| Not quite the same, because right now tracking is suppose to be opt-in. Free cookies are not. A fair comparison would be a law saying people need to opt-in for paying for a cookie. You can't charge the customer or hide the information, they need to agree to pay for the cookies, and they need an equally clear option to not pay for them. However, stores bend the rules. They have someone stand at the entrance saying, "Thanks for coming to our store, we have cookies for sale at $0.99. Would you like to come in?" If you say yes, then you're charged for cookies you buy. To get the cookies for free, you need to realize you can say "No" to entering the store, and then through a complex 5 minutes conversation, you can get the person to let you into the store for the free cookies every person is allowed to have according to the law. Most people don't know about the free cookies. Others can't figure out the correct questions to ask to get permission to enter the store for the free cookies. Some people want the free cookies but they don't have 5 minutes to waste talking to the person, so they just decide to pay. At the end of the day though, of course everyone wants the free cookies. I want them. You want them. The law says the store is required to give free cookies. Why introduce all the complex interactions and rules that businesses will not follow, and customers will find annoying? Just give everyone the cookies and be done with it. If you don't want a blanket statement allowing free cookies everywhere, what's the ideal process? 97% of people want free cookies all the time. 2% of people want free cookies "sometimes". 1% of people never want free cookies. Asking people at each store for their preference (similar to a website cookies pop-up) is only beneficial to the 2% "sometimes" crowd. For the other 98%, they're just being annoyed and repetitively giving the same answer to every store. Require the banks to allow a setting on credit cards to toggle free cookies on or off, and have stores respect that setting without needing to ask. |