On May 31st Microsoft set off the row: It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear with Windows 8, would have DNT as a default.
5月31日，微软公司宣布，在和windows 8一同发布的IE10浏览器上，DNT将设为默认选项。微软此举引发了大家的争议。
An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted — the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim “behavioural” ads at those most likely to buy.
有句老话说得好，花在广告上的费用有一半被浪费了——但问题是，没人知道究竟是哪一半。在互联网时代，至少在理论上，这种浪费可以大幅减少。通过观察人们在网上的搜索、点击、和说话内容，企业可以将
In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grained information: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?
在过去几周，大家的一席争论已经展示了这种精细信息对于广告商的价值：广告商是否可以认为用户乐意被追踪，且愿意接受行为广告？或者说广告商是否应该先得到用户明确的许可才行？
In December 2010 America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed adding a “do not track” (DNT) option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari both offer DNT; Google’s Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests.
2010年12月，美国联邦贸易委员会曾提出，应该在网络浏览器上添加
It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioural ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft’s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway.
现在还不清楚广告商们将会作何反应。尽管有些公司已经承诺一旦得到
Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. People will not get fewer ads, he says. “They’ll get less meaningful, less targeted ads.”
这令广告商们惶恐不已。大多数用户都不会去修改浏览器的默认设置，这是人的本性。现在很少有人会开启
Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comply with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies almost wholly on advertising, it has chosen an indirect method: There is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8 — though the firm has compared some of its other products favorably with Google’s on that count before. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, blogged: “we believe consumers should have more control.” Could it really be that simple?
同样不清楚的是，微软为何要特立独行。毕竟，微软自己也有广告业务，微软声称自己的广告业务也要遵守
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