FTC Calls for 'Do Not Track' List

WASHINGTON — Internet marketers and their affiliates in particular may face a daunting new hurdle if a federally imposed "Do Not Track" registry becomes a reality.

One of the most pressing hot-button topics contemplated by the nation's regulators today, the issue of consumer privacy in the digital age is being tackled in Washington and elsewhere as legislators attempt to play catch up with advancements in Internet marketing techniques — such as behavioral and location-based advertising and the tracking systems that enable it.

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While some websites and advertising networks allow consumers to opt-out of any tracking systems, the FTC goal is a simple switch that controls tracking consent across the entire Internet. Implemented as a toolbar or web browser plugin initially and as a default feature set eventually on all Internet access devices (think V-Chip for computers), such a system may provide enhanced privacy protection — but at what cost?

Such moves would disrupt most current affiliate marketing schemes, advertising and traffic sales, traffic trading, and many other forms of ecommerce that rely on following a visitor from acquisition to the checkout counter — including next-generation contextual content management systems that deliver information based upon a prospect's behavior, even across multiple websites.

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According to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, the commission will consider Internet user and business feedback before issuing a report on the topic later this year.

“The commission continues to believe that requiring affirmative express consent for material retroactive changes to how data will be used is an essential means of maintaining transparency,” Leibowitz said in statement provided by the FTC this week.

The Direct Marketing Association, however, opposes such an initiative.

“Any ‘do not’ national list doesn’t work, and undermines the basis of the Internet as we know it now in terms of free content and companies being able to monetize the Internet,” said Jerry Cerasale, senior VP-government affairs at the DMA, in a statement. “Self-regulation is the way to go.”