The House Is Debating
Two subcommittees are conducting a thorough investigation into the controversial sales technique known as behavioral advertising. This is where advertisement agencies will actually scan and scrutinize a person’s browsing habits and send them advertisements that they feel will be tailored to the person’s needs.
Today, members of these committees are beginning preliminary drafts on a bill that will likely cut down on the freedom these advertisers have to analyze people’s records, and thusly, restrict their marketing demographic.
Google, FaceBook, and Yahoo remain rooted in their opposition to any bill that would limit these advertisers.
These companies praise the work that the Federal Trade Commission has done with this technology, and wouldn’t want it to be cut down. Privacy advocates such as the Center for Digital Democracy, insist that this software is invasive and compromises people’s Privacy Rights by scanning their histories with no permission or notification.
The extent to which the bill will limit these companies has not yet been revealed, but Congress representatives are expected to turn in documents with their thoughts and plans detailed out before the recess in August.
They must always be careful when drafting these laws however, because people can take advantage of the semantics of language. If a bill were set to regulate this behavioral advertising, these companies would use certain words and twist them to mean different things. Therefore, the representatives must spend a long time testing every possible interpretation and make their proposal totally infallible and as lucid as possible.
The House acknowledges that behavioral advertising is an essential practice that keeps many Internet advertisers afloat, and could actually help somebody out by showing them something they might like! At the same time, there are basic rights that every person has online and off, and they believe people should have at least some minimal protection while surfing the web.
Their rudimentary plans consist of a system where the website must tell customers what information is being collected, and how it is going to be used. These consumers can also opt out of the information collection, especially when the information is going to go to a third party.
Although this will affect advertising agencies a little bit and take away their freedom to spy and report under total indiscretion, they will still be able to do their activities and market. This would provide people the right to not have their information collected also. This would provide a perfect compromise between the advertisers and the people being solicited to.
Although it is still apparent at this time that major search engines and sites such as Yahoo and Google can still not cooperate with the new laws, soon they will have to.
If this plan passes, legislators will begin another draft that can help them make it mandatory for every website to abide by their rules and regulations about advertising.
