
EU Adopts Law Requiring User Consent for Cookies - duck
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1700584/eu-adopts-law-requiring-user-consent-cookies
======
kkowalczyk
I'm all for protecting privacy, but this looks like it might have some
unintended consequences.

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.

------
btubbs
The article is dated Nov 10, 2009.

