We're about to see what happens when industry self-regulation fails. It will not be pretty. And it will be the free market, not government, that applies the pain.

The industry is the online advertising and marketing business, notably the marketers that develop targeted advertisements based on your Internet activity.

The Federal Trade Commission and consumer groups have long wanted a do-not-track protocol that can guard privacy. The idea is to give Internet users a one-click option to prevent marketing firms and websites from placing "cookies" on their computers, following users around the Internet, and then selling that browsing history to advertisers to pitch product.

It's big business. Internet advertising revenue hit $37 billion in 2012, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And if you're an average Internet surfer, you likely have dozens of these bugs on your computer tracking you now.

After two years of negotiation and missed deadlines, the effort to find a solution through industry self-regulation suffered a nervous breakdown this summer.