Re: [patwg-charter] jwrosewell: "primarily non-technical" -> "do not have any technical component" (#8)

I am mentioned above multiple times so I feel I should speak up.

@jwrosewell, my read of your argumentation here and elsewhere is it is contradictory or intended to halt progress. Here's how I've come to this conclusion:

- You have made it known in many forums at W3C and elsewhere you think it is not the job of standards organizations to progress standards that veer outside of interpretations of _any_ jurisdictions' current laws and precedents (or at least those jurisdictions with forms of democracy you agree with?). This is now a well established understanding of your expressed positions to date.
- Your argument here appears to be that instead of focusing solely on technical, user agent approaches to addressing key ads outcomes while reducing the wide spray of global identifiers, PATWG should expand its scope to include approaches based on commercial contracts, legal interpretations, current market player dynamics, opinions on the spirit of certain data protection laws (you continue to come back to the General Data Protection Regulation), and theories on competition with all the requisite voices, incentives, strategic angling, etc... that would add to a table like a future PATWG.
- I personally believe that if PATWG is to be charted with scope to formally encompass the above (more or less) it would look very much like the unwieldy non-governmental actor you often pejoratively describe, as factoring in so many opinions and approaches particularly those that aren't actionable by user agents would look very much like W3C tables taking on a role(s) commonly assumed to be those of governments.
- It's hard to avoid concluding it is unlikely your desire the W3C standards process look more like a governmental actor trying to represent so very many POVs and so very many desired outcomes. Therefore I conclude you seek to halt work on standards discussion that would have any disruptive effects on any current market dynamics.
- However, even the approaches you and whoever else authored in SWAN.community would have disruptive effects on market dynamics. This is the nature of standards. Were this group to take up SWAN.community or something similar for discussion I think we would quickly find that there are a lot of potential participants who would not believe it it aligns with cross-jurisdictional laws or their various directions _and_ could have material market disrupting effects. This is not to throw shade on SWAN.community, but to recognize what is likely true for one proposed approach is true for others.
- Whatever we do or don't do has impacts, some potentially predictable and others not. This is the nature of progress or stagnation.

I remain very much in the camp that **it is best for the PATWG charter to be scoped to technical approaches** and those reasons have already been well summarized by @ekr, @martinthomson, @lukwlodarczyk, @bedfordsean, @AramZS and @jaylett-annalect. I will not attempt to add further nuance at this time. I don't think it's necessary.

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Received on Wednesday, 30 March 2022 15:10:21 UTC