According to a report in the BBC, Facebook will file papers for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.

The company will be valued between $75 billion to $100 billion. They hope to be able to raise about $10 billion through the public offering.

If they manage to achieve this target it could be one of the largest share offerings to take place on Wall Street, making Facebook one of the largest companies in the world, by market capitalization. Google had raised $1.9 billion through their public offering in 2004.

It is being suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be involved with this public issue.

Most of Facebook’s monetization occurs through advertising and is believed to be around $5 billion. Since Facebook is a private company so far, they have not been required to publish their accounts.

Ironically, the upcoming IPO has made the executives at Facebook extremely conscious about their own privacy. Web Pro News has reported that before a recent news conference, attending journalists were initially asked to sign a non-disclosure contract. It is a different matter that the contract was eventually called off when they objected about such a contract infringing their right to free speech and code of journalism.

Facebook has not yet made an official announcement, but the indications are all there that this announcement will happen, and the possibility of such an announcement has got the press and investors very excited.

Possibly the worst kept secret in the industry at present, this IPO filing could be what the U.S. economy and stock markets need. However, a lot of analysts and investors are also worried that such an ambitious floatation could flop just like the recent IPOs from Groupon and Zynga.

Google has stated that they are doing this because they wish to create a “beautiful, simple and intuitive experience” for their users.

In effect, the new policy will make it possible to share information provided by a user on one Google product across all other Google products and features. This includes Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Plus and others.

A major stumbling block of this new policy is the fact that users will not have the option to disagree with the policy if they wish to continue using any of these Google services.

Consumer Objections

Users have voiced their discontent via comments and votes on the YouTube video introducing the new, unified privacy policy. The major bone of contention for users seems to be that information from any one Google service will now be accessible to a host of other services.

Regular consumers are not blind to the fact that Google makes its money from advertising. They also accept that in order to advertise on all of its services, Google does need to be able to pull information from one service and use it elsewhere. What they dislike is the idea that Google is mixing the concept of privacy in a closed system such as GMail with that on an open network such as Google+ or YouTube.

Official Investigations Triggered

Not surprisingly, the announcement has not gone down too well with certain groups. Gary Davis, the Data Protection Commissioner in Dublin, where Google’s European headquarters are based, has said that their office would be “further assessing the implications of the changes now that they are launched to users”. He also said that “Google has a responsibility to ensure that any such changes are made abundantly clear to users”.

Greg Jones from the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office said, “Failure to inform users about changes may not only lead to a loss of trust in the company, but could also mean that they are failing to comply” with U.K. law.

Exceptions to this new policy will be Google Books, Google Chrome and Google Wallet. These sites will continue to retain their own privacy policy.This exception is due to legal reasons.

The new policy will come into effect from the 1st of March 2012.

It is quite well known that any and all information once posted on Facebook is stored by the website for ever. The information could be concerning a user’s location, sexuality, political beliefs, religious beliefs or any thing else. Even if a user deletes content, it still remains in Facebook’s database indefinitely.

This information is then passed on to marketers and advertisers who wish to advertise to a highly targeted audience. The user is not even aware that this information has been stored and later passed on to others. In fact, Facebook’s advertising policy specifically forbid advertisers from making their ads seem too personalised lest this alert regular users to the degree of personal information the system actually shares with advertisers.

According to a report in the Telepgraph, the European Commission is planning to introduce a new directive that would actually ban targeted advertising on Facebook. This would be much harsher than the current FTC directive that’s just been imposed on the network.

A spokesman for the UK Information Commissioner says, “Facebook should ensure that any data it collects should be used in the manner that its users expect. If personal data is being passed on to a third party or used for targeted advertising then this should be made clear to the user when they sign up to the site and reinforced when users are invited to use an application.”

Facebook has, however, argued that they do not pass on specific information about users but only generalised information. This argument does not seem to have found favour with the FTC or the users, as it is very easy for the marketers to locate the person or persons concerned with the information that is made available to them.

The FTC has now ruled that Facebook can no longer pass on any of this information on to advertisers, unless the users specifically give their consent to do so. In other words, Facebook will have to change their policy from the current opt-out policy to an opt-in facility.

