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The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. Let's imagine a world where a government force car b

by Rexxar 6y ago

The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. Let's imagine a world where a government force car builder to add speed limiter to cars. The car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit. Will you say the law is bad or that car makers are trolling everybody ? It's the same for this law. But curiously everybody is prompt to say that the law is bad. The reality is that a majority of internet actors are bad and are just trolling us.

bgun 6y ago
If the worst possible application of a law is insane, then the law itself is NOT perfectly sane.
- Rexxar 6y ago
  I don't see why. People don't need laws to do insane things. Everybody can do insane things and respect the law. Law is not a magical thing that force everybody to act rationally and sanely.
- anticensor 6y ago
  Imagine the converse: if the worst possible application of a law is too sane, then the law itself is not _strong enough_.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
I have never seen a cookie consent implementation that wasn’t annoying, and absolutely do not believe that this law has had any beneficial impact at all on anybody’s privacy. It is the very definition of a bad law. It makes the web worse and more user hostile, and achieves none of its objectives.
- wlll 6y ago
  See the tracking consent page on https://basecamp.com/ https://basecamp.com/? No? That's because there isn't one. Every time you see one of those cookie popups it is a sign, right there front and centre, that the website you are trying to use is trying to play fast and loose with your data. Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their hands" when they get caught not doing so.
  - eitland 6y ago
    > Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their hands" when they get caught not doing so. Brilliant. I might copy and reuse that.
    - manfredo 6y ago
      I wouldn't recommend it. It's a bad analogy and if I saw someone use it I'd think they don't have a good grasp on web technologies. Cookie tracking is used to do things like persist shopping cart items without logging in, and plenty of other things users expect websites to do. It is also used in data collection, but that's more of a moral objection to advertising-based monetization than some sort of strictly-worse practices (like kitchen employees not washing hands).
      - wlll 6y ago
        Just to be clear, you can still use cookies, you don't need consent. Shopping carts and login sessions etc. will work just fine. You can still display advertising, that also doesn't need consent. You just can't collect and process people's data that isn't required for providing the service. If a site displays that notice, it's because they're attempting to do more with your data, or collect extra data, than is strictly needed for the service.
        manfredo 6y ago
        Perhaps in theory. But in practice, nobody wants to risk being fined because a court determines that some data wasn't required to provide the service. Do you really need to have persistent carts for non-logged-in customers? Can't you just only offer the cart for logged in customers? It's not required, just beneficial. Thus, these cookie disclaimers are like Proposition 65 warnings in California. They're everywhere so people ignore them.
        ummonk 6y ago
koonsolo 6y ago
> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. You mean putting trust that a website behaves by implementing its own popup system versus enforcing it on the browser side with a single implementation? Doesn't sound sane to me. Why don't we implement a law where visitors cannot enter your house when you are not at home, unless you consent. That way we can get rid of locks. Very sane.
- thefounder 6y ago
  How can you enforce it on the browser site? The issue is not the data stored on the client. In many ways it is impossible to implement.
  - FineTralfazz 6y ago
    This is about cookies, which are stored on the client.
    - eitland 6y ago
      It is not about cookies. If you hire Harry Potters friend to create a totally magic way to track users and collect data from them GDPR still covers it.
      - joshuaissac 6y ago
        The cookie law is the ePrivacy Directive 2002,[1] not GDPR. And as a user, I would much rather control my privacy preferences regarding cookies from my own browser, instead of within hundreds of different implementations across websites. We already have P3P to allow websites to declare how they want to use your information. European legislation should have focused on leveraging these existing tools and protocols to give control to the user, instead of annoying them with endless pop-ups. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Electronic_Communications_Directive_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Electronic_Communi...
      - andrenotgiant 6y ago
pembrook 6y ago
> Let's imagine...the car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit. We don't need to imagine a world like that, because it has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Let's stick to the real world. The EU implemented a law. Everybody is scared of the power of the government, so they implemented what they thought was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. The mom-and-pop flower shop down the street could care less about making troll political statements about technical internet topics. Turns out, the law had stupid unintended consequences. Was the person who designed it stupid? Or is the entire world stupid? If your answer is "the entire world is stupid," then I'd argue you don't understand how the field of design is supposed to work.
- belorn 6y ago
  > so they implemented what they thought was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. That's not what actually happened. Companies got scared that the law would impact their business model, for which the law was directly design to impact, and asked lawyers to find the minimum change which could be argued as being in compliance. When you ask lawyers to find a solution to a problem you do not get the intention of the law. If you ask a lawyer to find a solution to tax law you don't get the intention of the tax law, you get tax avoidance, the direct opposite. And if you ask a lawyer about consent, as I have done during conferences, you get straight answers like "People can consent to a 20 page EULA they have not read or have the legal education to translate". It not that the word is stupid or that the person who designed the law is stupid. It just happens that if you pay a lot of people who have studied and spent a large part of their life to find clever interpretations of words what you get is a clever interpretation that may or may not be what a judge will see. To make a quick parallel, a bunch of lawyers for companies are arguing that while the company is having millions in profits and giving out a lot of dividends to shareholder, the company is at the same time in "economical crisis" and thus deserve government grant money in order to handle corona. The department in charge of giving out the money asked its lawyers and they agreed, but the politicians are now a bit upset since they disagree. And so now everyone is arguing/blaming each other and discussing if they should change the law to specify what an economic crisis is and isn't and if the change to the law should be retroactive or not.
pathseeker 6y ago
> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. A law that doesn't take into account how people react to is not "perfectly sane". This was the obvious outcome before it passed.
- Rexxar 6y ago
  There is no reason to submit to abusive people because we know in advance they will react in bad way. Pragmatism has some limits and tracking everybody is out of limit even if it makes some types of business more difficult.
- hk__2 6y ago
  > A law that doesn't take into account how people react to is not "perfectly sane". Law is a back-and-forth process; you can’t just create a perfect law on day one then stop evolving.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody be technically complaint with ignoring purpose of the law. FTFY

