Re: [meetings] Agenda Request - Review Working Group Charter Changes (#52)

I’m unable to attend the meeting today to make the following points under this agenda item.

The charter will be reviewed by the W3C membership. What have the group done to verify there is a mandate within the W3C to disintermediate advertising by web browsers as the proposed draft of the charter directs? I don’t think there is one.

The W3C membership are not the only consideration. There is the matter of competition law compliance. In [PR #18](https://github.com/patcg/patwg-charter/pull/18#issuecomment-1123233207) my lawyer colleagues provided a number of suggestions. These include ensuring all parties to the web are guaranteed access to the source data need for standards developed by the group under Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms by those that join the group. FRAND is already an accepted principle for the licencing of intellectual property. It can be applied to essential data.

Such a change would likely necessitate all the work of the group be implemented using web primitives (aka general purposes APIs). Where new APIs are needed these would need to be general purpose and not specifically for advertising. An example of such an API could be the sharing of state information between multiple data controllers under GDPR laws.

Importantly this change will free individual publishers and advertisers to decide which of the groups standards they use. Publishers and advertisers would not be force to adopt particular standards by browser vendors or the W3C.

In the past there have been few lawyers on the call. I suggested some names from Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Can the representatives from those companies advise if they have been approached?

My company has a number of Formal Objections open in relation to matters related to competition. We have agreed to withdraw those Formal Objections should the W3C Director setup a Legal Advisory Group where only qualified lawyers are eligible to join and this group rule on such matters. The Legal Advisory Group would provide horizontal review on matters such as group charters to ensure any competition issues were resolved prior to the work commencing. This charter should be subject to such a review.

@AramZS @seanturner Please could you draw the group attention to this comment during the meeting?

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Received on Tuesday, 17 May 2022 21:02:33 UTC