EU Cookie Law Implementation by the European Union is a Waste of User Time and Webmaster Resources

The wheels of law turn slowly and one would think that something sensible is being done in the interim by the powers that be, but it is difficult in the present case to discover what that might have been.

We posted about the impending and in many regards superfluously invasive effects of the European Union Cookie Law more than three years ago, see e.g.:

• EU Internet Cookie Law One-Year Grace Period Ends May 26, 2012 and Confronts Websites and Blogs with Compliance Problems
  
  
• European Union Cookie Law Compliance Solution: A Free Open Source Plugin at Silktide together with a Definitive Guide to the Cookie Law

How surprised we were then as a "publishing" blogger to receive an email today, July 27, 2015, from Google and the Google Ads Policy Team regarding "Important information regarding the user consent policy" which reads as follows:

"Dear Publisher,

We want to let you know about a new policy about obtaining EU end-users’ consent that reflects regulatory and best practice guidance. It clarifies your duty to obtain end-user consent when you use products like Google AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Please review our new EU user consent policy as soon as possible. This requires that you obtain EU end users’ consent to the storing and accessing of cookies and other information, and to the data collection, sharing, and usage that takes place when you use Google products. It does not affect any provisions on data ownership in your contract.

Please ensure that you comply with this policy as soon as possible, and not later than 30th September 2015.

If your site or app does not have a compliant consent mechanism, you should implement one now. To make this process easier for you, we have compiled some helpful resources at cookiechoices.org.

This policy change is being made in response to best practice and regulatory requirements issued by the European data protection authorities. These requirements are reflected in changes recently made on Google’s own websites.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Regards,
The Google Policy Team

© 2015 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

As a publisher using a Google ads product, you are receiving this email to inform you of an important policy change." 

We were gratified to see among the "EU cookie law solution choices" at cookiechoices.org that the solution we recommended more than three years ago, Cookie Consent by SilkTide, has emerged as the most popular solution. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the lawmakers at the European Union (EU) appear in the intervening years to have made little or no progress in adopting a user-friendly and webmaster-friendly set of rules and solutions regarding opt-ins and opt-outs for cookies.

Quite the contrary, they are contributing to a massive bloating and absolutely useless boilerplate bottlenecking of the Internet, thereby costing users valuable time by demanding even more superfluous clicks via the consenting process for every cookie-using web presence. A ridiculous state of affairs.

Opting in or out of cookies can be better and faster done simply by making the appropriate changes to the cookie options in modern browsers. The EU law is a colossal waste of time for webmasters, bloggers and users. WHO is responsible for this nonsense? They should not be in Brussels.

When one takes a look at the Cookie Consent Kit that the EU has developed, one really must ask for whom it was designed. Code-savvy webmasters need little coding assistance of this kind, whereas coding novices who run blogs or websites via the many portals and services offered, can do nothing with that overly complex, virtually useless kit. We will be surprised if anyone uses it.

We ourselves, as already stated more than 3 years ago, rely on the simple solution that SilkTide presents. Thank you.