There’s nothing like bringing back a classic, something that Democrat senators Jay Rockefeller and John Kerry are trying this week at online privacy hearings this week in the Senate.

I almost missed the news, but caught the recap this morning from Frank Reed over at Marketing Pilgrim:

Don’t think that just because Facebook has managed to not completely trample people’s privacy as of late that there is not more activity around the subject. In fact, forces in Washington, this time the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), are speaking at ‘hearings’ that are looking into this issue right now with talk of a “do not track” list. This is not the first time the subject has been raised (2007 it got some attention) but in light of recent online privacy ‘dust-ups’, this idea may have a real chance to develop.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) both expressed concern that privacy policies weren’t giving Web users enough useful information about online ad practices.

Rockefeller proposed that some companies were burying too much information in lengthy documents that consumers don’t read. “Some would say the fine print is there and it’s not our fault you didn’t read it,” he said, adding, “I say, that’s a 19th-century mentality.”

Kerry added that he didn’t know that consumers understood how companies use data. “I’m not sure that there’s knowledge in the caveat emptor component of this,” he said.

Sen. Rockefeller just tossed the advertising business so far into the past regarding their practices that the 20th century was ignored. I guess he made his point.

I haven’t covered this topic in depth since my early days at Mashable.

My analysis now is more or less the same as it was then:

There are very real privacy concerns with regards to user data, especially with recent developments in advertising relationships with Facebook and Microsoft, not to mention the ever advancing juggernaut of the Google data acquisition machine.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, and the Consumer Federation of America as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are among the privacy advocates proposing for the do-not-track list. The groups are suggesting that there be a requirement that advertisers, as a part of their online ads, give those that they advertise to the details of what they intend to track about them.

It’s as if no one thought about the feasibility of enforcing restrictions on advertising companies, or how, for instance, you’d initiate an agreement to share demographic information with a user downloading an advertising supported podcast. In a world where these privacy advocates have their way, am I going to be inundated with privacy policy pop-ups every time I navigate to a new domain?

It’s simply not feasible for something like this to be executed, and even if it were, would we want the government in charge of enforcing compliance?

Aside from my Geico Caveman reference in my Mashable post, most of what I said stands the test of time. So little has changed. EPIC and CDD are still pushing for ridiculous restrictions on digital business, the FTC still doesn’t seem to understand how the web works, and big government is pushing for more digital regulation to protect us all from ourselves.

The bottom line is that behavioral ad networks sound more scary than they are in practice, and regulating the fundamentals of that business would knee-cap a large swath of the web. It should go without saying that this is a bad thing.