FC: European Parliament plans vote Nov. 13 to ban cookies

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Let me get this right: Instead of encouraging users to disable
cookies, or suggesting browsers like Opera that offer excellent ways
to fine-tune cookie use, a Eurocrat (W.G. van Velzen) wants to try to
ban 'em. Doesn't matter how many jobs will be lost in the
already-beleagured online advertising industry, van Velzen insists,
because some nebulous "privacy right" demands it. Perhaps there's a
bright side to this nonsense: European entrepreneuers may choose to
move to the more hospitable business climate of the U.S., and European
citizens, realizing that websites all over the rest of the world still
use cookies, will recognize how nutty and anti-free enterprise their
politicians really are. --Declan]

---

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48025,00.html
   
   Europe Goes After the Cookie
   Reuters
   6:20 a.m. Oct. 31, 2001 PST
   
   LONDON -- The "cookie," a simplistic identification tag that most
   Internet users unknowingly carry when surfing the Web, runs the risk
   of being outlawed under a proposed privacy directive from the European
   Commission.
   
   The legislation has triggered concern in Europe's Internet advertising
   community. The Interactive Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) said British
   companies could lose 187 million pounds ($272.1 million) if the
   directive is ratified.
   
   "Cookies have been branded as spyware tools, or some kind of
   subversive software," Danny Meadows-Klue, chairman of the IAB United
   Kingdom, told Reuters. "But it's what we use everyday."

   The IAB has marshaled support from its members across Europe to launch
   a lobbying effort it calls "Save our Cookies."

   [...]



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