Re: action-231, issue-153 requirements on other software that sets DNT headers

On Aug 22, 2012, at 17:06 , Mike Zaneis <mike@iab.net> wrote:

> David, you continue to reference "the site", but all of this impacts the multibillion dollar third party industry, so can you couch Apple's position on DNT in terms of impact on the third parties? 
> 

Mike, I am an engineer trying to help find consensus in designing a good specification; official corporate statements come from somewhere else.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the scenario (perhaps more are).  As I understand it, the scenario is that the user visits a site, and the user-agent sends a DNT header, but the site isn't sure it reflects the user's true intentions.  If the site is designed so that it continues to allow access if it is satisfied it does indicate the user's intentions, then it might be concerned that, in this case, the site's chosen 3rd parties will be asked not to track when that was not the user's true request.  The advertising under these DNT circumstances may be less valuable, and the site may receive less compensation from the advertisers. Do I have it right?

(Alternative responses to a DNT header are to ask for an exception, to offer a value-reduced site, to ask the user to pay directly, and so on; these don't seem to be dependent on the user-agent choice.)

All I am saying is that the site has the same set of choices in this case as it has always had; it could choose to go through verification with the user, and so on, before it offers free access, or it could take any of the other actions above, or it could re-direct to a page that says that site access is not offered to users of that user-agent.


If you have another scenario in mind, I apologize for misunderstanding;  could you explain it, because I think it important we understand them. Many thanks


David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 23 August 2012 23:28:11 UTC