If Facebook fail to do so, they will have to face legal action or pay a huge fine.

It remains to be seen how Facebook will deal with the situation, as it could mean a big loss to them financially. This may even delay their plans of going on to the Wall Street Stock Exchange next year.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook has made mistakes with regards to user privacy, in the past, but he also pointed out that they have been learning from these mistakes and correcting them.

One of the most important messages that the FTC has passed on is regarding standardization of the practice of opt-in. So far most social networks have been following the reverse practice of opt-out.

According to the opt-out practice, companies can approach all clients who have not opted-out of a particular feature. Now they will be allowed to approach only those users who have specifically opted-in for that feature.

Media analysts have remarked that this rule is not likely to adversely affect marketers as most users opt-in for all features any way.

The network will also have to be more transparent in letting users know, who can see their information.

Mark Zuckerberg says that in spite of the fact that they have made mistakes in this regard, they are very particular about this issue. He says, “Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.”

He has clarified that Facebook has already set right, over the last couple of years, some of the complaints that the FTC has asked them to deal with.

Facebook has also appointed two new corporate officers to make sure that user privacy is protected more thoroughly.

In effect, it looks as though Facebook wants to appear to follow the FTC suggestions not only in letter but also in spirit. It is also likely that these suggestions of the FTC will have to be followed by all other social networks as well.

These changes to how users set privacy levels for their content have been made keeping in mind the requests that Facebook has received from users over a period of time. It is no small coincidence that these changes come as Google’s own social network, Plus, is quickly growing in popularity and uses a much simpler privacy setting mechanism than Facebook.

It will now be easier for users to share photos, posts, tags and other content only with those whom they wish to share the information.

Most of the changes have been made by moving the controls from a separate settings page to a position directly inline, next to the photos or tags.

Setting privacy levels on Facebook next to a content tag

To begin with, users will be better able to control the information available on their profile. They will also be able to control who can see this profile.

The controls for these settings will now be available in a drop-down menu next to an icon, instead of being on a separate settings page. The user can control the settings with a single click.

Users will now be able to approve photos of themselves, when they have been tagged by someone, instead of being automatically visible to all as soon as they have been tagged. The user can now approve or reject a tag that someone has made for him.

It will be easy for users to see how their profile looks before others see it. The user will now be able to control who sees his posts. He can also add location and tag other people he is with, if he chooses to.

A drop-down menu with the terms, Public, Friends and Custom will be available to decide who should see the photos. This menu will be expanded in future.

Earlier the term, ‘Everyone’ meant that all on the internet could see the photo. This word has now been changed to ‘Public’ to better express what they mean.

Users will also be able to decide who can and cannot see their posts after the information has been posted, unlike in the past, when they had to make this decision before posting the matter. Earlier, users could add location only through the ‘Places’ feature on a smartphone. They will now be able to do so from any device.

Users will also be able to remove a tag that someone else has added, if they do not like it.

These changes will help to streamline and simplify the way users communicate through Facebook. Many of these features are already available on Google Plus which is doing very well.

The changes are expected to start rolling out from Thursday 25th August.

Reding, who was in the U.K. recently, has already warned banks that they would be required to notify customers regarding any breach in data security. This instruction will now be valid for all businesses operating in the EU.

The earlier data protection laws, which were written back as in 1995, did not cover the Internet sufficiently, as it was only a fledgling industry then.

However, the Internet has expanded at an unprecedented rate over the years. Popular sites like Facebook and Google and gaming networks like the PlayStation Network have generated huge databases and there have been several instances of these databases being breached of user privacy. The EU commissioner intends to put an end to such breaches.

“Only recently, we witnessed a massive security theft in online gaming services affecting millions of users around the world,” Reding said. “This incident highlights why companies need to reinforce the security of the information they hold. Frequent incidents of data security breaches risk undermining consumers’ trust in the online economy.”

So far, Facebook has not breached any EU laws regarding user privacy, as they are based in the U.S. The new laws will be applicable to all businesses and services operating within the European Union, irrespective of where the company is based.

