Team report on Privacy Working Group Charter Formal Objection

Editors: Philippe Le Hegaret, Ralph Swick

Status: Final

Visibility: Public

Procedural History

The Formal Objections

Public records of formal objections

"Privacy Labels and Declarations" deliverable

Two organizations objected:

[Organization 1] [...] Specifically, I object to the inclusion of a "Privacy Labels and Declarations" deliverable. Such a document is not currently being incubated at W3C, as far as I can tell. Not only is it not currently being incubated, it’s never even been proposed for incubation! I wasn’t able to find anything resembling it in either WICG’s or Privacy CG’s proposals repos: [...]

[Organization 2] [...] As a matter of record we do Formally Object (FO) to the "Privacy Labels and Declarations" deliverable as it has not been incubated, which we would have expected to have happened in the Privacy CG chartered for the purpose of such incubations, before adding as a WG deliverable. We note that there is an open pull request on the charter which removes this deliverable. The merging of this PR would resolve this FO.

Other organizations, without formally objecting, also supported the removal of the deliverable. Others agreed to the removal

Antitrust policy

The remaining formal objection is as follows:

The antitrust policy needs to be resolved before any further discussions on privacy takes place.

See [Member's] Formal Objection to the decision by the TAG chairs to publish the Privacy Principles, the Private Advertising Technologies Working Group charter, and the submission related to competition policy.”

Activities Following the Advisory Committee Review

Analysis

"Privacy Labels and Declarations" deliverable

The formal objections related to the "Privacy Labels and Declarations" deliverable were resolved by consensus by merging the open pull request #46.

One objector indicated that merging the open pull request #46 would resolved their formal objection and the other objector confirmed their agreement in the pull request itself.

The charter change was communicated in January 2024.

Antitrust policy

The antitrust policy needs to be resolved before any further discussions on privacy takes place.

  1. Prior to the Charter review, the Objector raised concerns regarding the Antitrust policy: December 7, 2023, January 12, 2024
  2. The Board of Directors issued an updated Antitrust and competition policy in March 2024 and is the only body competent to revise that document. W3C Groups and the charters under which they operate are not allowed to have specific antitrust and competition policies.
  3. The Objector followed up on the announcement from the Board of Directors: 18 March 2024:

    [...] It appears that your policy still needs to address all the points [...]

  4. On 19 March 2024, the Board of Directors indicated:

    All comments received were taken into account, including [Member's] (which were indeed helpful).

    [...] you will be pleased to know that as part of its resolution approving this policy the Board has instructed the CEO to develop and implement a compliance program.

  5. All persons participating in W3C activities have a duty to ensure that their behavior is compliant with the policy. If you are part of a meeting or discussion that appears to violate this advice, bring your concern to the attention of the meeting chair and ask that the topic be changed. If this does not happen, excuse yourself and immediately bring the situation to the attention of a W3C Team member.

See [Member's] Formal Objection to the decision by the TAG chairs to publish the Privacy Principles, the Private Advertising Technologies Working Group charter, and the submission related to competition policy.”

The comments listed in [1] and [2] relate largely to the specific links with those documents and are addressed separately. The submission related to competition policy [3] falls within the same purview as the antitrust and competition policy.

Team Recommendation

The formal objection on "Privacy Labs/Declaration" from 2 organizations, supported by others, was resolved by consensus and retracted. One objector indicated that merging the open pull request #46 would resolved their formal objection and the other objector confirmed their agreement in the pull request itself. The removal of the Privacy Labs/Declaration was already communicated in January 2024. Other agreed with the charter change in January 2024. The W3C Team considers this resolved.

For the second formal objection, the Team recommends overruling the objection because:

  1. an updated Antitrust and competition policy was adopted by the W3C Board of Directors in March 2024, and the Board of Directors indicated that they addressed the comments from the objector prior to the announcement.
  2. comments related to this policy should be directed to the W3C Board of Directors and not as part of a Group charter

The W3C Team recommends approving the proposed charter as revised following the resolutions from other comments.

After that, the Team expects a separate Advisory Committee review to add the "Off-The-Record Response Header Field" (OTR) deliverable.

Response to the Team Report from the [Member]

As you know, we represent [Member]. Please see below our feedback on the draft Team Report on the Formal Objection to Privacy Working Group (Privacy WG) (“Privacy Team Report”) [...] ahead of [...] being sent to Council. As mentioned [...], the matters relate to competition rather than privacy and W3C risking being used as a forum for anti-competitive behaviour in the web.

1. Antitrust and competition policy (March 2024)

We welcome the W3C’s new antitrust policy but would like to know whether a compliance program (with a roadmap and necessary trainings) to implement this antitrust policy been put in place by the board.

If not, the Formal Objection Council lack the necessary compliance training to make a decision related to competition. Updating the policy accepts that there is an issue but it remains unaddressed if no training has taken place and it is not enough to ensure that malpractice doesn’t continue. In short, the Antitrust policy formal objection has been progressed (the updated policy has been published) but not fully resolved (absence of a compliance program). Please see [Member’s] presentation of September 2023 that explains what we would expect to see in compliance training. In addition, see Annex 1 for [Member’s] full submission to the W3C on the W3C Antitrust and Competition Policy, which outlines the gaps and practical steps that remain unaddressed by the W3C.

If the W3C Teams choose to progress the formal objections without the necessary training being in place, then it appears, as a matter of process, such an approach would be ineffective.

2. The W3C Team has not followed the new antitrust policy in Team Reports

The 2024 antitrust policy now includes guidelines that state that participants should not undertake meetings and other online/in person activities, which decrease or eliminate competition by “encouraging or forcing others to modify a business relationship with third parties”. The Working Group (Privacy WG) being established would contravene this provision of the new antitrust policy. It appears that the W3C Team has not received the requisite training to write the Team Reports as they would have picked up this conflict had they received such training. We are thus raising in this response with the Team that the Team have not followed the Antitrust Guidelines.

Changelog


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