EU Adopts Law Requiring User Consent for Cookies(clickz.com)
clickz.com
EU Adopts Law Requiring User Consent for Cookies
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1700584/eu-adopts-law-requiring-user-consent-cookies
2 comments
The article is dated Nov 10, 2009.
1. It might give US companies (those without presence in EU) a leg up on their European competition.
2. It introduces legal uncertainty when using cookies. Cookies clearly have other uses than tracking users (my very first web app, an web-based dictionary, stored user-configurable display settings (like color) in a cookie because it was the simplest way that somewhat worked). They seem to recognize that in the bill and allow exemptions for "strictly necessary" cookies, but who's to decide what is and isn't necessary? Hence, uncertainty.
3. There are work-arounds. Cookies are just a way to associate a piece of data with a user, to work-around stateless nature of HTTP. There are other technologies that allow that: I can encode data in the urls instead, I can use flash storage, html5 storage. Smart people will invent ways to achieve the same functionality without using cookies. Will legislation be updated every time comes up with a new way?
4. It might lead to "popup blindness". It's a well know fact of humans interacting with computers: when a computer shows an information and asks for a decision, most people don't bother to read and comprehend the information and make plausible, not informed, choices to dismiss them.