by Rexxar 6y ago

bgun 6y ago

If the worst possible application of a law is insane, then the law itself is NOT perfectly sane.

Rexxar 6y ago
I don't see why. People don't need laws to do insane things. Everybody can do insane things and respect the law. Law is not a magical thing that force everybody to act rationally and sanely.
anticensor 6y ago
Imagine the converse: if the worst possible application of a law is too sane, then the law itself is not _strong enough_.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

I have never seen a cookie consent implementation that wasn’t annoying, and absolutely do not believe that this law has had any beneficial impact at all on anybody’s privacy. It is the very definition of a bad law. It makes the web worse and more user hostile, and achieves none of its objectives.

wlll 6y ago
See the tracking consent page on https://basecamp.com/ https://basecamp.com/? No? That's because there isn't one. Every time you see one of those cookie popups it is a sign, right there front and centre, that the website you are trying to use is trying to play fast and loose with your data. Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their hands" when they get caught not doing so.
- eitland 6y ago
  > Complaining about these notices would be like complaining that restaurants are forced to put up a sign on their front door "Kitchen employees don't wash their hands" when they get caught not doing so. Brilliant. I might copy and reuse that.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    I wouldn't recommend it. It's a bad analogy and if I saw someone use it I'd think they don't have a good grasp on web technologies. Cookie tracking is used to do things like persist shopping cart items without logging in, and plenty of other things users expect websites to do. It is also used in data collection, but that's more of a moral objection to advertising-based monetization than some sort of strictly-worse practices (like kitchen employees not washing hands).
    - wlll 6y ago
      Just to be clear, you can still use cookies, you don't need consent. Shopping carts and login sessions etc. will work just fine. You can still display advertising, that also doesn't need consent. You just can't collect and process people's data that isn't required for providing the service. If a site displays that notice, it's because they're attempting to do more with your data, or collect extra data, than is strictly needed for the service.
      - manfredo 6y ago
        Perhaps in theory. But in practice, nobody wants to risk being fined because a court determines that some data wasn't required to provide the service. Do you really need to have persistent carts for non-logged-in customers? Can't you just only offer the cart for logged in customers? It's not required, just beneficial. Thus, these cookie disclaimers are like Proposition 65 warnings in California. They're everywhere so people ignore them.
        ummonk 6y ago

