The site focuses on the UK implementation of the law, but unfortunately the directive is EU wide and individual member states are hence supposed to put it into

The site focuses on the UK implementation of the law, but unfortunately the directive is EU wide and individual member states are hence supposed to put it into law, too. I say supposed because as in typical EU style, the member states are lagging, or doing their own thing. http://www.dlapiper.com/files/Uploads/Documents/DLA_Piper%20_%20How_the_EU_has_implemented_the_new_law_on_cookies.pdf http://www.dlapiper.com/files/Uploads/Documents/DLA_Piper%20... Who are screwed: Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and the UK. The actual law says that any non-strictly-needed cookie (or whatever you use to track users) MUST receive PRIOR opt-in from the user. It also clarifies that non-strictly-needed must be read in the narrowest sense possible, so that even saving user preferences is considered non-essential. As far as I can tell this means that even normal use of session cookies is outlawed. There seem to be some posters here who think the law only matters for analytics, and hence as users it's not their problem. You couldn't be more wrong, there is no such restriction in the law! This will effectively make the internet unusable unless websites start grouping login/cookie access. Like with Google/Facebook/Twitter account login systems. If the intent of the law was to hamper those companies, it will effectively achieve the opposite by hurting the smaller players disproportionally. And of course, you might not have to care because this will likely end up mostly unenforced. But as a site operator, it's still a Damocles' Sword hanging above your head if you ever get Kafka'ed. The fines are not small.