Cookie regulations have been a disaster. Cookie prompts are a huge annoyance but the bigger thing is that sites are locking their content with registration walls so they can track users by logged in state. Benefit to users is actually negative.
> sites are locking their content with registration walls so they can track users by logged in state
This has nothing to do with that. NYT started locking its content years before cookie regulations. Membership content existed way before. It recently exploded. That's why. Not due to cookies.
> Users accept vendor's conditions upon registering and are giving their consent
That's the Angloamerican common law's logic. In civil law, the law cannot be overridden by others 'agreeing' to override it. Its more like software engineering in that regard, instead of arbitrary interpretations.
It is totally due to that difference. Contracts form the basis of common law. The reason why so many US corporations think that someone 'agreeing' to terms and therefore entering a contract with the company regarding the usage of the site over those terms means anything in civil law. It does not. In the eyes of civil law, the use of the site would need to take place per the laws and regulations present in civil law as opposed to whatever that the user may agree in terms.
This is factually inaccurate; contracts are one area of, but not the basis of, common law.
> In the eyes of civil law, the use of the site would need to take place per the laws and regulations present in civil law as opposed to whatever that the user may agree in terms.
In common law, contracts don't trump other law, and contracts or provisions thereof can be invalid for being contrary to public policy.
> This is factually inaccurate; contracts are one area of, but not the basis of, common law.
Of course it isn't the entire basis of the law. However it lies in the fundamental of the entire common law institution: Common law originated from the feudal relationship in between the liege lord and the vassal contracting each other based on certain criteria. Over time, this concept was meshed with medieval customs and started being applied to the society as a whole. Hence the awkward medieval-feeling nature of the common law with all those 'precedents', 'interpretations' and 'agreements'.
> In common law, contracts don't trump other law, and contracts or provisions thereof can be invalid for being contrary to public policy.
Today. And mainly because the US combines common law and civil law in a meshed system. For the UK, its mainly because common law was basically unworkable and indefensible in the modern age after civil law became de facto standard in the entire world, setting the legal discourse. Still, the contractual concepts lies in the fundamental of the law as evidenced by the 'agreement' concept that is so extensively being utilized by US corporations.
Law is a philosophical construct, not a programming language. By their own statement Microsoft demonstrated bad faith and intent to coerce, and this forms an antithesis of compliance.
Never dick around trying to use contract terms and narrow technicalities to bypass regulations and obligations. It won’t go well.
Terms and conditions do not override law. Coerced consent is not consent.
By law, the user experience must not be different based on whether the user has or has not given consent for tracking.
Registration implies consent to process information (identity) for the purposes for which that information was provided, namely access to the content. It does not imply consent to use that information for other purposes such as tracking, and so any attempt to track a user around a site for advertising purposes using their login details would be in breach of the GDPR, unless the user has explicitly and freely given separate consent for that to be done. For that to be possible, the request for consent to track must be completely separate from the process of creating an account or logging in - it cannot be part of the terms and conditions.
Others have pointed out the specifics related to websites and GDPR/the ePrivacy directive, but there's another example of why what you say isn't really true that might help understand, and that's EU (and for now UK) consumer law.
A site might have terms and conditions, or conditions of sale etc. but if you as an individual buy something you still have protection from consumer laws. Any conditions you agree to are only ever in addition to your statutory rights.
So, a company might state that an item has a 12 month warranty (as happened with me, a Mac computer bought from Apple), and it might break after that time (mine after something like 13 months). In my case Apple said they were not going to fix it for free because it was out of warranty and I didn't have Apple care (deliberately because I knew consumer law), but I successfully argued that (as stated in the legislation) that there was a reasonable expectation that the item should have worked for a lot longer than that, ultimately making them responsible. They did in the end accept this and fix it.
There's other examples, like if an item is not as described then the company selling it has to pay costs to have it returned, and that the company is responsible for the item while it is in transit in either direction. You are due a refund within 14 days of the /rejection/ of the item, not any other timescale, or dependent on when you return the item, etc. etc.
In summary, your "terms and conditions" are effectively irrelevant if they attempt to reduce or bypass existing legislation.
I don't see how banning digital advertising would be anything other than a net positive to society and it drives me crazy that such an idea is beyond discussion thanks to how enthralled our political class is.
Similar - more precisely another term for "enslaved". The subtle distinction in my mind is that enslavement is forceful, while enthrallment is more like people voluntarily baring their neck to a vampire, hoping for dark powers.
This isn't really true, it means "capture the fascinated attention of". A child could be enthralled by a jigsaw puzzle. You could argue that their attention has somehow been enslaved, but I can't recall ever hearing or reading any phrasing quite like it.
Context matters. If you are talking about a child with a jigsaw then sure, the more cutesy definition applies. But talking about politicians and money, you have to bend over backwards pretty far not to see the second definition as more appropriate.
Hopefully they will just go away; much easier to understand the value proposition of some content if the owner has had to put an actual price tag on it. Yes, people will end up consuming less media - but given how precipitously the quality of news and news-like publishing has dropped, I'd be glad to have fewer, better sources of "journalism".
Advertisers aren’t charities though, their objective is to show ads to people who have the means to buy stuff - poor people seeing their ads (and having their content subsidised) isn’t something they want and they’d be more than happy to stop it should there become a reliable way of tracking and detecting poor people.
If you don't like them then don't visit them or visit them with an ad blocker on. Don't deprive users from the content and don't deprive staff from their jobs.
Not that simple. Even for paid media (Netflix, for example) advertising is starting to creep back in, because consumers have no way to resist it. Companies which don't gather ad money and just rely on actual value-transfer transactions get outcompeted.
Advertising itself is only mildly offensive; if done with taste it can be no problem at all, but too many companies seemingly don't know when to stop - the line from Ready Player One about monetizing 70% of a person's field of view sounds exactly like what Meta and Google would do if they could get away with it.
I want legislation on this topic to create breathing space for real businesses which make things of value.
No. It's really not. It's "I would gladly give person A the thing I have X for the thing they'll give me Y but you won't let me because you don't want to do that".
It's more like the minimum wage argument or something like that but you don't really need an analogy.
