Re: ISSUE-45 ACTION-246: draft proposal regarding making a public compliance commitment

On Sep 7, 2012, at 13:08 , David Wainberg <david@networkadvertising.org> wrote:

> Also sorry for piling on, but to put it slightly differently, my understanding has been that much language in the spec has been provisionally passed as strawman text, to be reconsidered in light of future work. Given the  non-linear route we've taken to developing the spec, this seems like a necessity. I'd be shocked to hear now that text that was not objected to in the past, in the interest of letting the process move along, but with an understanding that it could be revisited later, is now locked down.
> 
> -David


I think we're all cool with that.  "I'd like to take another look at <this> text because <x>" is not something you'll get push-back on (yet), not from me, and I doubt from the group.  We are indeed in progressive refinement.


On the other hand, the chairs are rightly trying to stop us repeating discussions without new things to say -- possibly in the hope of a different outcome; none of us want to be either repeatedly rebuffed or having to repeat the same rebuffals, and we don't have the time or energy to go around the same mulberry bush multiple times.

I hope that it was a misunderstanding that David's text was suggesting decoupling expression and compliance, because that is a discussion we have had several times and not agreed to, and because the issue was asking, in my reading, something else -- how companies might make the *additional* step of providing a hook:

'Companies making public commitments with a "regulatory hook" for US legal purposes', and the note (made at the same time) 'could be useful for enforcement either through regulation or self-regulation; "accountability"; could be EU/US jurisdiction distinctions'


If this is the question, then adding an additional signal "other regulations or specifications complied with" is not hard, though I wonder why machine-readability is needed. Would it help in cross-border questions (e.g. someone from inside the EU contacting an external server could then be 'automatically' warned that the service does not claim EU compliance, only Zimbabwe compliance, in addition to that specified by the protocol)?

In the interests of closure, how would it be if the well-known-resource had a list of labels other specifications complied with?  Given I expect it won't be fetched often, I'd suggest something that doesn't need IANA or other registration, such as URIs.  Then the EU, or IAB, or anyone, can say what their URI 'label' is, and servers can add it if they wish and believe it would be helpful.

But users and user-agents would know that the (somewhat leaky) 'baseline' of the W3C specifications -- which are intimately related -- would be the 'floor'.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 7 September 2012 22:41:20 UTC