Success of W3C DNT Process Depends on This Week’s Meeting
As the last scheduled face-to-face meeting before that July deadline, “this is an important face-to-face,” said working group co-Chair Peter Swire. Though the July deadline can be pushed back, stakeholders “are treating the ‘Last Call’ deadline seriously,” he said. “We'll know by Wednesday” whether the process will produce a DNT mechanism, TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said. Szoka is an invited expert to the W3C process. He’s optimistic, Szoka said: “If we can’t move forward from this, there is no other way out."
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The group may not reach complete consensus on an entire draft by the end of the meeting, but it can agree on a framework to move the process forward, said Mike Zaneis, Interactive Advertising Bureau senior vice president-public policy and a participant in the W3C process. “A lot can happen if we're able to agree on a framework.” Stakeholders will have three months to agree on a draft, and “three months is a long time,” he said. Zaneis commended Swire on his ability to “get the group focused on a problem,” as opposed to earlier leadership, which “failed to get the group to agree on a single problem."
John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog advocate and a W3C invited expert, is less optimistic that the online ad industry and privacy advocates can reach consensus, he said. “It could well be that the differing perspectives are a chasm that cannot be breached.” If the W3C process fails, DNT discussions will likely move to Congress, he said. Last month, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on DNT, where Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he thought legislation was necessary (CD April 25 p7). “Rockefeller is quite serious about pushing this” in Congress, Simpson said. “I think that’s where it’s got to go."
Though Rockefeller has discussed his DNT legislation, that potential is not adding pressure to stakeholders to accomplish the process’ goals, Szoka said. A DNT bill is unlikely to make it through the Senate and very unlikely to make it through the House, he said: “Rockefeller doesn’t have the votes he needs.” Zaneis believes the likelihood of legislation or regulation is “very low,” he said. “I don’t think the legislative environment is putting pressure on this process."
During the most recent stakeholder conference call, Stu Ingis -- a privacy lawyer with Venable who represents the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) -- introduced a draft framework for this week’s meeting (http://bit.ly/15Xg0aK). Though Ingis presented the draft, which outlines potential solutions to issues that have been discussed by stakeholders, Swire said the document “emerged from multiple stakeholders.” Szoka said that, by asking for compromises from both the privacy advocates and the online ad industry, the draft framework presented by Ingis “allows both sides to declare victory.” The document represents compromise on both sides, Zaneis said. “The framework is about each side getting something and giving something."
One of the issues discussed in the draft framework is the permitted uses, or the reasons for which a third party could place unique identifiers on a user’s browser -- including “debugging” and “compliance with local laws.” Privacy and consumer advocates “would like to see new language” that excludes “market research and product development,” Zaneis said. Industry members are “willing to have productive discussions about areas where we could narrow those permitted uses,” he continued. The document presented by Ingis said the DAA “would modify its current codes, notably including the current ‘market research’ and ‘product development’ exceptions to collection limits, including evaluation of potential retention limitation.” The document said the “permitted uses would be limited to the extent practical.” The DAA has “agreed to try and limit the potential for abuse,” Ingis told us. “We don’t know what the final language would look like."
The online ad industry is “very concerned” about DNT being turned on by default, Simpson said. If DNT is turned on by default, users are “not able to make an informed decision,” Zaneis said. The draft framework for this week’s meeting requires that DNT is “off by default” and can be activated “in the browser settings panel ... not through an installation or other similar mechanism.”