> then there is nothing left to track

Isn't that the whole point? Websites may not have interest in tracking disabling policies, but a lot of people do. Maybe these advertising companies ought to incentivize users to opt-in to sell their data instead of the other way around.

The whole business model is that users don't care if they're tracked, so let's track them (and others) and do things for them that we couldn't before

I can see Google fully implementing DNT on the basis that users don't care, and for the few that do they're happy to comply

But making it default to on, especially if no one gives a damn is the death knell to the whole business model

Suddenly you have to pay for everything.

Although I would be interested in using DNT if out had more granular control to block certain entities

> Suddenly you have to pay for everything.

I wonder if we'll see sites who honor the header, but require that it be off in order to access content.

Na.. that will be too much work for the user, plus disabling DNT will mean it's disabled for everyone, not just the said website. It also does not make alot of sense, disabling DNT does not make site any money directly. So it will only raise suspicion in a casual user's minds, that why would the site need to track him/her when there is no apparent monetary profit to the site.

Instead they can show a banner that DNT is enabled and when it is disabled, the banner is gone.

>Suddenly you have to pay for everything.

False dichotomy. It's not "targeted ads vs no content on the internet". People will just have to use generic ads, not targeted ones. I don't think there will be any meaningful difference in profit, and even if there is, then so be it.

Good luck selling "generic" anything to someone.

Like newspapers did for 60 years? And magazines? and TV? By guessing that people reading cycling blogs might be interested in cycling gear etc?

Yes, that is the whole point. Those people who are interested can send the Do Not Track header to indicate the preference. By sending it even when the user didn't indicate that preference, IE would have been the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Network owners wouldn't has been able to trust the header to indicate actual user preference.

I think you are conflating two problems - setting to off by default is also setting a default user preference - that the user wants to be tracked. This may or may not be the case - whether the default is on or off that will be the majority setting since most people don't know / dont't care enough to change it.

I think a couple other posters here have pointed out the larger problem - without ads like this, the free internet dries up and suddenly you need to start paying for everything from gmail to facebook (or whatever other tools/blogs/webcomics any of us visit).