[LINK] Why Steve Jobs Insists on HTML5

[Steven Clark]

  On 12/10/2010 7:27 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 07:16 AM 12/10/2010, Roger Clarke you wrote:
>
>> Mr. Kamkar and privacy experts say that makers of Web browsers should
>> agree on one control for eliminating all tracking capabilities at
>> once. "There should be simple enough controls to take care of every
>> single thing," said Ms. Dixon, who added that some browsers
>> automatically collected large amounts of data unless a user told them
>> not to.
> This is all backwards. Why not block ALL storage except without
> specific permission? What happened to Opt-*IN*?

It's well recognised that opt-out reduces the number/percentage of 
people who are not captured. (for example, the difference between 
European countries with high organ donor levels and low donor levels is 
in large part explained by opt-out vs opt-in.)

In short - people tend not to bother changing default options; so choose 
the default *you* prefer for them, and they'll largely just go with it.

Which, of course, is why privacy advocates push for privacy-sensitive 
defaults, and the Facebook's of the world prefer the opposite ;)


Also, how does one operate a contemporary commercial operating system 
*without* storing data *somewhere*? They're *designed* to do so (eg 
caching). Just because an application isn't *saving* data explicitly, 
doesn't mean it's not being stored somewhere else on the device.

Daily interactions online involve a lot more data transfer than most 
realise, and a goodly part of that traffic is stored in some form at one 
or both ends. Some of it for 'basic' transactional processes like 
browser and server history, disk and web caching (just because you're 
not 'storing' it doesn't mean someone else isn't o.O), and so on.

-- 
Steven R Clark, BSc(Hons) LLB/LP(Hons) /Flinders/, MACS, Barrister & 
Solicitor

PhD Scholar
School of Commerce, Division of Business
City West Campus, University of South Australia (UniSA)
http://people.unisa.edu.au/Steven.Clark

Deputy Director, Community Engagement Board (CEB)
Chair, Economic, Legal and Social Issues Committee (ELSIC)
Australian Computer Society (ACS)
http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=show&conID=acscas 
<http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=show&conID=acscas>

*Disclaimer:* This is email is not legal advice. Comments and statements 
above are based on my understanding of the issues at hand, and my 
attempts to understand them. They are intended to add to, and elicit 
discussion. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions and statements 
are mine, not those of UniSA or the ACS.