[eckyptang]

I agree the law is bad. I actually stated that the legislation is not very good. However, suing people is probably the best approach bar forcing Firefox, Chrome and IE to ship Ghostery (then what are you going to do?) I mean you're obviously annoyed, aware and scared of the consequences.

However, the fact that you plug oddles of stuff into your web site that intentionally tracks people and hide under the banner of "we merely use" is the sort of attitude we don't want and the sort that should get you sued.

Ignorance and laziness is not an excuse.

I don't want to be tracked by Google Analytics and for my usage to be profiled and tracked across different sites (this almost certainly does happen as GA is capable of reading enough info from the browser to identify a user or at least build a persistent profile). Google do not have to operate under EU privacy laws as they aren't EU based.

Disqus, Twitter, Facebook all track users through these buttons just by them simply being there. None of these have to operate under EU privacy laws as they aren't EU based.

Your buttons and analytics MUST be disabled until someone agrees because you operate under EU privacy laws. That's your problem.

Either put the banner up or get rid of all the junk that you've plugged into your web site.

Regarding analytics, it sounds like analytics has grown to encompass too much of your business model. Have you thought that perhaps you are possibly not entited to the information that you gather?

As for advertising - if your revenue is derived from that, good luck. You're going to die miserably. Find a better model. Build something you can sell rather than something you can scatter with crap to pay your bills.

Sorry don't I don't buy your argument. It seems naive and arrogant.

Users first, or to hell with the WWW.

[sageikosa]

Suing websites is going to force browser makers to do something? Perhaps that chain of reasoning can be expanded upon...

Fighting urge to flame the revolutionary baiting in this post, such as use of we don't want in paragraph 2, and possibly not entitled in paragraph 8. I usually don't like deconstructing posts, but the tone rubbed me the wrong way for an intellectual discussion.

All that laws designed to limit technology do is limit technology.

[eckyptang]

I think I covered that here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4479140

[sageikosa]

So...the lawsuits will drive a demand (from site owners, presumably) for legislation to force browser makers to do something...?

[eckyptang]

Not really. It's more that browser vendors are worried that it'll shoot their market share so they won't turn this on by default. If users get used to it, that is likely to be less of an issue.

[18pfsmt]

You know, I'm the type of person that operates as you would like most people to (i.e. NoScript, Adblock, RequestPolicy, BetterPrivacy, etc.), and by reading your comments you've made me realize how I've been kind of a jerk for installing these things on friends' machines. They get annoyed and call me asking what I did to their machines (and how to "fix" it).

Obviously, I should've explained the use of and showed them how to use these add-ons, but such things are difficult to do in a casual/ social context. Many of the concepts are foreign, and there is a whole set of jargon that requires explanation in the first place. These are non-technical, yet educated, people in their 30s for whom most of this seems academic. So, I've just installed, and hoped they'd figure it out. I wish it were easy, but it's not; now, I'm certain I will no longer do this because I don't want them to "get used to it" for any reason other than that is what they choose to do.

[eckyptang]

That's a great approach and I admire your honesty. I think users should always have a choice. At the moment, there is a big assumption made which is the problem.

[oliveremberton]

If we subscribed to this logic:

"Either put the banner up or get rid of all the junk that you've plugged into your web site."

then we'd still be setting cookies, but we'd be telling users about it after we did so. This is exactly what most sites are doing right now, and it's clearly farcical.

When you start attacking anyone who depends on advertising on the Internet - by which I guess you mean Google, Facebook, Twitter and every commercial news site in existence - then I start to lose you. Those services cost billions, and somebody has to pay for it.

[eckyptang]

Nope - it's fine.

Google and commercial news is fine - advertising is a big chunk but Google have other products and commercial news still sells paper and has television slots. Legislation will not kill them.

Neither Facebook or Twitter have a sustainable model and will fall in time. They don't actually do much of value really apart from enslave people into walled gardens full of noise and bombard them with advertising.

If you put all your eggs in the advertising basket, get pumped on VC cash and act like a dick, yes you will lose billions.

I quote: You have no right to make money shoveling magic unicorn shit.

Those of us who have a real product and earn from that, it's not a problem. We'll be here in 10 years. We were 10 years ago (in fact we started in '92). Empires have risen and fallen in our time. We have never advertised at all.

[oliveremberton]

"advertising is a big chunk but Google have other products"

96% of Google's 2011 revenue came from ads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Advertising

"commercial news still sells paper and has television slots"

Magazine and newspaper sales continue to collapse: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/aug/08/us-pr...

I appreciate you don't like ads; I'm not a big fan either (not that this is what the law is about). But consider the implications of it not becoming viable.

And for the record my company doesn't advertise anything. We just want to be able to use non-invasive features of the Internet like every other country.

[eckyptang]

Ok perhaps Google will disappear as well? I can't say I use any of their products or services at all, so I'm not that bothered.

I don't have a problem with advertising.

I think the real issue here is that cookies are just shit.