Viviane Reding has said, “The law is for everyone who does business on the territory of Europe, whatever the origin of the business might be. So you cannot hide anymore by saying ‘I do not have my headquarters in Europe’.”

There will, no doubt be difficulties in implementing these new laws for companies based outside Europe. Any action that needs to be taken, will have to be done through the nearest responsible national data protection authority.

This particular user has been using the pseudonym ‘Mr. Monkey’ and publishing unsavoury and slanderous material about councilors of the South Tyneside council.

Twitter has given in to the pressure and has released information regarding the user to its lawyers, according to Paul Robinson the council spokesman. This information includes the users name, address, telephone number, email address, and geographic location of the user. The information is being analysed by technical experts.

It is believed that the blogger is Ahmed Khan who is an independent councilor with the council. He is believed to have been using five different accounts on Twitter.

Mr. Khan has, however, denied the allegations of being the person in question. He says, “I’m the kind of person who will tell you face-to-face what I think. I have no need to use an anonymous blog.” He has, however, admitted that he did not approve of some of the policies of other councilors. He has also criticized the amount of money the council is believed to have spent on this legal action.

This is believed to be the first legal action of its kind in the U.K. and its success may give rise to a spate of other such litigations.

Just a few days ago, there had been a hue and cry regarding the revelation of the identity of a footballer who allegedly had an affair. His name was revealed on Twitter, in spite of a gagging order. The footballer whose privacy was publicly flounted could follow South Tyneside council’s example and he too may now pressurize Twitter to identify the user who disclosed his identity.

The footballer in question, a Premier League player, has recently been in the news for his alleged involvement with former Miss Wales and Big Brother contestant, Imogen Thomas. The concerned player has brought an injunction against his name being published by the regular tabloid publications.

However, the story has been among the trending topics on the social networking site Twitter, where his name was revealed and discussed widely. This only means that even though the newspapers are being restrained from publishing his name with regards to the story, his involvement in it is common knowledge.

A Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald has taken the liberty of publishing his name. They have also displayed his photo with a black bar across his face and the word “Censored” written across.

While this could be seen as willful opposition to the injunction, they have explained in their editorial that it is “unsustainable” for newspapers to be prevented from publishing this hot piece of news while the individual’s name is being openly discussed on Twitter, and therefore known to everyone who has access to the Internet.

They have further said that “The issue is one of freedom of information and of a growing argument in favour of more restrictive privacy laws.”

The British prime Minister, David Cameron has expressed general agreement with these sentiments. He has said, “It’s not fair on the newspapers if all the social media can report this and the newspapers can’t, and so the law and the practice has got to catch up with how people consume media today.

Mr. Cameron has further indicated that it may be time to take a fresh look at this aspect of the law, and make some appropriate changes regarding privacy laws in keeping with the times.

So far, the attorney general’s office has not brought any charges against the newspaper or Twitter. However, the judges ruling on the case have continued to rebuff attempts by the newspapers to bring this case to trial, mainly due to the fact that overturning the rules would only serve to benefit the newspapers and not the general public and definitely not the individual whose privacy is being encroached upon.

On the other hand, even if the courts choose to sue Twitter for the breach of the injunction the question being asked by many is whether it is possible for the British courts to sue Twitter which is an American company and has no culpability in the U.K. courts.

It has been discovered that Facebook hired a well known PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, to spread negative publicity about Google’s privacy policy and the search giants’ failed efforts at social networking.

Burson-Marsteller got in touch with a number of bloggers including one Christopher Soghoian and asked him to blog about Google’s policy with respect to user privacy. They even offered to help the blogger write out the article and they also promised to get it published in important places such as the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

Unfortunately for them, Soghoian turned down the offer and instead posted the emails online for the world to see.

Email sent to Christopher Soghoian by Burson-Marsteller

When this story became public through USA Today, the PR firm was blamed for trying to run a smear campaign against Google on behalf of an unidentified client.

Dan Lyons from the US-based news site The Daily Beast then wrote that he has evidence that the client was Facebook. Confronted with the evidence a Facebook spokesperson later confirmed their role in the fracas.

Facebook tried to justify their actions by claiming that they felt that Google was acting in a way that was not good for user privacy and they felt that users should be made aware of this. Secondly, they claimed that Google was scraping Facebook data for their own social network, which wasn’t very ethical.

