Tangent: I wish the idiom of "placing" cookies would go away. Websites don't "place" cookies. Websites can include cookies in their HTTP responses. Your browser can include them in future requests. But it doesn't have to. There is nothing in the HTTP spec that says you have to accept cookies or include them in subsequent requests. There certainly isn't any reason to "place" them on your computer.
If more browsers were still User Agents in the literal sense, maybe we wouldn't have needed this legislation. Browsers could have informed people about what cookies were, and could have presented the user with the option to never accept tracking cookies from Big Advertising. Every browser has the option to reject third party cookies or to clear all cookies at the end of the browser session.
This mischaracterization of cookies has, ironically, made life a lot less pleasant for people who don't accept cookies. The "opt-out" is just another cookie. There's nothing special about them either, they can be used to track return visitors just as well as any other cookie. I'm sure they're not, because that would be against the spirit of the law ...
Not tracking people without consent is definitely a Good Thing, but it shouldn't require everyone and their grandmother to put annoying cookie banners on every website under the sun. And I think it wouldn't have, had people been better informed.
If more browsers were still User Agents in the literal sense, maybe we wouldn't have needed this legislation. Browsers could have informed people about what cookies were, and could have presented the user with the option to never accept tracking cookies from Big Advertising. Every browser has the option to reject third party cookies or to clear all cookies at the end of the browser session.
This mischaracterization of cookies has, ironically, made life a lot less pleasant for people who don't accept cookies. The "opt-out" is just another cookie. There's nothing special about them either, they can be used to track return visitors just as well as any other cookie. I'm sure they're not, because that would be against the spirit of the law ...
Not tracking people without consent is definitely a Good Thing, but it shouldn't require everyone and their grandmother to put annoying cookie banners on every website under the sun. And I think it wouldn't have, had people been better informed.