This is probably a discussion I would prefer us to have offline but the gist of it is that as a nascent industry, we have to make strides towards self-regulation very quickly. The NAI knows about the dangers lurking ahead. Overregulation is not a bogeyman. It is a real threat.
DNT is good for us. We don't want to track someone who explicitly does not want to be tracked (boo, Microsoft IE team!)
As far as I know, DNT was designed to be a tri-state with { NoPreference, On, Off. NoPreference is the default. If it is turned on by default, what would NoPreference mean?
One could argue that DNT preference where chosen when the users opted to use IE with DNT as default. As such, NoPreference has no meaning when the user chose is always made one way or the other.
In the end, Microsoft made the decision to force it into a yes/no, rather than leaving it at "NoPreference". I can fully see the argument that Microsoft is not following the spirit of the standard in doing so.
DNT is good for us. We don't want to track someone who explicitly does not want to be tracked (boo, Microsoft IE team!)