koonsolo 6y ago

> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. You mean putting trust that a website behaves by implementing its own popup system versus enforcing it on the browser side with a single implementation? Doesn't sound sane to me. Why don't we implement a law where visitors cannot enter your house when you are not at home, unless you consent. That way we can get rid of locks. Very sane.

thefounder 6y ago
How can you enforce it on the browser site? The issue is not the data stored on the client. In many ways it is impossible to implement.
- FineTralfazz 6y ago
  This is about cookies, which are stored on the client.
  - eitland 6y ago
    It is not about cookies. If you hire Harry Potters friend to create a totally magic way to track users and collect data from them GDPR still covers it.
    - joshuaissac 6y ago
      The cookie law is the ePrivacy Directive 2002,[1] not GDPR. And as a user, I would much rather control my privacy preferences regarding cookies from my own browser, instead of within hundreds of different implementations across websites. We already have P3P to allow websites to declare how they want to use your information. European legislation should have focused on leveraging these existing tools and protocols to give control to the user, instead of annoying them with endless pop-ups. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Electronic_Communications_Directive_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Electronic_Communi...
    - andrenotgiant 6y ago

pembrook 6y ago

> Let's imagine...the car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit. We don't need to imagine a world like that, because it has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Let's stick to the real world. The EU implemented a law. Everybody is scared of the power of the government, so they implemented what they thought was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. The mom-and-pop flower shop down the street could care less about making troll political statements about technical internet topics. Turns out, the law had stupid unintended consequences. Was the person who designed it stupid? Or is the entire world stupid? If your answer is "the entire world is stupid," then I'd argue you don't understand how the field of design is supposed to work.

belorn 6y ago
> so they implemented what they thought was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. That's not what actually happened. Companies got scared that the law would impact their business model, for which the law was directly design to impact, and asked lawyers to find the minimum change which could be argued as being in compliance. When you ask lawyers to find a solution to a problem you do not get the intention of the law. If you ask a lawyer to find a solution to tax law you don't get the intention of the tax law, you get tax avoidance, the direct opposite. And if you ask a lawyer about consent, as I have done during conferences, you get straight answers like "People can consent to a 20 page EULA they have not read or have the legal education to translate". It not that the word is stupid or that the person who designed the law is stupid. It just happens that if you pay a lot of people who have studied and spent a large part of their life to find clever interpretations of words what you get is a clever interpretation that may or may not be what a judge will see. To make a quick parallel, a bunch of lawyers for companies are arguing that while the company is having millions in profits and giving out a lot of dividends to shareholder, the company is at the same time in "economical crisis" and thus deserve government grant money in order to handle corona. The department in charge of giving out the money asked its lawyers and they agreed, but the politicians are now a bit upset since they disagree. And so now everyone is arguing/blaming each other and discussing if they should change the law to specify what an economic crisis is and isn't and if the change to the law should be retroactive or not.

pathseeker 6y ago

> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way. A law that doesn't take into account how people react to is not "perfectly sane". This was the obvious outcome before it passed.

Rexxar 6y ago
There is no reason to submit to abusive people because we know in advance they will react in bad way. Pragmatism has some limits and tracking everybody is out of limit even if it makes some types of business more difficult.
hk__2 6y ago
> A law that doesn't take into account how people react to is not "perfectly sane". Law is a back-and-forth process; you can’t just create a perfect law on day one then stop evolving.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

> The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody be technically complaint with ignoring purpose of the law. FTFY