Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

The articles calling this a "Europe" or "EU law" are disingenuous. The EU issued a directive. It's up to the individual countries to implement the directive. So here's what happened:

http://www.dlapiper.com/files/Uploads/Documents/DLA_Piper%20...

Quite a few countries chose an opt-out system, which appears to be workable. Quite a few (most?) countries are still debating what to do or are intentionally or unintentionally dragging their feet (this is very typical).

The UK chose an extremely strict opt-in system, which is complete bullshit and unworkable in practise.

Now, I know it's "de rigeur" for the UK to blame Europe each time something bad happens, but in this case they only have their local government to blame. So please, stop calling this a European problem and tell it like it is: it's a UK problem brought onto them by a stupid government. The sooner the people of the UK realize they have their elected officials to blame, the sooner this can get fixed.

On the topic of the UK blaming Europe for its problems, there is a great blog which debunks such claims in the media: http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/blog/index_en.htm

As far as I understand it, the UK now allows an implied opt-in, so long as you make it clear to the user that cookies are being used.

Do you have a reference for that? I don't see anything like it at the ICO site.

In the latest info on Friday.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/blog/2012/updated-ico-advice-guid...

"Implied consent is a valid form of consent and can be used in the context of compliance with the revised rules on cookies."

Here are some selective quotes from the document, I take it to mean: tell the user with a clear message at least once (ideally get them to click confirm but it's not a requirement):

"In some circumstances those seeking consent might consider implied consent as an option that was perhaps more practical than the explicit opt-in model... For implied consent to work there must be some action taken by the consenting individual from which their consent can be inferred... This might for example be visiting a website, moving from one page to another or clicking on a particular button... The key point, however, is that when taking this action the individual has to have a reasonable understanding that by doing so they are agreeing to cookies being set."

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electron...

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