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Five EU Countries Taken To Court For Failing To Implement Cookie Law
concertina226 writes "The European Commission announced on Thursday that it has asked the European Court of Justice to impose fines on Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia for not transposing binding telecoms rules into their national laws. The official deadline for doing so was 25 May last year. These telecoms rules are aimed at protecting users' privacy online. They also require companies to notify users about any data breach without undue delay and to allow customers to switch fixed or mobile phone operators without changing their phone number, within one working day. But the main sticking point in the telecoms package appears to be the requirement for Web companies to obtain 'explicit consent' from Internet users before storing cookies."
The Netherlands won't get fined because they ensured Neelie Kroes of the EC they will transpose the rules: http://www.nu.nl/internet/2823753/nederland-ontloopt-nipt-europese-telecomboete.html (in Dutch).
Sig?
The correct solution is to leave that horribly mutated experiment.
1) These rules are pointless - session cookies per se are of no consequence, but retention of vast amounts of data by Google & co. is;
2) Retention of data for government purposes is an especial threat, yet the EU promotes this rather than restricting it.
The EU has failed. It has turned into a method for economic domination by Germany and, to a lesser extent, France. Iceland rightly outright avoided the effects of financial subjugation, Greece should take the opportunity to do so right now, and so over the years should any other nation which values its sovereignty.
These rules are all just to show that they are doing something anyway. Here in Sweden this has been implemented in law but I've never heard that it's enforced.
Because our government never ignores the moment to tell the populace how important Europe actually is for us. We're looking forward to a major increase in local taxes, traveling costs (also as a result of point 1), cuts in social security, and basically looking forward to end up with less money for the stuff we do.
All because they want to make sure we meet the requirements. Of course; we can still donate a few miljard of Euro's to support other countries, that's no problem. We'll just raise the taxes even more!
(our government thinks you cut expenses when you try to increase your income).
And now it turns out that this same government, who keeps on yapping how important Europe is to us, has neglected to implement a European law ? Of course; this law isn't all that important; after all, all it does is raise protection for the citizens. What kind of common politician would care about that ?
But oh the irony! I can't wait for the news to hit the papers here. So much for our "Europe abiding government".
Time to raise taxes again in order to cough up our upcoming fine :-)
This cookie law does not require consent for all cookies. Unfortunately, the media, including Slashdot continues to carry this myth. This is the spin that the advertising industry is (successfully) putting on this issue...
I requires consent for cookies that are not "strictly necessary for a service explicitly requested by the user". So session cookies are safe for example.
Consent is mainly required for TRACKING cookie.
This is all about government control over the internet. This is just the beginning and it won't stop until they are in total control.
IANAL from Austria.
Afaik explicit consent is not explicitly demanded by the EU. UK opted in to require this in their law. IANAL, currently in Austria it says that the user decision already happens through the browser settings. If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
IANAL from Austria.
Afaik explicit consent is not explicitly demanded by the EU. UK opted in to require this in their law. IANAL, currently in Austria it says that the user decision already happens through the browser settings. If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
Such a logical decision will never be accepted by the EU!
"But currently the problems in the other countries devalue the euro, meaning Germany gets to export at great prices."
Which means that greece could also export at great prices if they actually bothered to produce anything that anyone wanted.
"Basically, Germany gets a huge boost for free and pretends it's all due to working hard"
Rubbish - it is due to working hard. Meanwhile the greeks don't bother to pay their taxes then whine abd bitch like little children when finally it all goes t1ts up.
No sympathy. The greeks made their bed , well its time to lie down.
The same in Sweden. Though websites have to contain a notice that they have cookies, what cookies are and how to disable them.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Greece borrows a fuckton of money, pisses it up the wall and then throws a massive sulk when asked to pay it back. Meanwhile Germany makes stuff that people want to buy.
Just who's being subjugated here?
