Re: ISSUE-151 Re: Change proposal: new general principle for permitted uses

On Sunday 28 July 2013 00:35:24 Aleecia M. McDonald wrote:
> And then something really weird happened. US users have turned on DNT
> in their browsers at a truly surprising rate. Even without promotion,
> even without DNT being honored by most websites, we're looking at
> about 1/6th of users turning on DNT in Firefox. The incentives shift.

And something really weird happened in Europe: UK-ICO, with support from 
the concerned industry succeeded in getting an implementation in some EU 
countries that work with "implied consent". You get a banner that says: 
"If you continue, you'll accept whatever we will do, see our 42 pages of 
legalese". This is less protection than the US has. De-facto. This lead 
to the abandoning of the global considerations work and changed the 
interest and incentives. If you're a big data consumer, it is much more 
attractive to spend your time on a generalization of "implied consent". 
Because it means that the EU goes de-facto on the US level (must have 
privacy policy). 
> 
> The idea of supposing a principled argument about lack of user choice
> is a bit hard to take seriously given the EU treatment. From the
> first meeting, we've all been fine with EU users having DNT
> protection without making explicit choices to turn on DNT:1. 

Given the above, the lack of user choice discussion starts to make 
perfect sense. And suddenly, as the regulator-argument is gone, the only 
arguments that remain are "market unrest" and "browser arms race". Both 
are linked. 
> 
> It seems to me the challenges to DNT are not the ones we're talking
> about right this moment. Could we deal with real issues?

The interesting question is that we want to jump on last call while the 
underlying issue has changed. We are trying to match a moving target 
here. Even worth: the target's moves are also determined by the way DNT 
advances and by the way it is shaped. So even if we have that 
discussion, it will only give you a glimpse of a certainty for a fixed 
moment in time. 

The alternative is to put out a useful tool and see how the market 
reacts. Translated into W3C process, it means we should make the 
Specification the best we can and adapt during a longer Candidate 
Recommendation phase (CR) where people try UGE and other features that 
go beyond the mere reception of a DNT:1 header. Those tests will 
influence the market IMHO and then we should have that discussion again. 

The new Mozilla access to browser history is a perfect example that  the 
UGE might be useful. This could end in a TPE 1.1 if Mozilla is generous. 

 --Rigo

Received on Sunday, 28 July 2013 16:21:07 UTC