What really bothers me is the law's original design got hamstrung when governments realized it would subvert their own site analytics, and we ended up with the quite-empty-but-mandatory dialog informing users that a site does a thing that is pretty fundamental web technology (not quite as fundamental as "Transmits data using the HTTP protocol", but pretty close)---instead of scrubbing the whole initiative or replacing it with a Europe-wide education initiative ("The EU presents: browsing and you").
Maybe regulation would work better if there weren't such a disconnect between what lawmakers think people want and the way the technology works.
> got hamstrung when governments realized it would subvert their own site analytics
That's a pretty strong claim. Citation needed.
nod
I always thought it was a combination of slow legislative process, legislators not understanding tech, and industry pushback. I somehow doubt underfunded government IT departments had that much pull.
Those cookie disclaimers are one of the most retarded things on the web.
IIRC the EU mandated that behavior.
Edit: More info: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
What should really bother you is that rather than putting up these stupid cookiewalls the intended effect of the legislation was to get websites to stop tracking everything and everybody and this was the result.
Self regulation didn't work, then there was a soft push, which resulted in a lot of wriggling to get around the laws intent and now we will see the hard push.
I wonder how many parties will have the guts to try to wiggle out of the hard push, and I'm quietly hoping for one of the larger offenders to be hit so hard they have to shut down, which might send a useful message to the rest.
Analytics is fine but this wholesale profile building is really across the line.