[antocv]

How came that crap to pass and become some EU thing anyway?

Whats the big deal about EU and cookies?

[garethadams]

People complained that cookies were being used by advertisers to track them.

The EU decided to take action by mandating that companies make it visible when this was happening, in the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications[1].

Since it's technically impossible to allow the benefits of cookies without opening privacy holes, I don't really know what else privacy campaigners were hoping to achieve.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electr...

[DanBC]

People used to care about privacy. The EU wants to protect people's privacy. Passing EU law takes a considerable length of time. By the ti e the law passed it had been made weird by bureaucrats and obsolete by time. Now there are many worse privacy invasions and most people don't care so much about privacy.

[netcan]

It's an example of why we are doomed.

The law was caused by a combination of dumb/naive politicians thinking they were preventing tracking/spying and self righteous political opportunists pretending they were in the first group. They had a vague understanding of what cookies are and how they work and made a law that is the equivalent of painting a second lock on a door for extra security.

The net result is that they have effectively mandated nag screens and done nothing to protect anyone's privacy.

Having politicians with a "high level understanding just doesn't work here. Cookies are controlled by the browser and the browser is controlled by the udder so the sensible solution is for the browser, not the law to make rules about who should be able to set them when.

I listened to some parliamentary comitee hearing once about parental controls online. It was being chaired by some arrogant and clueless parliamentarian playing the concerned mother. It was horrifying. Like listening to Pointy Haired Boss reprimanding Charles Darwin.

We're doomed!