• The standard identifies/addresses the manner in which personal privacy terms are proffered and how they can be read and agreed to by machines.

5.3 – Is the completion of this standard dependent upon the completion of another standard? 

• No

5.4 – Purpose:

• The purpose of the standard is to provide individuals with means to proffer their own terms respecting personal privacy, in ways that can be read, acknowledged and agreed to by machines operated by others in the networked world. In a more formal sense, the purpose of the standard is to enable individuals to operate as first parties in agreements with others–mostly companies–operating as second parties.
  • Note that the purpose of this standard is not to address privacy policies, since these are one-sided and need no agreement. (Terms require agreement; privacy policies do not.)

5.5 – Need for the Project: 

• The Internet did not come with privacy (meaning the ability of individuals selectively to disclose information about themselves and to obtain agreement on how that information might be used). The Internet is, however, based on peer-to-peer protocols (e.g. TCP/IP) that allow any two parties to agree on how each will respect the other’s intentions. The norm on the Net thus far has been for server operators to proffer all terms of engagement, including respect for privacy, and to force individuals engaging those servers to agree to those terms, with no alternative but to go away.
  • On the Internet, however, anybody should be able to proffer terms, including individuals who wish to obtain agreements respecting information they wish to keep private. These agreements should scale as well for individuals as contracts of adhesion do for companies, and bring many benefits to both sides, such as the ability of individuals to provide the same data to many trusted companies in one move or add or subtract conditions of data use. Making these terms machine-readable is required for implementation in the world, and for use to scale for all parties.

5.6 – Stakeholders for the Standard: 

• The primary stakeholders are all individuals who interact as first parties with others in the networked world. Secondary stakeholders are the entities–mostly companies–that agree as second parties to individuals’ terms.