Sometimes the ways of the European Commission are simply too mystifying to fathom. What is one to make of an organisation which in one week decides that cookies ? little text files that sit on your web browser and relate where you've gone online (but which you can control quickly and easily via preferences on your machine) must be regulated as though they were an outbreak of Ebola fever, but says there's no need to impose "net neutrality" duties on telecoms companies?
The importance of the two matters is vastly different. Cookies really aren't the end of the world. Net neutrality, or the absence of it, might be ? or it could be the end of a digital startup's ambitions to become the next YouTube. The uncharitable view would be that the cookie-planters are bad at lobbying, and that the telecoms companies fared much better at knocking on European commissioner Neelie Kroes's door and saying "Neelie, could we have a minute?".
The cookies thing? Let's go over that. The EC has determined that "explicit consent" must be obtained from "every site visitor" to install a cookie on their machine. Many people think this might mean something like a popup consent form. This would be a nightmare for all sorts of people, but most of all for you and me, the user. Have you ever tried navigating around a website (or the web) with the preference on your browser set to "Ask me before accepting cookies"? It's like being stopped by every single person who passes you on the street, if the street were London's Oxford Street. On the last shopping day before Christmas.
Sites set cookies for all sorts of reasons: to show you've logged in, to track if you've visited, to keep your shopping cart stocked. And yes, to serve adverts. The EC directive (which communications minister Ed Vaizey is desperately trying to make calming noises about) will affect pay-per-click advertisers and users of Google Analytics. Pretty much every European website will be affected, including guardian.co.uk.
Are cookies bad? No, they're useful. Alex Sharratt of Impact Media puts it well: concerns over cookies as privacy-busters are like the worries over the Large Hadron Collider imploding the Earth into a black hole. Attention-grabbing, but absurd. Vaizey is trying to find a way of implementing the directive yet not causing total disruption to the internet business in the UK. And good luck to him.
But net neutrality is a real issue. Imagine you have a brilliant video startup that relies on pumping gigabytes of data at high speed over networks to consumers. The sheer cost of bandwidth is bad enough ? but internet service providers give you pained smiles and say you'll have to pay extra, or that high-speed video just isn't going to reach their customers. Without net neutrality, that's a realistic scenario.
Kroes's (and Vaizey's) answer is not to worry ? ISPs would be obliged to tell you if they do this. And then everyone would arise en masse and leave their ISP for another one. If, that is, they disapproved. This is nonsense. Look how much trouble people have shifting to the best-interest bank accounts ? and that's about money, not some web service. Vaizey was told as much when the idea was floated at a net neutrality meeting in London with ISPs and content producers. The fact Sir Tim Berners-Lee favours net neutrality should be a clue which side to fight on.
Why can't the EC see that net neutrality is one thing that will really make a difference to indigenous startups? It removes barriers to success, rather than putting them in the way of everyone. Maybe it is down to that lobbying differential. Loads of small companies rely on cookies. A few big ones don't want net neutrality. And look what happens.
Is it too much to ask that Kroes will come to her senses? She has a team looking at mobile operators' neutrality, or lack of it ? though she doesn't think that's a problem either, nor that safeguards are needed. For consumers, it's a world of hurt.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/apr/25/cookies-net-neutrality
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