You'll never work in this industry again - Microsoft 1994
|
|
|
Bill could ban advertising data snoops
A NEW YORK assemblyman has drafted a bill which, if it passes, would make collecting information about people online for the purposes of targeted advertising, illegal.
Democrat Richard L. Brodsky reckons that companies like Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo should be punished with hefty fines if they continue to use people’s personal information for targeted advertising without prior consent. He is hoping that his bill will force companies to let users opt out of the constant tracking of their web behaviour. He wants to ensure that users would have to give firms unequivocal permission before they were allowed to track things like Web history and searches, or information including names, addresses and phone numbers.
The bill could set an interesting precedent and because it would be almost impossible for companies to limit their data collection in just one state, the bill could easily end up having global implications.
Unsurprisingly, lobbyists for the major companies likely to be affected, including Yahoo, the Vole and AOL, have been scurrying to Albany, New York, to meet Mr. Brodsky. Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, who represent companies like Google and Yahoo reckons they have to fight the bill because: “If you take the fuel out of this engine, you begin to see the free services and content dry up”.
But the sneaky Vole has a different ace up its sleeve. Microsoft claims that it is in fact in favour of the proposed legislation to protect a user’s online privacy. In fact it has even asked Mr. Brodsky to broaden his bill to include all sorts of companies (Ahem, cough, Google) that place ads around the Web, not only those that show ads based on users’ behaviour.
The bill is still being tinkered with, but Mr. Brodsky hopes that it will come to a vote sometime this Spring. µ
L'Inq
New
York Times
Share this:
Share
Yes!!! People will stop monitoring my internet usage patterns and providing me with meaningful advertising. Finally, I can keep getting flooded with useless advertising again. And here I am, stuck without a properly working flash player for all the really annoying or obscene ads.
omg, i can see why mikerowesoft would support it, 
Lets look at the business model
1/MS, anticompetitive monopoly, lock people into proprietery formats, milk every possible penny from punters, give them shite and if its the only option, they will take whatever we give them.
2/Google, give them everything for free, give them choice, but collect everything they do.
Create a business model whereby your advertising is so effective, you make a packet.


back to no free services, google would have nothing, we would all be using 2mb hotmail addresses, and be thankful.
Perhaps though google could do a netscape, everything would become free, opensource
we just need that 10petaflop 'vista ready' nippon pc to run all the server side apps
Yes, yes, yes!
I hope that gets done nation wide. While they are at it ban all those prescription drug commercials. It's the doctors job to know the drugs why to I have to hear the bleeding heart commercials how the drug company cares so much about me and to ask my doctor for them.
how about we expand the bill to ALL companies collecting anything.. like M$
I have the gut feeling that all this hooplah is not being done for me, the surfer, but for some strange reason that has a lot more to do with corporate interests of some kind.
So I'm not actually going to expect anything good out of it in any way. Especially not when Microsoft is backing it.