Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites

The problem here is not the law, but malicious compliance by websites that don't want to give up tracking.

"Spend Five Minutes in a Menu of Legalese" is not the intended alternative to "Accept All". "Decline All" is! And this is starting to be enforced through the courts, so you're increasingly seeing the "Decline All" option right away. As it should be. https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stan...

Of course, also respecting a Do-Not-Track header and avoiding the cookie banner entirely while not tracking the user, would be even better.

No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance.

Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. If the law allows for malicious compliance, it is a badly written law.

The sites are just trying to maximize profit, as anyone could predict. So write better laws.

No. The law does not allow it.

To quote Article 4(11) – Definition of Consent

> ‘Consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.

Meaning if you force users into pressing a button or let them scroll through 1000 no options, with one easy yes option, you have not collected their free consent. Congrats you broke the law.

Meaning if you just have them click yes, but not informed them about the harmful data collection you did not collect free consent.

The law is pretty clear on that.

Wouldn't this also mean that if a user was using one of those browser extensions that automatically click "yes" to close the pop, then the site would not have informed consent, and therefore would not be allowed to collect the data?