Geopriv compromise proposal

In advance of the Last Call, I wanted to make one more pass at trying to 
arrive at a compromise on the Geopriv idea of including rules alongside 
a position object.  A proposed update to the draft, and a diff, are 
posted at the following URLs:
<http://geopriv.dreamhosters.com/w3c/spec-source-priv.html>
<http://geopriv.dreamhosters.com/w3c/spec-source-diff.html>

The only change that these documents make is to add a "rules" element to 
the "Position" interface that allows the user to make additional grants 
of permission, beyond what the Privacy Considerations allow.  For 
example, the rules element can specify that it's ok for the recipient to 
retransmit a location or store it.

The most important thing to note about this proposal is that it is 
purely optional for both UAs and recipients: UAs don't have to set 
privacy rules (if the user is OK with the default privacy 
considerations) and recipients don't have to look for privacy rules (if 
they're willing to stay within the existing privacy considerations). 
All the software out there that conforms to the current spec also 
conforms with the modified spec.

These rules just offer another avenue for users to provide permissions 
to web sites.  For sites that already have a rich relationship with 
users (e.g., facebook), this might not add much value -- although it 
does allow them to be more adaptible to individual users' needs in some 
cases.  The major benefit of these rules is to save new sites (or newly 
geo-enabled sites) the effort of crafting extensive privacy policies and 
interfaces, while still allowing them to do more interesting things than 
the default privacy considerations allow.

Given the minimal impact of these changes, and the large possible 
benefit, I would like to propose that the changes be incorporated into 
the current draft before last call.

Thanks,
--Richard

Received on Friday, 12 June 2009 14:28:24 UTC