Re: Summary of First Party vs. Third Party Tests

Jonathan, this is a very helpful discussion, providing the scenarios and possible real examples. My only comment is that I believe your second possible definition - legal business relationships - is overly broad. The corporate ownership factor is correct, but I don't think most/anyone would argue that a contract with a non-related company would make that company a first party (it could make them an agent of the first party if the data is only used for the benefit of the first party, but that is a different discussion). Most U.S. laws treat legal "affiliates", companies with some common ownership, as first parties (i.e. ESPN and ABC are treated as first party to the parent company Disney). I think that is the more useful straw man to use for this discussion. 

Mike Zaneis
SVP & General Counsel, IAB
(202) 253-1466

On Oct 29, 2011, at 1:11 AM, "Jonathan Mayer" <jmayer@stanford.edu> wrote:

> (ACTION-25)
> 
> As I understand it, there are four camps on how to distinguish between first parties and third parties.
> 
> 1) Domain names (e.g. public suffix + 1).
> 
> 2) Legal business relationships (e.g. corporate ownership + affiliates).
> 
> 3) Branding.
> 
> 4) User expectations.
> 
> Here are some examples that show the boundaries of these definitions.
> 
> Example: The user visits Example Website at example.com.  Example Website embeds content from examplestatic.com, a domain controlled by Example Website and used to host static content.
> 
> Discussion: Content from the examplestatic.com domain is first-party under every test save the first.
> 
> Example: Example Website (example.com) strikes a deal with Example Affiliate (affiliate.com), an otherwise unrelated company, to share user data.  The user visits Example Website, and it embeds content from Example Affiliate.
> 
> Discussion: Content from Example Affiliate is third-party under every test save the second.
> 
> Example: Example Website embeds a widget from Example Social Aggregator.  The widget includes a prominent logo for Example Social Aggregator, though a user is unlikely to recognize it.
> 
> Discussion: Content from Example Social Aggregator is third-party under every test save the third.
> 
>

Received on Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:38:32 UTC