The cookie law is dead, you’re welcome

Last week we laid down a bitter ultimatum to the guardians of the cookie law: Go Ahead And Sue Us. We stripped our sites bare of cookie warnings and begged them to do their worst.

The cookie law is dead, you’re welcome
blog.silktide.com

This all looks like typical political rhetoric to me. The politicians think something must be done-- OK, here is something, let's do it! It doesn't matter that this something isn't the right thing, because now "I did something about this problem. Re-elect me."

It's worth noting that this law wasn't produced in the usual way, and there was not much in the way of industry involvement in the legislation' s drafting process. About 15 months ago, I commented:

> I think it was not so much that the community was ignored, but that the law was passed under unusual circumstances: usually the lobbyists inform the legislators, who defer to industry on the specifics. Here the lobbyists mostly hated the legislation, but legislators were more responsive to privacy activists because of widespread public concern. So the law is a triumph of democracy over technocracy.

> And I think that's reflected in the legislation. The principles are OK, but the detail does not match up with practice. Hence the law is some way from being something workable.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2587995

So I don't think this is really the politician's fault, so much as problems with parliamentary process. Your idea of a technology commissioner might be helpful, but the whole problem here is that the EU Commission did not guide the legislation, with the drafting being driven by parliament.

It seems that the bigger companies (BBC, Amazon, etc.) have just gotten away with having a link to their cookies policy in the footer, while the smaller guys (e.g. the web dev place I work at) have been scared into placing often intrusive JS notifications that grab the user's attention needlessly.

If the average user were to even understand what cookies were, I could see at least some reasoning behind the law, but as it stands, it's like having a prompt at the petrol pump that asks you if you consent to something in your fuel that's there to help your engine - most people don't know about it and don't want to be bothered being asked the question in the first place.

No, the law is known as the "cookie law" but it is actually the "E-privacy directive" (or something like that).

It is quite clear that it is the intent rather than the method that is being regulated.