The rhetoric over cookie legislation ratcheted up a notch on Tuesday, as the Information Commissioner’s Office told companies they “must try harder” in working out how to comply with the new rules on online privacy.
Christopher Graham, the commissioner, suggested that very few companies had yet come up with ways to get permission from online users to collect their details, as required by the new law.
“A report that listed the URLs of sites that were perfectly compliant from day one would be very short indeed.”
The blog post by Mr Graham was a warning to companies that the UK has not forgotten about cookie legislation which came in last May, despite giving companies a 12-month grace period before beginning to enforce the rules.
“There will not be a wave of knee-jerk formal enforcement action taken against people who are not yet compliant but trying to get there…But if you have decided that this is all too difficult, that you don’t want to give your users choices about how your web pages might collect information about them or that you will get around the law by wilfully misleading people about what you do and how you do it then be assured that if we get complaints or have concerns then we will be checking your site and we will take the necessary steps to ensure that you do work towards compliance,” Mr Graham wrote.
Meanwhile, however, UK online retailers have been warning that the legislation will prove too onerous and could drive business away.
Andreas Edler, chief executive of Hostway, the web hosting company, said the ICO was giving business too little guidance, too late on a difficult issue.
“The overall legislation has good intentions in aiming to protect peoples’ privacy but it has opened up a minefield of compliance issues. With even the likes of Google admitting that it is struggling to create an effective way to enable it to abide by the new cookie laws, it is clear that the Government has misjudged the huge impact the legislation could have on many businesses,” Mr Edler said.
Michael Ross, director or eCommera, which provides software and services to online retailers, said he was worried the legislation would disadvantage UK online shops.
“There is significant risk that all of our advantages will be squandered by unnecessary regulation. We are already seeing how regulatory constraints can catalyse an exodus of eCommerce businesses to more favourable jurisdictions,” Mr Ross said.
“This is not a fantasy. Many of the great names in ecommerce – Amazon, eBay, Skype, Apple, Rakuten – have a significant contracting entity in Luxembourg. Some of this is clearly for tax reasons, but also the Luxembourg government is very ecommerce friendly. One can be assured that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg will be less likely to litigate against its domestic businesses than the UK’s Information Commissioner.”
A number of large online retailers contacted by the Financial Times were unwilling to talk at all about their plans for complying with cookie legislation. Whether this is because there is very little good news to report, or whether they are unwilling to speak out on what is becoming a highly sensitive subject is unclear. But it does seem that the battle lines are being drawn.