Whatever their reasons, the means employed by Facebook to run down their rivals can only be considered as underhand or cowardly.

Reding has said that people have the right to have their data protected and also they have the right to be forgotten. She has said that this summer, new legislation will be enforced, to ensure this.

The legislation will focus on four aspects of user privacy:

1. The right to be forgotten
   It will henceforth be essential for the data controllers to prove that it is necessary to store certain data about the user. Also, if a user wants a particular photo or other information to be deleted, it should be deleted from all servers, and it should not be traceable at a later stage through some other server.
    
2. Collection of data should be transparent
   Users should know how data is collected. The websites and social networks concerned should clearly inform users about this when the user signs up for the service.
    
3. Privacy by default
   In other words the user’s information, photographs etc. should remain private unless the user specifies the contrary. At present, all data is public unless the user specifies the wish to make it private.
    
4. Protection regardless of location
   European privacy rights and data protection groups will have the authority to tackle data processors even outside of Europe, as far as European users are concerned.

These rules will be applicable to all 27 member states of the European Union. It is expected that the police and other authorities will work in tandem with each other to enforce this new legislation.

Facebook and Google, both of whom have been involved in controversies regarding user privacy, for some time now seem to be the particular targets of these new laws.

In the first incident reported last week, data protection officials in Germany discontinued talks with Google and were to have likely to file a court case against the search engine, as their investigations led them to believe that Google was only playing for time.

In another case, Google is countering Spanish government mandates over alleged invasion of privacy laws. Spanish authorities have instructed Google to delete links to data that is outdated or inaccurate.

Analytics Trouble In Germany

The bone of contention, in Germany, was the detailed information collected by Google Analytics, from users’ IP addresses. The information is pulled from website visits in Germany and then processed in the U.S.A.

Both German authorities and Google were discussing this issue since November 2009. Google had agreed to shorten the IP addresses of users and create different protection modules for the various Internet browsers. However, this was not possible with Safari and Opera browsers and so their users did not remain anonymous.

Google maintains that Google Analytics has met the requirements of the European Union, since the beginning. However, Johannes Caspar, Commissioner for data protection in Hamburg believes that this is not enough, and Google is trying to merely pass the responsibility to the website operators.

As a result, the German government has started threatening businesses who use Google Analytics with steep fines and legal action.

Libel Trouble In Spain

In Spain, Google insists that the task of removing inaccurate information should be carried out by publishers and not by the search engine, as the latter would amount to censorship.

The Spanish data protection agency, the AEPD, says that Google is breaking the country’s laws, which gives people “the right to be forgotten”. The authorities filed 90 court orders against Google at the request of individuals who want Google to remove specific links that contain libelous content about the person’s past.

According to Google’s lawyer, “Search engines are a fundamental part of the information society, and it would be attacking freedom of expression.” That said, Google does block certain material that violates copyright regulations in the U.S.A. and neo-Nazi material in Germany, which also amounts to censorship, by their own reckoning.

In both countries, Google’s handling of privacy has once again come under fire. Neither government seems likely to back down. In fact, the German tactic of dissuading website owners from using Google Analytics could prove to be quite a dangerous tactic for Google if other countries in the region follow suite.

Kirsty Cook-Bell, 33, who teaches at a school sponsored by a Christian charity got herself in trouble after some pictures of her on Facebook were discovered by her students.

The pictures, which show her in a bikini and blowing a kiss at the camera with lipstick smeared on her face while she was on vacation, have been described as being “semi-nude” and “inappropriate”.

Some of the tweets she sent out on her Twitter account have also raised eyebrows. One of them said, “Celebrating being able to slack off and get abuse from the public about my low life job!!!”

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers has also issued warnings to members of their union on their own Facebook page, about behaviour that could be deemed as inappropriate. Their advice includes ensuring that any contact with students is kept strictly within an educational context and setting privacy settings on social networks to control who can see private information.

While there will probably be an almost equal number of people who would support the actions of the teacher concerned, as those who will oppose her, the whole controversy could easily have been avoided if she had just taken care to mark her photos as ‘private’ thus ensuring that they were seen only by her friends and not by others such as her students or colleagues.

