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Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

amazingcto.com

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Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#191

Post by littlestymaar »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #51

Hate this way of thinking where the government (with seemingly good intentions) tries to stop something but leaves a loophole where all our lives are made more tedious and then people defend it saying the companies should just not do it, well we needed the law in the first place so it's a bit silly thinking to suggest they stop doing it after the law, no?. If the cookie law was written properly then it would have jus…

That's what you get when you try to protect consumer but “don't want to harm business” who are hurting consumers.

Sometimes life really is is fact a zero sum game and you need to punish the offenders in order to protect the victims.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#193

Post by squigz »

pgeorgi wrote: post #175
squigz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardization would certainly be nice, since we could automate it then (I imagine doing so now would require specific cases for most sites)

Most consent banners are produced by a relatively small set of providers. As such, https://consentomatic.au.dk/ does a decent job of submitting your preferences and pushing them out of sight.

Thanks!

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#194

Post by eterevsky »

pif wrote: post #170
eterevsky wrote: post #74

There is a law, that does not mandate cookie banners, but that still causes them by creating incentives to show the banner. That's the point of criticism.

You are implying that strict anti-emission laws caused uncontrolled emissions by Volkswagen vehicles. But Volkswagen was very discreet about it, and when uncovered everybody was against them. Website are being obnoxious, instead, and people accuse the law. Go figure!

I don't see the relation to the story about VW and emissions. VW broke the law, while the websites are following it.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#195

Post by thinkingtoilet »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #51

Hate this way of thinking where the government (with seemingly good intentions) tries to stop something but leaves a loophole where all our lives are made more tedious and then people defend it saying the companies should just not do it, well we needed the law in the first place so it's a bit silly thinking to suggest they stop doing it after the law, no?. If the cookie law was written properly then it would have jus…

There is no loophole here. If you want to track someone, you need their consent. How are cookie banners a "loophole"?

>Instead through incompetent government employees

Or greedy companies, one of the two...

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#196

Post by cbeach »

madsbuch wrote: post #182
cbeach wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. The law could have been written in such a way that we could use a browser setting and avoid incessent popups which irritate users and desensitise them to genuinely useful warnings. Whatever the good intentions of EU lawmakers, they seem inept at technical legislation because they ALLOW companies to continue doing shady things, and rather than tackle it, the legislators create a law that merely annoys us…

it would be horrible regulation if you tell how to comply instead of telling what to comply with. as written elsewhere (since you obviously didn't read anything) your proposed solution would be just fine. But people opted out of impmenting it that way since it would yield less profit.

Show me the section of the ePrivacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC) or GDPR that implies the "Do Not Track" browser setting can override the need for consent banners / popups.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#197

Post by nicce »

iEchoic wrote: post #86
nicce wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it is just showing that most companies are collecting more data than they need. You don’t need a banner for the data that is necessary for the service to work at minimum level. There is no role for the consent since the site won’t work otherwise.

> You don’t need a banner for the data that is necessary for the service to work at minimum level. We were advised by our lawyers (a top SV tech law firm) that we should include a cookie banner in the EU even if we're only using cookies for functions like login. After eventually switching legal counsel (for unrelated reasons), we were told the same thing by our new counsel. Either EU law covers cookie banners that us…

It is indeed quite complex. I would argue that just the login does not need.

1. There are users who will come to your website with specific purpose or expectation of your service.

2. Then there are users who came to website by accident and might just try out things without understanding what is happening.

The banner recommendation from the lawyers is likely for the 2nd case. The users haven't subscribed to the service with certain expectation or knowledge what is expected from them to service to provide what they want. Or they have zero expectations about the service to provide something for their needs.

For example, the login case, the group 1. probably wants to stay logged in if they came to service with expectation of personal service, which cannot be linked to the person without an account.

Or the lawyers just did not understand your service well enough and just said that put the banner be done with it. For group 2. it is unlikely that someone did not expect or want to stay logged in all the time, but that is for minority and arguable case whether is fair to assume that.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#198

Post by [deleted] »

plextoria wrote: post #111
arbuge wrote: post #89

"Companies could easily avoid any cookie banner. Just don’t track." It seems like a point dear to the author's heart, given the way he highlights this and puts it in bold at the top of the article. But while it sounds good on the surface, it doesn't take much digging to show it's silly. If you store any kind of data about a visitor to make their life more convenient, is that tracking? Shopping carts? Notification pre…

> But while it sounds good on the surface, it doesn't take much digging to show it's silly. If you store any kind of data about a visitor to make their life more convenient, is that tracking? Shopping carts? Notification preferences? etc. A tracking warning a login/sign up would be enough. No need to ask for cookie consent at every visit. It would just be part of the typical T&C. > It's actually a bit ironic to ask v…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#199

Post by gizmo »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #152
jasode wrote: post #70

>, Paul Graham came up with the thought, that the EU forces companies to have cookie banners. There is no law for cookie banners. [...] Companies could easily avoid any cookie banner. Just don’t track. KingOfCoders/amazingcto, of course you are technically correct but Paul Graham wasn't talking about the letter of the law. Instead, you have to interpret his complaint with the lens of game theory . I.e. The Law of Uni…

(author here) I'm a fan of second-order thinking and unintended consequences, so I'm with you there. How would you frame a "don't track people without consent" without unintended consequences? The article tries to make the point (perhaps fails), that companies do this intentionally to get the "consent" of people against their will, therefor running the tight line of breaking the law without breaking it.

The problems with the current law are:

- no fines for non-compliance (or malicious compliance)

- no legal liability for data leaks of PPI

When businesses believe (correctly or incorrectly) that the benefit of tracking outweighs the cost (annoying users, regulatory noncompliance) they will do it. The fix is to make tracking too costly for businesses.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#200

Post by yard2010 »

isodev wrote: post #134
miracle2k wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On this issue in the group that complain about the cookie law there are some people who are very wrong on purpose because it's in their interest, and some people who are very wrong because they genuinely don't understand the position they're defending, complaining about being made aware of the fee, instead of the fees themselves or the fact that the companies hide them if not forced by law. The reality is that I (a…

"Number of visitors" does not constitute tracking. The tracking in question here is to discover who you are specifically and the absurd amount of detail about your online activities collected and shared with data brokers for aggregation and resale. A few of these cookie prompts during the day and they'd be able to tell everything from where your kids go to school to the kind of prn you prefer to watch on weekdays and…

Honestly I don't mind them collecting this data, what is really infuriating is the fact they won't share it with me. I would love to know what kind of porn I prefer on weekdays. I think they shouldn't be allowed to track anything with consent or without it unless they share all the data with the subject of spying.

And aside from that, I think it should be much more expensive to say sorry than ask for permission. In my world a firm like facebook should not have any right to exist, they earned it. Fine them to oblivion just like I would get a long time behind bars if I wouldn't do my taxes right.

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