The EU – Apparently they don’t know anything about the Internet.

A few years ago I remember a privacy group asking the EU to implement a law that requires sites to give an acceptance pop-up every time a cookie is stored, so you have to physically click to allow a site to use cookies.  Now in my ignorance I assumed that no entity would be ignorant enough to bring in some god awful stupid legislation like this.  Unfortunately I was ignorant of the ignorance of the EU, so was fairly shocked when Ryan Kett pointed me towards This BBC Article today.

Now just in case you don’t know what a cookie is. A Cookie is basically just a text file on your PC that stores data locally (This is usually encrypted).  Browsers also already have inbuilt options which allow you to block cookies if you want to.  However nearly every website uses cookies to track statistics, allow users to stay logged in for more than one browser load, or let users fill up a shopping cart of things they want to buy.

This privacy group has obviously got their knickers in a twist over this, and in an effort to make the internet a more annoying place for everybody, they have decided that they need to do more than just turn off the cookies on their own browsers.  They want to make it so that every time we visit a website that uses cookies, we will need to click an accept button to allow cookies to be used.  For every site we visit, every time we visit it.

Now this has some fairly wide repercussions.  Not just in pure annoyance, but in other ways too.  For instance this site is new, I still have a pretty low readership, but how many people will still regularly visit this site, if every time they visit they will need to click an ‘accept’ button.  I’m sure the users of facebook will find the rewards enough, but what about the millions of smaller businesses out there? Even having to click the button once, and then the users choice is stored, just that one negative association with the site is enough to put off maany people from visiting the site again.

Things get even more interesting, if worldwide sites don’t comply they need to stop showing their site in the EU, and even worse, the technically inept legislators failed to address cookie like parts of the net such as PHP sessions. To clarify this, if you own a WordPress site, and you have not blocked all EU Visitors (Challenging for most single blog owners) then chances are your site is illegal because your site not only most likely tracks cookies, but it contains PHP session too.

As someone who uses the Internet a huge amount for research and work, often visiting hundreds of sites a day, this new EU regulation infuriated me. It is technically challenging, morally un-required, and essentially does nothing other than create an annoyance accross the internet. Why not just ask browsers installed in the EU to automatically load with cookies disabled, that way we can choose if we want the hassle of being notified of every bloody site that uses a visitor tracking script, shopping cart, advertisement or whatever.

The EU was originally set up as a trading league, now they seem to be throwing more and more shit on to the pile, which makes me want to emphatically leave what will soon become the ‘European Union of Goddamn Inane Useless Rules & Regulations’. After rules covering everything from it being illegal to export bananas which are not curved enough, to the unfortunate knee buckling in Holland on marijuana legislation, the people in charge of this stupidity should in my opinion be forced to bend over and take it from every person in the EU who has to deal with the shit they have caused.

Tagged as: Cookies, EU