Facebook could also help ease such situations by publicising privacy controls more and working harder on making  it easy for users to protect their private information rather than driving users to share everything by default.

Google has admitted to German and Irish authorities that they have been “mistakenly” collecting information transmitted over unencrypted wi-fi networks over the last three years.

The error was discovered when the concerned authorities in Germany asked for details of data collected by Google’s Street View cars, for Google Maps.

Google has admitted that they were “mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks”. The data thus collected could include emails, photos, websites visited by individuals and businesses surfing on unencrypted Wi-Fi networks when the Street View cars passed by them.

A number of individuals, communities and even entire townships already oppose the Street View service, as they believe that photographs taken by the Street View cars are an invasion of privacy and could be easily misused.

The fact that Google has now been caught snooping private wireless networks will give privacy watchdogs more ammunition to fight their case.

In 2006-2007 a Google engineer wrote a piece of code on an experimental Wi-Fi project, which sampled publicly broadcast data of all categories. The data collected was supposed to be limited to SSID and MAC addresses broadcasted over non-password-protected networks.

It may be little consolation to know that most of the data collected is probably quite unintelligible.

Google suspended the use of Street View cars after the issue was brought to their notice. The company has also asked for a third party to study the case and find out exactly what caused the error and what kind of data was collected.

In what may be considered to be an apology, Google’s senior Vice President of Engineering and Research, Alan Eustace said, “Maintaining people’s trust is crucial to everything we do, and in this case we fell short.”

Google’s problems, though, are definitely not over. Soon after the German government disclosed the issue, the Irish Data Protection Authority ordered Google to delete all payload data collected in Ireland, and they won’t be the last. In fact, Google is sure to have a lot of explaining to do and may even have to face legal action.

Every change made by Facebook seems to upset privacy pundits. The latest changes in their policy have once again not gone down well with the advocates of user privacy. EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) and nine other groups filed a complaint against Facebook with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC is now looking into the matter and has asked EPIC to arrange a meeting. They have, however, refused to confirm or deny whether an investigation is being conducted on the issue or not.

David Vladeck, the FTC’s consumer protection chief wrote in a letter to EPIC, “As the amount of personal information shared on social networking sites grows and the number of third parties and advertising networks with access to such information grows it is important that consumers understand how their data is being shared and what privacy rules apply. The commission staff believes it is critical that companies provide transparency about how this data is being handled, maintained, shared and protected and what steps consumers can take to control the use of their information.”

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said, “people have already gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect, what the current social norms are.”

In other words, Zuckerberg claims that the increased acceptance of social networking gives Facebook the right to decide how much of their users’ information can be shared and with whom. This stance is likely to invite the ire and criticism of the FTC.

As if to add insult to injury, an unnamed employee of Facebook allegedly said, “we track everything. Every photo you view every person you’re tagged with, every wall post you make and so forth.” He also says that all information is stored in a database, even if a user tries to delete it.

Latitude works with Google Maps on mobile handsets as well as on a desktop. Users who add this service on iGoogle or download the latest version of Google Maps on their mobile phones can join Latitude and then invite their friends to join. If the friends accept and share their location, they can see where they are, in real time, on the map.

The system makes use of a digital map, where the coordinates of the handset being used are plotted by triangulating the location of the nearest mobile communications towers. This is merely an extension of their My Location service that was launched in December 2007.

The service has its benefits above and beyond the obvious social aspect of knowing where one’s friends are. For example, people can keep track of each other in a very large gathering, or parents can keep an eye on their childrens’ whereabouts.

There are concerns that using such a service would allow Google to invade an individual’s privacy. As David Perez of Arete Consulting put the point across succinctly, “I do not want my mother to know where I am!”.

Users have the choice to accept or refuse an invitation to join the service. A user’s location is revealed only to those members whose invitation has been accepted. Moreover, one can also choose to change the privacy settings for individual contacts in their friends list. Users can also manually input a fake location if they wish to hide their true location from a particular contact.

While Latitude is free to use, Google will most likely start serving location-based advertising to monetise the service.

