FTC Privacy Initiative (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 09:22:11 -0800
From: Internet Marketing Discussion List <internet-marketing@popco.com>
To: internet-marketing@popco.com
Subject: FTC Privacy Initiative

From: Lewis Rose <lewrose@arentfox.com>

        The US Federal Trade Commission has launched a "Privacy Initiative"
to investigate whether the information collected at websites (either that
affirmatively submitted by a visitor via a form or information collected
based upon a visitor's selection of pages at a site to reflect personal
interests) should be the subject of regulation by the FTC.  To get
background on this effort, you may want to read a speech by FTC Commissioner
Varney on Electronic Commerce and Privacy which is available at the FTC's
site under speeches (www.ftc.gov) or the Advertising Law Internet Site
(www.webcom.com/~lewrose/home.html) under speeches.

This week the staff of the FTC established a mailing list to allow
interested parties to discuss the issues surrounding the privacy interests
of consumers visiting web sites.  To subscribe, send the message "subscribe"
(without the quotes) to privacy-request@ftc.gov   I suspect most of the
participants will not represent the internet marketing community and urge
interested members of this list to subscribe and participate.  So far, there
have been only two posts-- one by me yesterday wondering why marketers on
the internet should be treated any differently than marketers using more
traditional media, followed by one post simply asserting that internet
marketing privacy issues are completely different from those raised by
traditional media.

Lew


Lewis Rose                           202-857-6012 (voice)
Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn     202-857-6395 (fax)
1050 Connecticut Avenue, NW          lewrose@arentfox.com (email)
Washington DC  20036                 Advertising and Marketing Law
 Advertising Law Internet Site  http://www.webcom.com/~lewrose/home.html
 Net-Lawyers Mailing List:  net-lawyers@lawlib.wuacc.edu

FWIW, Sunsite has always had a policy of following the guidelines of the 
American Library Association on both collections policy and use of access 
records. The ALA rules are pretty cool, and have the great advantage of 
being easily understood by administrators (it also means that you can 
rely on the library community as an ally in the event of challenges.)

Joe-Bob says check them out

Simon