Privacy Crackpots Are at It Again

Just when you thought the privacy crackpots couldn’t get any wackier, they call for a contraption that would kill the Internet economy as we know it: a national do-not-track list.

This mother of all cockamamie ideas threatens not just advertising but behaviorally targeted e-mail as well.

The scheme a group of nine privacy and so-called civil liberties advocates presented to the Federal Trade Commission recently is not channel specific. It addresses online advertising in extremely broad strokes and defines the term “personally identifiable information” in such a way that it encompasses all behaviorally targeted pitches.

You know those “thank you” e-mails marketers are sending these days? If they contain pitches, they would be considered behaviorally targeted advertising. Now imagine having to screen those and all other behavior-based messages against a list maintained by the FTC.

Did Utah’s state legislators go to Washington to introduce some of their Internet legislat-o-zaniness and I missed it?

Here’s a news flash for privacy zealots: When you visit a Web site, the data surrounding that foray is not your personal information. It’s the site owners’ information, too. You’re on their property; you’re using their resources. Telling them they can’t monitor you on property they own is akin to telling a retailer to shut the store cameras off.

Nonsense. Get out. And take your infantile shenanigans with you.

Your demand that the government force others to allow you to consume their resources without giving anything in return is immoral.

I am sick to death of so-called privacy advocates who don’t hold down real jobs making ludicrous demands on those who make the Internet economy work.

Let’s lay it out as simply as possible: As environmental concerns mount, a growing number of people want marketers to limit — or even eliminate — catalogs and direct mail. People also don’t want to be spammed. And they don’t want to be barraged with permission-based e-mail either. There goes e-mail as the tree-friendly prospecting medium of choice.

Additionally, for the most part people won’t pay for non-pornographic content on the Internet — one major exception being The Wall Street Journal Online, which executives expense.

And even WSJ Online is likely to go from paid to free, according to Rupert Murdoch. He said he expects the site’s 1 million subscribers to soar to 10 million to 15 million as a result. Where will WSJ.com’s money come from? Advertising. That’s 10 million to 15 million people gaining free access to some of the best business journalism in the world thanks to online advertising.

As shocking as it may seem, people who create, edit and package content have bills to pay, family members to clothe, and mouths to feed. So as much as some of them may want to, they can’t work for free.

Online content costs money to create — especially the high-quality stuff. I know. Crazy.

Here’s another wacky concept: The people who buy online advertising are increasingly results oriented. The reason: Online advertising’s results are measurable. So marketers measure them and won’t buy ads that don’t pay off. I know, the nerve of them to expect value for their dollar. But hey, that’s the way they are.

Moreover, there has not been a single instance of actual harm due to behaviorally targeted online advertising. Not one.

And now, a bunch of privacy zealots — who have nothing better to do than muck up the works for the rest of us for no other reason than to address a nonexistent theoretical threat — have the gall to demand a mechanism that would allow individuals to refuse to pay the universally agreed-upon currency for access to an unprecedented array of goods and services.

OK. By all means, let’s implement a national online advertising do-not-track list. Then let’s either charge the freeloaders who sign up for it or block them from logging on to our sites. Maybe a little two-tiered Internet service would teach these anti-advertising spoiled brats a lesson.