[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom]All of you have to understand that Do Not Track requires the advertisers' consent to actually work: if it were enabled by default, meaning that no one would switch it back off, advertising companies would simply disregard it altogether and track you anyway. It is, actually, the corner stone between the advertising companies and the browser alliance. The new proposal makes it very clear.As such, IE10 turning DNT on by default was effectively an attempt at killing DNT's effectiveness. Moreover, had it kept working (which is doubtful, but let's consider it anyway), it would have meant your browser would be barring you from content, without your explicit consent - this alone would be reason enough for Mozilla to ask for it being switched off.Another reason is that most websites on the Internet work thanks to advertising funds - nowadays, the least annoying advertising is done thanks to user tracking; disabling tracking means that you get irrelevant adverts - welcome to AOL.Killing off advertising would essentially mean that there would be no more subscription-less websites: only websites that you'd need to pay to get their content, or private websites. That would mean the end of self-expression on the Internet as we know it nowadays, and a jump backward in time of more than 15 years.At best we'd get Geocities back.[/citation]
Tracking != Advertising. Tracking is just a part of online advertising. Radio, Print, and TV advertising don't know your preferences, where you've been, what products you've looked at, content of your gmail, etc. Advertising will survive without tracking, there are plenty of other ways to determine what ads to target where.
People using adblockers do much more damage to a site's ad revenue. Really annoying ads and popups that make people resort to adblockers do more damage too. DNT enabled by default isn't as big of an issue as the DAA is making it out to be.