What the FTC is supporting with the "Do Not Track" strategy is an opt-out system built-in to browsers where you, the consumer, are treated as agreeing, by default, unless you understand the whole idea of a system that requires you to build your own personal list of allowed and disallowed sites, to being tracked with no exchange of equivalent value!

Worse still, the computer industry, as represented by the likes of the free, open source products of the Corporation, the organization behind the incredibly successful Firefox browser, is falling into line behind the FTC's position. Nope, despite having a reportedly powerful anti-tracking tool for the Firefox browser , dropped its concern that "it would force advertisers to resort to use even sneakier techniques and could slow down the performance of some websites." What a load of you know what.

The whole "Do Not Track" concept is flawed and, over the next few months, unless you, my industry colleagues, speak up, there's a real danger that this nonsense could become law. Be warned, while it might, in some way, benefit your company, in every other way, it will cost you personally.

Gibbs knows the cost of everything in Ventura, Calif. Your guess about the value to backspin@gibbs.com.

in Network World's Software section.