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| Posted: July 15, 2008 |
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How much information should online advertisers and Web site operators know about you? And how should they be able to use this information? Congress is trying to establish rules so that the rights of both online users and advertisers are protected. |
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| Brian Watkins of St. Charles, Ill., asks: |
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| Most municipalities have "peeping tom" laws prohibiting persons from peeping through a home's windows, even if the purpose were to find what products were used in the home. Is not electronic monitoring the same thing? |
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| Wayne Crews responds: |
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 But ISPs aren't gaining unauthorized access to somebody else's property in the same sense. An ISP using NebuAd, for example, is tracking URL keywords that are being transmitted over its own network. A network owner can create value for shareholders and those customers by using the data flowing over its pipes. The debate today is over whether consumers are being made aware of that a business model and being given options. But in principle, so long as the ISP hasn't entered into any contractual arrangements barring such monitoring, it's likely to be a part of the online world in some fashion. And again, predatory criminals online won't care about any peeping tom laws. And if they can use technology like NebuAd, we're really in trouble. Those above board about use of the technology might be able to help keep ahead of the bad guys. |
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| Leslie Harris responds: |
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 Good question; no good answer. We have made the legal argument that when ISPs sell their subscriber's online traffic to third-party ad networks for use in behavioral advertising, the ISP might in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No one is sure, however, because there is no legal precedent in this area. |
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