European Union cookie law. Yes another topic!

[ossipetz]

Of course you don't have responsibility what I do with my site. That's ok. With websites one often lives by "no prosecutor - no judge".

But I don't create cookies. The software does. That is already enough for the law to apply. I need to inform the users this happens and I don't know what can happen or what IP.Board is doing (connect to chat servers, twitter and facebook integration and so on, maps in the gallery, etc). From my point of view that is nothing I'm in control of. I cannot choose what chat servers to use or what country they are located in. So parts of the responsibility lies at IPS too. I can turn on facebook integration or maps in the gallery but the effects in the background are not in my control (and I buy software to not have to deal with it myself) nor do I see if changing a setting causes something that relates to this law. For example there are features related to google analytics - you don't care if your customers shot themselves in the foot by using it?

 

 

I only found http://meine-cookies.org (pretty german) related to this topic. Most websites will be ok writing a data privacy statement. But one from IPS would probably need to be included as I am not in control of some technical solutions (just so everyone is aware what happens for what purpose and where).

That could be simply documentation one could translate for the country I target for my users.

The community guidelines settings allow that already. But I'm not sure if the text in there is completely true (lets say I enable facebook integration or the share buttons). I would argue that default features not coming from plugins or hooks are in the responsibility of IPS. Especially social media buttons come with implications a lot of IP.Board clients will not be aware of. So cookie related settings or features should probably be at least in a list.

 

Just the fact other software isn't doing it now (or properly) is a dangerous argument. Sounds like "everybody drives too fast". I would guess it is not the best argument 

 

[Lindy]

We are not an EU company and have no legal presence in the EU, thus our knowledge and interest in EU law is unfortunately minimal. We would need to retain EU counsel to get a formal interpretation of the law as it may or may not apply to IPS software, its components and its customers... a law that has already been changed numerous times and yet still, few agree on. I do apologize for any hardship and inconvenience it may cause, but we're not willing to do that at this time nor are we willing to just guess and blindly assure compliance. 

As noted earlier in the topic, we are reviewing taxation feedback as it pertains to the commerce module. I'm afraid our position on the cookie law remains such that the onus of complying with local laws and regulations lies with the site owner. 

I think most would agree we do our best to accommodate feedback and we consider each and every suggestion. In this case, we've heard the feedback quite clearly and do very much respect and appreciate the interests of our EU customers, but we cannot accommodate the cookie law at this time and believe this should be left to the marketplace. With that said, this could easily go on for 8 more pages with the same end-result, so I'm going to close this as it has run its course. 

Thanks for your understanding and your business and once again, I'm sorry we're unable to act on the feedback in this case at this time. If circumstances change, we will be happy to entertain this at a later date.