14 DAY TRIAL // The DAA, Digital Advertising Alliance, an industry body that represents advertising companies announced that it would not be requiring its members to respect the Do Not Track header option set in IE10. This is because Microsoft enables the feature by default.
Being a user option was the condition on which advertisers agreed to respect the setting. Obviously, advertisers don't want something restricting the way they do business.
But they don't like the government telling them what to do and how to do it either, which is why they prefer self-regulation and why they half-heartedly agreed to Do Not Track in the first place.
That's how it works in these kinds of things, all parties involved work until they reach a compromise. Unless of course you're Microsoft, in which case you do as you please and ignore everyone else.
It's hard to fault the DAA too much, but that doesn't mean its decision was welcomed by privacy groups and lawmakers, on both sides of the Atlantic.
European digital chief Neelie Kroes has been a proponent of DNT and has followed progress so far, but is not satisfied with the way things are going.
For one, the W3C and the groups involved missed a June deadline for a finalized DNT. More recently, Microsoft's decision and its repercussions are threatening DNT's future even more.
Kroes criticized Apache for deciding to ignore the privacy setting in IE10 and she also had worries about exactly what DNT would cover, only third-party cookies or only some type of cookies.
DNT is of particular interest in Europe as it's seen as a replacement or at least complementary to the cookie privacy law already in effect. Sites in the EU have to notify users that their actions are being tracked, even if this means a login cookie. The EU hoped DNT would automate the process somewhat, but the cookie law and DNT, as it is currently envisioned are not the same.