Re: Today's call: summary on user agent compliance

You are assuming the site sticks a giant label on itself somewhere saying
"We comply with DNT."

If in your paper example, the store said "The following shelves have ISO A4
sheets, and these other shelves contain 8 1/2 x 11" I don't think you would
have a case to be mad if you walked over to the 8 1/2 x 11 shelf and then
said "But I wanted A4!!!"

This is the same thing. If the site says "I support DNT under the following
circumstances" and is clear about that, and you are outside of those
circumstances, I don't think you have any reason to be surprised.

-Ian

On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net> wrote:

> * Ian Fette wrote:
> >A site is already under no obligation to conform to DNT. Would you rather
> >have the user be clear that their request is being ignored, or left to
> >wonder?
>
> You are mistaken. Sites are under no obligation to claim they conform to
> the DNT specifications, but if they choose to claim they do, then they
> most certainly are under obligations to conform to the specifications.
> That's the whole point: the DNT specifications define who or what can
> make conformance claims, and what obligations are incurred when they do.
>
> If you go into a paper shop and ask for 500 ISO A4 sheets of paper, and
> they do not have ISO A4 paper, but they stick a ISO A4 label on some US
> Letter sheets, and assure you that they are really ISO A4 sized, and you
> go home and find they aren't ISO A4, you won't say "I should have known
> the shop is under no obligation to sell A4 paper, and I am better off
> with US Letter size paper than no paper." At least I would hope so.
>
> The Working Group may of course decide to have many classes and levels
> of conformance, let's say "DNT Platinum" sites only have first party re-
> sources, do not share any data, do not log identifiable data, and "DNT
> Tomato" sites just tell you that you are tracked whatever your prefer-
> ence is; or it could set up a "OS and Web Browser DNT UX Certification"
> browser conformance level and program that makes sure it's difficult e-
> nough to turn on DNT:1, with a corresponding conformance level for sites
> where they ignore DNT signals from non-certified user agents, and so on.
>
> Similarily, the Working Group might decide that "site" is not the right
> scope, and instead have separate classes for "ad networks" and "weather
> widgets" and whatever else, as it sees fit, but there is no basis for
> "you don't have to claim conformance, so you when you claim conformance
> you don't have to implement all applicable MUSTs"-style arguments.
>
> As for the specific feature you propose above, I see no reason to have
> features to make negative conformance claims; it's much better to infer
> likely non-conformance from the absence of positive conformance claims.
> If usability studies have shown the mere claim "I ignore DNT signals" is
> useful to normal users, then I would suggest to make that a conformance
> level if people expect great interest in this on part of site owners.
> --
> Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
> Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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>