DNT and the Tracking Protection Working Group – Did they “Just Jump the Shark”?
by Peter
If you have a spare hour or so and a large bucket of popcorn, you might want to head over to the Tracking Protection Working Group Public Mailing list forum – link
You don’t have to read all of the emails – it’s way to confusing, however spend some time in Octobers list to get a hint of what is going on. It’s like the IAB, DAA and DMA all decided that DNT has failed (Jumped the Shark) and even with speeches from people like Neelie Kroes (An update on Do Not Track The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)/Brussels, 11 October 2012), it doesn’t make any difference, because there really isn’t a privacy problem because online trust has never been so high as it is right now. (This is a great email).
What people on the forum fail to realize is that this is just the first innings. The protocol is not even finished and it can be made to do more (you can extend it to carry more data). The advertising industry needs to get onboard with the improvement phase, and NOT keep trying to kill the current phase. It would be in their best interests to have a something vs. the alternative which is regulation.
Nothing is ever perfect in the first rev – give it a chance before you make it ‘Jump the Shark.’