[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." [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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