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Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

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Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#31

Post by potatolicious »

DerpObvious wrote: post #20
mistercow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like technically the consent has to come after being informed, not the storage.

But they may only use the storage once consent has been given, which can only happen after a warning has been issued. The two clauses seem to indicate that consent must be before storage, and warning before consent, hence there must be a warning /before/ the storage on the remote machine.

In either case, storing the cookie before consent, in the Google context, seems to run directly counter to the intent and spirit of the law.

I'm not big on technicalities. Normally I would put this in the "not a big deal" bucket, but in this case the specific cookies do not belong to the website itself. This means that you cannot retroactively "untrack" a user once they refuse your warning.

If this was just the website's own cookie, and if the cookie could be deleted and all tracking data would vanish from the site's own backend, then I'd be inclined to give it a pass.

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#32

Post by lingben »

paradoja wrote: post #29
lingben wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you please explain a little bit more about this cookie law? the only one I heard about was the UK cookie law and it was abandoned months ago. which websites does it apply to? websites hosted in Spain? websites of commercial businesses operating in Spain? any website with an address in Spain?

I'm not him, but I can try to answer you. It applies to any businesses, professionals with a web page, and anyone who offers a service as long as they a) are located in Spain, b) target their services to the Spanish market or c) if they have a (permanent or regular) workplace or facilities in Spain. (It's a translation from Spanish legalese, so probably the language is muddled, sorry.)

thanks. so by condition b that includes almost anyone on the internet!

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#34

Post by albertoperdomo »

devx wrote: post #22

Does this impact only sites hosted in EU? Or with a domain from an EU country?

The actual implementation of the laws depend on the countries, but they are based on the same EU directive.

AFAIK this applies to companies registered in those countries, or with an office there or targeting the market in those countries.

So, to make things more difficult, the German law implementation might be different from the Spanis implementation. If you are targeting both markets, you'd need to pay close attention to both.

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#35

Post by paradoja »

lingben wrote: post #32
paradoja wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not him, but I can try to answer you. It applies to any businesses, professionals with a web page, and anyone who offers a service as long as they a) are located in Spain, b) target their services to the Spanish market or c) if they have a (permanent or regular) workplace or facilities in Spain. (It's a translation from Spanish legalese, so probably the language is muddled, sorry.)

thanks. so by condition b that includes almost anyone on the internet!

It seems so, but I guess it'll be difficult to fine businesses without presence in Spain.

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#36

Post by ensmotko »

notatoad wrote: post #9

Has there been any work done at all to standardize this process and allow users to opt-in to cookies at a browser level, so that we can all stop seeing this stupid warning? would that even be allowed under the law? i tried to download a firefox extension called "cookiesOK", but it doesn't seem to work in most cases.

The problem is that every site owner displays a slightly different popup. A few of my friends were trying to build a chrome extension[1], but they soon figured out they are going to need custom Javascript for every site in Slovenia (and others of course, but they were focusing on Slovenia) and they abandoned the project.

Personally I believe EU should target browsers not site owners for this. At least by doing so we would get a standardized UI and the ability to opt-in or out.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/peeshkot/idfkeeahc...

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#37

Post by albertoperdomo »

lingben wrote: post #32
paradoja wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not him, but I can try to answer you. It applies to any businesses, professionals with a web page, and anyone who offers a service as long as they a) are located in Spain, b) target their services to the Spanish market or c) if they have a (permanent or regular) workplace or facilities in Spain. (It's a translation from Spanish legalese, so probably the language is muddled, sorry.)

thanks. so by condition b that includes almost anyone on the internet!

In practical terms I don't think the Spanish AEPD (institution for data protection) would actually sue any company not registered in Spain. Too complicated.

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#38

Post by __david__ »

corin_ wrote: post #17
freehunter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really annoying as a non-EU citizen using a site in a non-EU country but still having to dismiss these warnings even on mobile devices (where it can be much harder to hit the link/button). The Internet doesn't care what country I'm from, so why are we designing it that way? The same goes for non-US content restrictions as well.

> The Internet doesn't care what country I'm from, so why are we designing it that way? The same goes for non-US content restrictions as well. Because the two other options are either to have no laws around the internet, or to designate one organisation (or one country) to define and enforce laws.

I'll take the former, please.

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#39

Post by txutxu »

martinml wrote: post #2

Sorry for submitting a Google Translate link. It's not doing a perfect job on a legal text but I didn't find any source in English. This is a blogpost of the lawyer taking this case, and the client name is unknown yet. Here's my summary of some facts (IANAL!): - The cookies being investigated are from Google Analytics, Google Maps, YouTube, Adsense and WordPress. - The website was setting the cookies in the browser a…

A bit of fun about all this:

The local government site of my spanish country, uses even javascript to record your mouse clicks in US (and cookies without advise, of course), pixel based tracking in case you block javascript, and more on the same line...

And it has been said in their "opengob" sessions two years ago... and you know what? the local gov does not have any proceeding about their faults.

The same than we have known grabbers (with proceedings that always finish the same), as politics and monarchy, which in turn, control the lawyers and the public security we pay (in the figurative sense of the word).

It's not nice to be Spanish these days. A Spanish (writing from other country).

Re: Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

#40

Post by notok22 »

pgeorgi wrote: post #27
mindstab wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... This isn't some "punishment" this is how the internet works. If you opt out of being tracked and cookies... how would that be remembered? That is really a sign it's working. This is part of why this is such an amazingly defective law

Some pages (eg. all that use the consent.truste.com script) use localStorage to store the decision. That way the decision remains client-side and can still be persistent by hiding the question via javascript.

This law applies to any kind of "data" stored on the client, so using localStorage to store the user's answer would be breaking the law. http://www.cookiepedia.co.uk/eu-cookie-law
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