June draft change proposal: Section 1 - Scope

Alan Chapell and I share the concern that the opening sentence of the June draft is demonstrably inaccurate and is silent on a fundamental element of the spec.

It currently starts:

Section 1. Scope
Do Not Track is designed to provide users with a simple preference expression mechanism to allow or limit online tracking globally or selectively. …

This is inaccurate because there are no compliance requirements to enable the expression of allowance, either selectively or globally.  It may have been decided not to mandate DNT:0 as a UA requirement or make UGEs a requirement, but so long as such requirements do not exist, the Scope should not state that it was "designed" to provide them.

Additionally as the document poses such dramatically different compliance obligations for 1st and 3rd parties, it seems to me to be entirely appropriate to at least mention this fundamental change in what compliance means in the different contexts within the Scope.

I propose starting as follows:

1. Scope
Do Not Track is designed to provide users with a simple preference mechanism to limit online tracking relative to the collector being a 1st or 3rd party to the user.  Do Not Track further lays the groundwork for how a user MAY express the allowance of tracking either globally or selectively. …

To be clear, I am not commenting on the correctness of the 1st/3rd party requirements or the lack of mandate for DNT:0/UGE, but, as the spec currently stands, a change would seem in order.

-Brooks

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Brooks Dobbs, CIPP | Chief Privacy Officer | KBM Group | Part of the Wunderman Network
(Tel) 678 580 2683 | (Mob) 678 492 1662 | kbmg.com
brooks.dobbs@kbmg.com

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