THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES

I have been talking about the Phorm and NebuAd lately and I received a very insightful comment from Kellie Stevens from AffiliateFairPlay.com Kellie has my utmost respect in terms of chasing the money trails and is a modern day click sleuth…I have paraphrased her comment and made a few spelling corrections and bolded a few key sentences. The original post about the controversy plus the comments can be found here. Other relevant posts: Twelve Questions for Phorm, more on Phorm, some more and Phorm’s response to me.

Kellie writes:

These are indeed very important issues emerging around NebuAd and Phorm. On a side note, it should not come as a surprise that some of the execs at NeBuAd are former execs from Claria/Gator. It is similar data tracking but only at a potentially much larger scale.

INAL so I’m not sure how strong of a legal case the Intellectual Property angle may be. It didn’t work that well in the past with lawsuits involving adware. But then a split hair can make all the legal difference at times.

I do think that there other issues surrounding this aside from consumer privacy rights and concerns. As if that isn’t enough in and of itself. ISP’s willingness to use both Phorm and NebuAd (until the stuff hit the fan) follows the same track as other practices I’ve observed by ISPs, which are flat out browser hijacks for their own profit IMO. With ISPs facing more competition these days and are looking at online advertising as a revenue source they need to understand what types of practices are and are not fair game. If certain practices have been deemed as unacceptable by software, why can an ISP engage in the practice? As an end user, I’m not any more happy when my browser doesn’t go where I’ve specifically intended for it to or my user preferences have been overridden. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a piece of software or my ISP that has done it. I’m actually more disturbed when it’s my ISP because I view them (whether it’s correct or not to do so) as a public service provider such as other media providers. Indeed cable companies have been regulated by Public Service Commissions in the past, although that regulation seems to pretty fragmented now. Regardless, I have expectations of a higher level of responsibility from my ISP (which may well be providing my TV and telephone service as well in the case of companies like Charter).

I also think that this brings up another issue that I don’t think has ever been adequately addressed when looking such data collection by software applications on the end user’s computer. Even if the end user does agree to opt in to tracking such as by NebuAd and Phorm, where is the line drawn about what type of information can be collected and how it can be used. Online businesses need to have their rights to fair competition and protection of proprietary information protected along the same lines as in the brick and mortar world. The boundaries seem not as clearly defined online as they are offline.

I brought this issue to the FBI in the past in the form of a formal complaint when I saw the type of data a particular adware application was collecting and sending back to their servers. Coincidentally (?) the behavior disappeared from the adware a few weeks later. Of course some forms of behavioral tracking with consent has long been considered acceptable. Hence Nielsen ratings.

Thanks for the great commentary Kellie. It was too good to lose your thoughts in my terrible commenting system…I will fix that eventually…Keep up your fantastic analysis.

ON WITH THE PROTEST

Some people are not taking it sitting down either- they are having a protest. The people across the pond take their privacy very seriously. Good for them!

On July 16th 2008 there will be a protest rally at The Barbican Centre (The Barbican Theatre) in London.  The purpose of the event is to protest against plans by BT Group PLC, Virgin Media and Car Phone Warehouse to deploy intrusive technology across their broadband networks for the purpose of profiling the behaviour of their customers which is then sold to Phorm Inc. (formerly 121Media) and used for their Open Internet Exchange (OIX) service.

You can read updates regarding the event on the following web page: https://nodpi.org/category/events/

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