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.

Tracking by default is not an acceptable solution, so I would say respecting the Do-Not-Track header must be mandatory and enforced by laws and percentage of global revenue fines.

GPC (Global Privacy Control) is the header that's actually being enforced in (parts of) the US. DNT is considered deprecated by many, due to the nonconsensual way that Microsoft rolled it out.

Why is Microsoft's implementation a problem? Having the setting default to a safe value is the rational choice.

It's like saying having a secure OS/browser would deprive malware authors of revenue, and thus vulnerabilities should be preserved unless the user explicitly opts into patching them.