14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is on a crusade to rid the web of abusive cookies. It's not an easy fight, but the organization has made some progress with the introduction of the Cookie Clearinghouse, in collaboration with Stanford University.
The project aims to create a blacklist and a whitelist of domains which use cookies with respect for user privacy.
It's no surprise though that advertisers aren't keen on it. The Internet Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing most major advertisers in the US, isn't a fan of Mozilla's plans.
It criticized the company when it moved to block all third-party cookies in Firefox. But now that Mozilla is backing away from that plan, the IAB doesn't like the alternative. It's not mincing words either, calling the project a "kangaroo cookie court."
"[The cookie clearinghouse] replaces the principle of consumer choice with an arrogant 'Mozilla knows best' system. It is not 'independent,' as Mozilla claims, but is stocked with self-interested academic elites with whom Mozilla has long histories. Nor is it rational, trusted, or transparent," Randall Rothenberg, the president of the IAB, wrote.
The IAB accuses the Clearinghouse of being designed to hurt advertisers at the behest of a few people with an "anti-business" agenda. The organization believes there is a need for consensus and more discussion in the area, something that Mozilla, it says, is against.
"That Mozilla doesn't understand this is unsurprising. After all, it represents nobody. It is part of a global distribution cartel whose members have been in a perpetual state of war with each other for 15 years," Rothenberg writes.
When talking about consensus, he's referring to Do Not Track. But discussions regarding the technology have been stalling for years, to the point there it doesn't look like there will ever be a consensus.
The IAB does have reasons to be upset about Mozilla's plans though. After all, what Mozilla would be doing is taking control out of the hands of advertisers, who get to decide when and how to use cookies to track people, always to their benefit, and puts it in the hands of the users.