Europa und die Cookies

Gigaom beschäftigt sich in einer Artikelserie mit der europäischen E-Privacy Directive EU 2009/136/EC:

Coming into force in the UK on Saturday, Article 5(3) of the E-Privacy Directive (happy reading) says EU countries have to make sure consumers are “offered the right to refuse” cookies being downloaded onto their computers by web services, in all but essential cases. They also have to give “clear and comprehensive information” about what the cookies are for.

The deadline for all this was late May 2011. A year on, eight member states – Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovenia – have yet to even transpose the directive into their national laws, let alone start enforcing it.

Zusammenfassung:

Forget the legalese, here’s the bottom line: under the rules, which cover the whole of the European Union, websites must ask visitors for their consent before they can install most cookies.

 Und wen es betrifft:

Pretty much everybody based in Europe who runs a web-based business is subject to the directive. Anyone headquartered or with offices in Europe is subject to the law, or will eventually be. And unlike some online regulation, it doesn’t matter where your servers are based, but where your business is directed.

Typical services that will definitely fall under the rules include website analytics, advertising — particularly third-party advertising — or recommendations. Essentially anything that is not completely intrinsic to the functioning of the site.

Startups im UK weigern sich, die Richtlinie umzusetzen:

“We’re ignoring it and waiting to see who gets sued and what happens,” one London-based startup co-founder told me this week. “We have a ton of revenue-generating work that needs to be done. This is just a distraction that does nothing for the business except waste time and resource.”

Ich kann die Intention hinter der Richtlinie nachvollziehen, aber das Ergebnis wird lediglich eine weiter geschwächte europäische Internetwirtschaft sein.

Wie Europa, in diesem Fall ganz deutsch, den wichtigsten Wirtchaftszweig des 21. Jahrhunderts ignorieren und zusätzlich solche Richtlinien erlassen kann, ist mir schleierhaft.

Wer für die Richtlinie ist, sollte sich auf der anderen Seite nicht über dominante US-Internetunternehmen beschweren.

PDF: EU Directive 2009/136/EC

(via Twittwoch)