[LondonChris]

A couple of points that I didn't get to make last night at the meeting last night.

1. I think the earlier poster is quite right, it's unfair to say "the general public thinks x". The general public at the moment doesn't know their phorm from their elbow (although that will change). "The technical community" would have been a more accurate phrase.

It is worth noting however that the technical community tend to be one of the bedrocks on which the general public computing experience sits - have a problem with your internet connection? don't understand this phorm thing? printer not working? Who do you speak to? Your local techie.

2. The whole "honouring robots.txt is implied consent to interception" is utter ******** and made me really quite cross, just because I want my pages to be accessible and searchable easily DOES NOT mean that I consent to a third party intercepting the transmission of those pages.

To use an analogy (no cars!), if I'm handing out a bunch of different leaflets, anyone is more than welcome to take whatever leaflets they like. It is no-one's business however (other than mine and Joe Bloggs), what specific leaflets Joe Bloggs decides to take from me.

3. Choice.

Choice was mentioned a lot by Kurt, choice on having cookies stored for ages, choice to have your web browsing profiled by IP address from a number of sites. Yes there is choice, there is the choice to use a service or to not use it. When an ISP employs phorm, the choice in having data intercepted vanishes. Therefore my next choice will be to use a Phorm-free ISP.

Chris