> allowed to make of data collected online will give no net benefit to
>> users in this regard.
> So you're stating that the whole DNT saga is without merit? If the point
> is not to allow users to restrict data collection, then what is it?
You tell me. We've never agreed on what we're trying to accomplish. 
Ostensibly, we're trying to give users a mechanism with which they can 
express a preference about tracking, but we haven't defined tracking. 
So, I tend to wonder, too, where we're going with this. In the direction 
we're headed, this standard will have little net effect on the data 
collected about users online.

>> those, that might be a good route. For example, if access to data and
>> misuse of it by governments is a particular issue, let's explore that.
>> It's been mentioned regularly, but has never been approached as a
>> discrete concern we are trying to address.
> Governments will (and can in most jurisdictions) access all data
> gathered. Which in itself is justification for having as little data
> around as possible. If anything, may I recommend to have a chat with the
> European telco operators who have been forced to spend vast amounts of
> money on data retention schemes to satisfy the data hunger of
> governments? Without any tangible benefit for society whatsoever and all
> because some of them where keeping that data around anyway for potential
> marketing reasons.
>
DNT, as we're crafting it, has zero effect on this problem. You might 
argue that we're trying to reduce the data in the hands of third party 
ad networks that governments might get access to. However: a) we've not 
directly discussed that as the problem we're trying to solve, and b) it 
would be just silly anyway since governments can get all the data from 
the telcos. Has there been even a single case of a government wanting 
access to pseudonymous third-party advertising data? If there has been, 
I'd love to hear of it. What would they do with it?
>> This is not how it is in the US. Our law and our culture around these
>> issues are different. Although we have had many conversations in this
>> group about how we can try to craft DNT to suit needs in the EU, I'm not
>> sure there's an appetite here to import European law to the US via this
>> standard. This is the justification for my compliance token proposal:
>> there are significant differences we may not be able to accommodate in a
>> monolithic standard.
>>
> Actually, from a EU perspective this standard as a whole is unnecessary
> because most business practices, at least the one that are publicly
> known, in this field are in violation of EU-law already.
So why do we keep talking about it in terms of EU law? Why do we 
continue to have proposals aimed at suiting EU requirements? I will be 
happy if we can once and for all determine that this
> Having a
> mechanism for consent in the form of DNT is much more significant in the
> US context than in the EU context. The fact that various EU parties are
> sitting at the table in this process is in itself a sign that the lack
> of appetite by the US to import EU concepts (unlike most other
> democracies on the planet) has been noticed in the EU.
Are you saying that EU participation in this forum is precisely for the 
purpose of trying to impose EU concepts on US companies?
> Moreover, please be aware that the successor to the Data Protection
> Directive, the Data Protection Regulation is quite likely to have an
> extraterritorial scope, the unprecedented lobbying efforts by the US
> Department of Commerce notwithstanding.
I am definitely aware of this, and I expect companies will always do 
what is reasonably necessary to abide by the law of the jurisdictions in 
which they operate. If they cannot reasonably meet the requirements of 
the law in any particular jurisdiction, they will cease doing business 
there.

But to my previous question, if the EU can impose these concepts 
extra-territorially through regulation then why try to do it through 
this DNT process?

-David

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2012 13:12:31 UTC