Germany banks got a huge bailout paid for by the rest of the EU:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-23/merkel-should-know-her-country-has-been-bailed-out-too.html
Germany was also the sick man of Europe not too long ago, and they were helped out by the rest of Europe (i.e., the countries that are now having trouble). Of course Germany doesn't bother returning the favor now.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/german-adjustment/
Things aren't as black-and-white as you make them out to be. Too things need to happen for this mess to be solved:
* the ECB needs to lower interest rates
* there needs to be stimulus spending
Austerity has failed everywhere it has been tried, and insisting on is just making things worse. Governments and national economies cannot cut their way to prosperity.
This law needs to desperately be amended to exclude all session cookies, cookies that help UX and analytics. The rest will also need a workable solution like using the W3C recommended DNT that is set as 'NO' to default currently. And if that is set and websites/the pervs in the house upstairs are still dropping cookies/tracking they should then have their backsides hauled to court.
IANAL from Austria.
Afaik explicit consent is not explicitly demanded by the EU. UK opted in to require this in their law.
I'm not sure about the wording of the law itself, but the guidelines from the Information Commisioners Office (who are responsible for enforcing the law) implied consent is allowable; that's also how a number of organisations such as the BBC have implemented it, with a once-only banner informing the user and giving them the ability to alter the behaviour if needed.
IANAL, currently in Austria it says that the user decision already happens through the browser settings. If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
That would be much more acceptable; this has been argued for in the UK as well but the ICO have stated that this alone is not an acceptable solution. That said, a lot of sites are now linking to http://www.aboutcookies.org which provides this information.
Bloomberg wants to outlaw cookies in NYC
First of all the cookies is only a single part of the recommendations the EU wants Belgium to implement, so insinuating that Belgium is getting fined about cookies is false. And as a Belgian citizen I applaud the EU involvement because there are to much conflicts of interests on our political level.
Let me inform you about my country. In Belgium we have a duopoly. Belgacom (Belgian symbol) on federal level and Telenet (Flemish symbol but ironically property of the American company Liberty) which was formed to break up the monopoly of Belgacom on Flemish level.
Both companies have a lot of politicians on the payroll, in the board of directors/as 'consultants', etc And because on each level it is a symbol and the current language difficulties that dominates our politician landscape, politician turn a blind eye for the fact that those companies have a very negative impact on our region and country. When our national bank warns in a study for the negative impact of those two companies, it just gets ignored. We have a saying "who's bread you eat, who's word you speak... "
We have very high prices in comparison with our neighbors, Telenet does deep packet inspecting slowing down torrents by day for example, we have unlimited download which is a joke, they created hw monopolies, they buy companies that because of their open character of very competitive plans (like unlimited mobile plans that doesn't cost a house) to kill them or for example just go for their main supplier. They buy licenses for example 4G just to do nothing with it, just to be sure that no foreign competition would arrive. Etc
For example of one the influence they have on laws or on our politicians. We have an in-depended organisation that "tries" to regulate the telecom word on local level, BIPT. Last week they voted a new law that states that when BIPT makes changes or gives fines, the government can revoke those fines or turn back changes. So what is the point ?
Really I've read a lot of bickering about the EU and there may be a lot not right, but hey I'm happy that on some cases something like the EU exists.
And when the Flemish (I'm flemish btw) right wing party the N-VA will come in power, it will be worse because of the big love for the "flemish" symbol Telenet. Although Telenet is as flemish as a big mac these days.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.
On a more helpful note I think "assured" was what you were looking for.
If the browser accepts cookies, so does the user and the government sees the problem solved.
This wouldn't fly because it misses the point of the directive. The point of it is to separate out "necessary cookies" from cookies that are there solely to track you, target ads at you, etc. The problem with browser settings is that there is no fine grained control- you can either "consent to cookies", and get everything a website designer can throw at you, or you can disable cookies and find key features of all sort of websites become unusable (everything from internet banking to e-shopping).
I believe the acceptable compromise in the UK is that the website must link you to a page telling you about all the cookies that the website uses. If you continue to use the site after being presented with this info, that will be considered informed consent. That is how most major sites I've seen have tackled it (including my company's one).
Ghostery blocks 3 items on this very page.
One of them doubleclick.
Slashdot is going to loose a HELL of a lot of money if it can't track its users anymore on behalf of advertisers.
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