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Internet Explorer 6 Agitates Web Administrators With Legal Kink
Antidote to P3P Privacy Filter Available Free at disavowp3p.com
DALLAS, TX, September 2001 . . . Privacy filters in Microsoft's
new Internet Explorer 6 pose for web administrators an
unexpected legal predicament. A new remedy is now available at
no charge.
The filters force administrators to post new privacy policies
for their web sites, coded in a technical language called P3P.
The filters punish administrators who fail to publish properly
coded P3P privacy policies by blocking or impeding their
cookies. Cookies are an important web feature.
The P3P coding language raises, for any corporation, government
agency or other institution that uses it, a lawsuit danger. A
privacy policy written in it exposes the organization to
liability, with little or no escape.
A privacy policy, even one written in computer codes, can be
legally enforceable like a contract. In lawsuits filed in 1999,
plaintiffs forced US Bancorp to pay $7.5 million for
misstatements in a privacy policy posted on its web site.
Web administrators face a dilemma. They want to satisfy IE 6's
technical requirement for P3P codes, but they also want to
sidestep liability. To address this dilemma, e-commerce pioneer
Benjamin Wright has invented a remedy and published it at
http://www.disavowp3p.com. Anyone can pick it up and use it at
no charge.
The remedy is an additional P3P code, "DSA". Any web
administrator using DSA in her P3P privacy policy indicates she
disavows legal liability for her P3P policy and renders it
meaningless.
Using the DSA code, organizations can publish fictitious P3P
codes to enable cookies, while nullifying their legal affect.
"The P3P language is simply inadequate for writing legal privacy
policies, and corporations are foolish to use it for that
purpose," said Mr. Wright. "The DSA code allows them to exploit
the P3P coding for the technical purpose of deploying cookies,
while disclaiming that the codes have any substantive or legal
effect."
To provide background and detail, Mr. Wright has written a
monograph titled "Disavowing P3P Liability" and made it
available for sale at http://www.disavowp3p.com. On request, he
will e-mail it free to any journalist.
"P3P is a very complex subject that will catch corporations by
surprise," said Doug Peckover, CEO of Demand Engine, Inc., a
strategic privacy consulting firm. "Few are even aware of P3P's
full implications. They need to read the analysis of a
world-class e-commerce lawyer like Ben Wright."
P3P is the Platform for Privacy Preferences, developed under the
sponsorship of a non-profit organization named the World Wide
Web Consortium (also called W3C) http://www.w3.org/p3p, a
coalition of industry and non-profit groups.
About the author:
Benjamin Wright is founding author of The Law of Electronic
Commerce, the world's leading written authority on e-commerce
legal issues. The book was originally published in 1990 and has
been regularly updated through the years. It is now available
from Aspen Law & Business www.aspenpublishers.com in its fully
revised fourth edition.
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