Are Digital Foxes Guarding the Web's Privacy Hen House?

If you want to see how industry self-regulation can fall short, take a look at the online advertising business and the fight over a do-not-track protocol to protect consumer privacy.

It would seem to be in business's interest to keep customers happy—to give those who want it the guarantee that they aren't being tracked on the Internet. That's the idea behind a one-click, do-not-track button that would permanently block marketing firms that currently follow your activity from website to website. And yet negotiations between advertising, marketing and privacy groups are stuck in a continuous loop. Email exchanged between members of the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group shows they still disagree over basic questions, such as what "do not track" should mean and how to assure compliance. The problem is, self-regulation in the case of the Internet is often a contradiction in terms. Jon Leibowitz, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, says he's still optimistic that companies will find a solution. But it's unclear how potent that threat really is. Sen. Rockefeller's bill didn't get traction after he introduced it. That may explain industry's strategy in the negotiations. Delay and rope-a-dope have worked so far. Maybe they will win the fight.