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

On Jun 8, 2012, at 4:27 PM, Dobbs, Brooks wrote:

> I think the problem is that compliance is based on both sides ability to honor user preference.  If one side forges user preference, and the other side can correctly only be compliant by acting on actual user preference, there is an untenable situation.  Where a UA sends a well formed header absent having obtained a preference from the user, the recipient server will always be forced into non-compliance, no matter which action it takes. 
> 
> Two cases come to mind:  
> If a UA sends a DNT:1 by default, AND this is truly the preference of the user, if the server fails to respond accordingly to DNT:1  then arguably compliance has not been achieved.  
> If, conversely, a server honors a well formed DNT:1 set by a vendor or intermediary, absent such being the actual preference of the the user, again preference has not been honored and compliance not maintained.
For the second case: I'm not aware of anything in draft specifications that would make a server non-compliant if it treated a user that hadn't expressed a DNT:1 preference as if it had. For example, we don't have any requirements that a user who arrives with DNT:0 must be tracked. You might confuse a user if you provide a very different experience under DNT:1 and it was inserted by an intermediary unbeknownst to the user, but I don't see any issues with compliance with this group's specifications.

Thanks,
Nick