At present, the service is available on Android phones like the T-Mobile G1, iPhone and iPod touch devices, most colour BlackBerries, Windows Mobile 5.0+, Nokia Smartphones and Java-enabled mobile phones in 27 countries including the USA, most of Europe and India.

The offensive video is a 3-minute mobile phone video, which had been posted on YouTube in 2006. In this video, a boy with Down’s syndrome was being teased by his classmates in Turin.

People found this video objectionable and complained about it, following which Google responded by deleting it quickly. The prosecutors, however, felt that that was not enough, as the video should never have been allowed to be displayed.

The executives involved are David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, George Reyes, former Chief Financial Officer, Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel for Google and Arvind Desikan, previous head of Google Video Europe.

The trial is being held in Milan and the executives may face up to 3 years in jail if found guilty. If that happens, it will not only mean that henceforth privacy laws will have to be taken very seriously, but it could also force a change in the way YouTube functions in Italy and the rest of Europe.

A thorny issue that will have to be reconsidered, as a result of a ruling against the Google executives in this case, will be whether or not Internet companies should screen content submitted by individuals before it is published.

In the United States, copyright laws so far do not punish online services if they respond quickly to complaints. Europe too has similar laws, but they are unclear about applicability to young people and certain private information.

If Google and its executives are held responsible for this video it will have very wide-ranging implications.

Google has said that their sympathies lie with the victim and his family, and they are happy the culprits have been identified due to their video and punished . However prosecuting Google would be like prosecuting mail services for hate mail. Also, holding Google responsible for content posted on their site is an attack on a free and open Internet and hence they will vigorously defend their employees.

The New york Times reports that the first hearing lasted only about five minutes and none of the defendants were present. The next hearing is scheduled for February 18.

For quite some time now, various organizations have been demanding that internet service providers cut down the amount of time for which they store user data, to protect the user’s privacy. They say the reduction of time for which such data is stored would make it difficult for hackers and other unethical people to infringe on the privacy of legitimate users.

This move by Yahoo! has obviously been welcomed by these organizations. In fact they now feel that it may even be possible for the service providers to further reduce the holding time of such data to 30 days without adversely affecting their business concerns.

Yahoo! says they have reached this decision after consulting their advertisers and a review of their data practices. These changes will be fully incorporated by 2010.

Their head of privacy, Anne Toth, says “this policy represents Yahoo!’s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users.” Speaking to the FT, she also said this policy”will set a new standard for protecting consumer privacy.”

Yahoo! has however reserved the right to retain the data for 6 months in cases of fraud and litigation etc.

Earlier, Google had said they would store the data for 9 months, while Microsoft had agreed to store it for only 6 months if other service providers agreed to do the same.

They may now be forced to review their decisions.

The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which deals with the protection of the privacy of citizens in the EU, is of the opinion that the search engines should delete all identifiable data of the user after 6 months, as the search engines keep tabs on what their users are searching for, or buying and from where etc.

Getting the search engines to accept this demand is not going to be easy, and it may take a long time to come to a mutually acceptable agreement.

It will not be possible for the EU to force their decision on the Search engines, as these companies run their operations worldwide, and it is not possible for them to use a different set of rules regarding privacy, for each country or region they operate in.

The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party does not have the power to enforce their decisions on the search engine providers, but they are currently discussing, the length of time after which user data should be deleted. They are also discussing how effective the measures taken by the search engine providers are, to protect the privacy of the user.

While the IP address is the most reliable and efficient clue to the users location even that is not 100% accurate.

The largest Search engine in Europe, Google, (which holds almost 80% of the market share) will obviously be in a position to call the shots here. They had agreed in September to cut down their data retaining time, from 18 months to 9 months.

Yahoo had offered to cut down to 13 months.

On the other hand Microsoft, which holds only about 2% of the market share, has agreed to accept the EU demands fully provided all others agree to do so.

The reason search engines wish to hold on to user data for a long time, is that they make use of it to find their target audience for the purpose of advertising which is their main source of revenue.

It looks as though the best way to get the search engines to agree to the EU demands would be to put pressure on them through the users while continuing negotiations across the table.