Re: ACTION-253 ISSUE: 119 and ACTION 208 ISSUE-148 Response signal for "not tracking" and definition for DNT:0

On Sep 13, 2012, at 13:08 , "Amy Colando (LCA)" <acolando@microsoft.com> wrote:

> This is (one of) the items that continues to confuse me about the "no tracking" claim -- aren't all of these examples that David Singer cites below (including the original example of http://duckduckgo.com/) first parties?  In which case, having a first party say that they don't make use of the permitted uses that apply only to third parties makes little sense.  And I cannot imagine a scenario in which a third party would respond that they weren't making use of permitted use exceptions -- they simply wouldn't be present on the site at all.

Let's try some examples:

First parties that can say "we don't do tracking" -- general purpose sites, sites hosted by providers that only provide aggregate statistics, 'small' sites (think of high schools)

Third parties that can say "we don't do tracking" -- sites providing web resources like web badges, style sheets, and script libraries

These sites don't use anything a first party is allowed to do, let alone what a third party is allowed to do when it claims permissions, or gets an exception.  First-party sites that are 'non-tracking' can safely be embedded (if they allow it) in frames in other sites, for example (whereupon they now stand in a 3rd party position).



> 
> Also agree with David Wainberg on tracking definition.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Singer [mailto:singer@apple.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 12:29 PM
> To: David Wainberg
> Cc: Nicholas Doty; public-tracking@w3.org
> Subject: Re: ACTION-253 ISSUE: 119 and ACTION 208 ISSUE-148 Response signal for "not tracking" and definition for DNT:0
> 
> 
> On Sep 12, 2012, at 8:31 , David Wainberg <david@networkadvertising.org> wrote:
> 
>> If it were a status qualifier alongside a,c,f,l, and r, it might make sense. However, I still feel strongly that, absent a definition for tracking itself, we need to excise the word "tracking" from all of those definitions. Without a definition of tracking, how can a party state that it is "not tracking except for....?" The party might be able to state "the only permitted use we are claiming is X," in which case it might also be able to say, "we are claiming no permitted uses." This is with the caveat that since the qualifiers are optional, it must be clear that silence is just silence and does not indicate any claims whatsoever.
> 
> I think the original motivation went well beyond "no permitted uses".  It was for sites such as ones hosting script libraries, or web badges, or humdrum sites that don't use analytics or advertising, and who simply aren't interested in anything other than the most basic logging (visitor counts, pages served, and so on), to be able to say "look, tracking is not even on our radar; we're out of scope."
> 
> 
>> 
>> On 9/12/12 12:51 AM, Nicholas Doty wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> On Sep 11, 2012, at 3:16 PM, David Wainberg <david@networkadvertising.org> wrote:
>>>> Moreover, how are we going to define "anonymous" or "pseudonymous" or "foo"? Given that this is an unnecessary appendage anyway, and that we can't even define "tracking" in a "do not track" standard, why do we want to create the problem of now having to define some other state. To include it without a definition would be unacceptable.
>>> I think we're agreed on defining the terms we use in the specification and communicate to users. It sounds like part of your concern here is that we would need to define new terminology and that that would be confusing. Would just providing the no-permitted-uses communication satisfy this concern [0]? This wouldn't be new terminology, just optional transparency back to the user about claimed permitted uses.
>>> 
>>> The group has already agreed on including the capability to claim which permitted uses in a machine-readable way, and I think Shane has made the case that transparency about claimed permitted uses is one of the key advantages of this specification.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Nick
>>> 
>>> [0] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tracking/2012Sep/0115.html
>> 
>> 
> 
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
> 
> 
> 
> 

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2012 20:49:30 UTC