Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spain begins disciplinary proceedings against site for violating Cookie Law

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 81 posts

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

#41

Post by corin_ »

__david__ wrote: post #38
corin_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No laws whatsoever? So someone can buy childporn.com and charge people for access?

I know issues like child safety are often used for over-reaching legislation that's bad for everybody, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons for governments to be involved here.

Just because the current implementation is often shitty, it doesn't mean we should go the exact opposite way. The same way that disliking things like anti-terrorism legislation don't make most of us think "we need to get rid of all laws".

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

#42

Post by AJ007 »

ensmotko wrote: post #36
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…

One would assume that the act of visiting a web site, from a personally identifiable IP address, using a web browser that accepts cookies is an act of consent to receive those cookies. The behavior is both expected, avoidable, and blockable.

This approach -- either by law, or by some "do not track" flag broadcast to web sites is the equivalent of walking through a busy city with hundred dollar bills hanging out of your pocket, with a sign hanging around your neck requesting that no one takes your money -- all when a simple wallet in your pocket would be adequate.

There are serious privacy issues when it comes to the internet and tracking. The "solutions" we've seen targeting cookies in both the US & EU would be laughable if they did not threaten to add considerable legal obligations over even the most casual of web site owners.

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

#43

Post by vicentereig »

scrrr wrote: post #5

Is there an open source JavaScript snippet somewhere that I can put on my page and it shows a pop up prompting users to accept cookies?

You actually need to avoid cookies getting stored until users give their consent to do so. Probably something like the rack-policy Ruby gem linked below will help making sure there is no cookies at all.

https://github.com/peter-murach/rack-policy#rack-policy

I ignore if there are similar libraries for other platforms.

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

#45

Post by malandrew »

ealexhudson wrote: post #4
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…

This is one of the most stupid and anti-user laws on the books. Worse, it's probably the only law I've ever seen have an instant and devastating effect on the UX of a swathe of websites. Hopefully they are going to start suing people regularly (unlike the inaction being taken in the UK) so that business wakes up to this stupid law and finally gets it repealed, the sooner the better.

The best balance would be to present the user with a page that lists all the things the site would like to track and let the user opt out of anything they don't want tracked.

Some people may value a "degraded" experience over being tracked.

I put "degraded" in quotes because it's often a degraded experience for the company's profits not the end-user.

Please, give us some examples of how this is "devastating" for the UX of a swathe of websites.

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

#46

Post by crististm »

corin_ wrote: post #41
__david__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the former, please.

No laws whatsoever? So someone can buy childporn.com and charge people for access? I know issues like child safety are often used for over-reaching legislation that's bad for everybody, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons for governments to be involved here. Just because the current implementation is often shitty, it doesn't mean we should go the exact opposite way. The same way that disliking thing…

Think of the children man... I wondered how long until I see this argument

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

#47

Post by corin_ »

crististm wrote: post #46
corin_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No laws whatsoever? So someone can buy childporn.com and charge people for access? I know issues like child safety are often used for over-reaching legislation that's bad for everybody, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons for governments to be involved here. Just because the current implementation is often shitty, it doesn't mean we should go the exact opposite way. The same way that disliking thing…

Think of the children man... I wondered how long until I see this argument

In some limited cases it's a perfectly valid argument. I'm against most of the current internet legislation, and hate seeing children used as a reason for it, but that doesn't mean there aren't any good laws.

Take my specific example. If someone hosts a childporn.com that is exactly like any legal porn website but with children, should that be legal or illegal?

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

#48

Post by malandrew »

corin_ wrote: post #41
__david__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the former, please.

No laws whatsoever? So someone can buy childporn.com and charge people for access? I know issues like child safety are often used for over-reaching legislation that's bad for everybody, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons for governments to be involved here. Just because the current implementation is often shitty, it doesn't mean we should go the exact opposite way. The same way that disliking thing…

Yes. No laws whatsoever online. Let it remain out in the open on the internet. A site like that has content that much be illegally made in real life. Real life is where the police should be enforcing the laws. Letting it exist out in the open would probably make their job of finding the people exploiting kids to create such content that much easier. Those sites aren't the real crime, they are the documentation of the crime. Allowing these the consumption to be out in the open, would probably reduce the stigmatization of such content to fall to the level where those doing the consuming can feel comfortable seeking help and therapy to overcome their vice. Hiding things away and criminalization of consumption just leads people to go longer and longer down their own dark personal rabbit hole without getting help.

If such sites existed, you could probably, at the country level, inject ads for free state-sponsored psychiatric therapy services for users.

AFAICT any thing that is illegal on the internet is usually also illegal in real life. Things that cause no real life damages have no reason to be illegal.

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

#49

Post by Karunamon »

corin_ wrote: post #41
__david__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the former, please.

No laws whatsoever? So someone can buy childporn.com and charge people for access? I know issues like child safety are often used for over-reaching legislation that's bad for everybody, but that doesn't mean there aren't also valid reasons for governments to be involved here. Just because the current implementation is often shitty, it doesn't mean we should go the exact opposite way. The same way that disliking thing…

Child porn is already against the law. We don't need legislation that takes existing legislation and adds "..but on the internet" as it's generally ill-thought-out, "feel good" ineffective garbage. As the cookie law shows us.

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

#50

Post by nolanl »

The last place I worked was a Swiss organization that built web sites for the European Commission. Dealing with the EU cookies directive was an amazing waste of brain cells for everyone on the team.

For instance, were we allowed to ignore it because we were Swiss (non-EU)? If not, which version of the law were we required to comply with? For instance, the UK implementation of the law says that you can assume "implied" consent if the user ignores your popup altogether. However, the Dutch version of the law is much stricter - the user must click "I accept" before you can save any cookies. And the French version of the law allows for lots of exceptions, e.g. for setting the user's preferred language.

Plus, we needed a cookie just to store whether or not the user clicked "yes" or "no," so in effect we were forced to break the law no matter what we did. (The only alternative would be to show the "no" users the popup every time they came back to the site, since we were supposed to forget that they had even clicked "no"...)

So all in all, it was a huge mess. In the end we just copy-pasted a JQuery plugin from GitHub and chose the strictest setting. Now our site is uglier, it's more confusing to users, and we still have to cross our fingers that we didn't miss a corner case in Bulgaria or something.

Post reply on HN