The online industry is vocally opposing the Federal Trade Commission's recent proposal for a voluntary do-not-track mechanism, and some privacy experts seem convinced that the initiative will slowly,
if at all.*
Consider, just this week the industry-funded think tank Future of Privacy Forum said that 86% of board members and other informal poll respondents believe that
do-not-track will not be enshrined in law by the end of the year.
Whether that prediction will prove accurate is hard to say, but lawmakers aren't known for moving quickly. After all,
enacting do-not-call took more than a decade, as Electronic Privacy Information Center executive director Marc Rotenberg reminded people this morning at a digital privacy conference in New York.
(Despite the similarity in names, do-not-call isn't comparable to do-not-track. Do-not-call completely stops telemarking calls, while do-not-track only affects ads served based on data gleaned from
tracking users across the Web.)
But even if do-not-track becomes law this year, there's no reason to think it would lead to the end of either free content or online advertising. On the
contrary, do-not-track is just another name for the notice-and-choice principles the industry has endorsed since at least 2000.
The idea behind do-not-track is that consumers should have an
easy way to opt out of all behavioral targeting -- precisely the same concept that industry groups endorse in their self-regulatory settings. Ten years ago, the Network Advertising Initiative launched
with the goal of enabling one-stop opt-outs for consumers. Now, the industry's icon effort also aims to inform consumers how to opt out of targeting with a single click.
What, then, would
change if do-not-track were enacted? One change -- probably the most important -- is that the industry would be regulated. That, in itself, is seen as threatening given that laws often have unintended
consequences: Sometimes the wording is so ambiguous that the laws end up restricting the type of activity that isn't generally seen as problematic.
But, while the fear of unintended
consequences is legitimate, it makes no sense to argue that allowing people to opt out of online ad targeting will hurt the industry while at the same time encouraging companies to use the new Digital Advertising Alliance icons that, in the end, enable easy
opt-outs.
*
Correction: This column has been updated to reflect that 86% of respondents to an informal Future of Privacy Forum survey said they do not believe that
do-not-track will not be enshrined in law by the end of the year.