The internet itself is a wonderful tool, used by billions for information sharing, watching untold amounts of pornography and for having slagging contests with 12 year olds as to who shot who in various online game arenas. It crosses international borders and as illustrated numerous times, can be used as a force for change, in places such as Egypt and Libya for example.

But in recent months there has been some movement made by major western governments to ensure that the rights of certain parties are met while we yank ourselves silly to hotandhornygrannies.org We all know that Iran and China have their own well documented fun when it comes to free access to the Internet, (Whoever came up with the term “Great Firewall of China” deserves a medal) it’s more governements in the supposed free world we now discuss…

First of all, let’s have a look at something which the EU themselves put together and is now being enforced recently in the UK; The EU “Cookie” Law.

Are these the new Borg?

Without even attempting to state that it is not about Cookies you eat as every other bloody web site tried to do, The EU Cookie Law, is basically some wonderful legislation which was drawn up, to protect us, the humble internet user from running things we didn’t know or indeed care about until now magically.

The Cookie law requires all websites to gain consent in one form or another from visitors (if they have any) to store or receive any information on a computer or anything else with a internet connection (including those funky internet fridges that no-one bought), most of the time, these cookies is used for tracking where visitors wander around on your site, or targeting adverts to a 90 year old man who has misplaced his ginger Toupée (We can’t imagine what adverts would be shown to him either). This doesn’t just mean the cookie files themselves, it also stems to Flash cookies (FLASH….AHHHHHHH) and anything else which may be used for the same thing.

So now, a website if to comply with the law, must ask you for your permission to run these things in the background (except for stuff which would break if you did object, like adding things to a basket any shopping website for example.) If every site did this, it would just p*ss people off with having to click through various pop-ups etc, so in a last minute attempt to make everyone feel better, the ICO (the people responsible for enforcement in the UK of this thing) changed its mind and stated “Implied Consent” is now OK, which means unless people activly change their settings after being told, you just carry on as normal.

So far, only a handful of sites including BT and the BBC have complied with this change, while the vast majority have either ignored it, or just made very tiny changes to pretend to comply. Why? Because for many, it seems to be all a grand waste of time.

Please let us know what you’re happy with us doing even though you have no clue.

Google basically ignored the EU and put in place it’s own privacy policy which they are happy with, as it seems is everyone else as the only people to complain, has in fact been the EU. Problem is, with the size of Google and what it does, the best it’s been able to do is to have a chat with them and ensure it’s all good. Probably. If anyone without a law degree fully understood any of this crap.

And what about you?

Your country needs a poo.

Yes you! The one with the hair! How concerned have you been about your privacy?

The likelihood is you don’t care about your privacy as in essence, your life in many ways stopped being private a long time ago. Do you use Face-crack (or Facebook as others may call it) and Twitter to tell people you had beans on toast for breakfast? Do you use Amazon to buy nipple clamps? Do you sign up to various websites to recieve vast amounts of spam, or indeed those loveable dating sites where the emotional crippled people live, just to hope that someone will settle for you?

Did you know that Google and many search engines like it, use “robots” (not Terminators, we’ve been assured Google is not self-aware….not yet.) to trawl through everything on the web to provide you with search results based on what they find, and all the while, sites like Face-Crack take what you put on and then use that for adverts and applications on the system, to build a picture of who and what your are? While poncing around on one of those shiny I-f*cks, it’s probably gone and updated a service which tell people where you’ve been, via GPS and Google Maps.

A lot of websites you hold dear like the British Association of Anger Management, Nude-tube, and the Zimbabwe Tourism Board website rely on advertising in order to maintain services that we enjoy enjoy and laugh at, and if everyone then disabled all the cookies and such everywhere, revenue could fall, meaning those sites have to find another way to stay online and basically we’d have to then end up paying to watch a kitten with big eyes videos for hours on end. Do you want that to happen?

For those of you who care, we have a new page in the menu about what this site uses so that you too can feel about the same as you did 5 minutes ago.

The other thing which has been pushed through in various shapes and forms, is legislation which will enforce blocking of web sites in western countries and we’ll cover that in Part 2 as we all need a break after all that long windedness over nothing.