Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, and the entire tracking-based advertising industry rely on the “Transparency & Consent Framework” (TCF) to obtain “consent” for data processing. This evening [May 14] the Belgian Court of Appeal ruled that the TCF is illegal. The TCF is live on 80% of the Internet.
The decision arises from enforcement by the Belgian Data Protection Authority, prompted by complainants coordinated by Dr Johnny Ryan, Director of Enforce at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. The group of complainants are: Dr Johnny Ryan of Enforce, Katarzyna Szymielewicz of the Panoptykon Foundation, Dr Jef Ausloos, Dr Pierre Dewitte, Stichting Bits of Freedom, and Ligue des Droits Humains.
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Microsoft destroyed any potential for DNT acting as a user choice by enabling it by default in IE. The DNT header was an incredibly weak line of defense anyway. Mozilla implemented a voluntary scheme, …
Make your pick. It’s not a particularly good look either way, I think.
It was not really a voluntary scheme. According to EU law, you need to have the consent of the user. If the user sends a “do not track me” signal to you, it is kind of obvious to everyone that the user does not want to be tracked. The exception here are advertising companies and judges who did some really, really strange rulings.
But yeah, it was kind of naive. Google is a multibillion dollar company and prints money. There is no way that they would have folded and changed their business model and decreased profits. They control the browser (Chrome), the sites where the ads are placed (YouTube, Search, etc), the operation system (Android) and the whole ad ecosystem (Ads, Doubleclick). No way that those psychopaths in their upper ranks were going to give up billions of dollars in profit due to Mozilla creating DNT
DNT predates GDPR by a number of years. I am also not aware that DNT became legally binding under GDPR, though maybe I missed that.