[vbo]

With or without EU regulations, client software could decide to discard all cookies once the user has "left" the site. Or it could block cross domain cookies of its own volition. Yes, it doesn't fix the fundamental issue, but it does address it for those that want to fix it against the tide. Yes, it comes with drawbacks, but it is what it is so long as we don't collectively move towards paying for content, ideally in micro form.

I sometimes come across articles in local publications that ask me to subscribe - dude, seriously? Do you expect me to subscribe to an Alaskan publication when I live half the world away and could not care less of what happens there, but just want to read this one article that seems interesting?

So instead we have ad funded websites that have to do what they have to do in order to make some money and keep publishing whatever it is they publish. Hence tracking cookies.

Everyone's needs would be better served if we could pay for content the same way we did back in the day of printed newspapers. You buy today's edition and you get today's edition and no one except the newsagent is tracking you (if you happen to regularly buy the newspaper from her, she'll remember you, and she may even suggest additional newspapers to buy but it's implied, right? we dislike machine tracking, not humans remembering our buying habits).

Alas, we don't have that. We have intrusive tracking and subscriptions, even though technically it's something we could build in weeks (lest the payment companies didn't make it unfeasible, for their own benefit).

And people do sometimes try to figure it out. Bundles come to mind. Everything -- except micro transactions allowing you to purchase just. this. article. And while micro transactions don't exclude tracking, companies are more likely (is this wishful thinking?) to be careful with a paying customer's experience than with freeloaders, which is what we insist of being, while putting up demands as to what publishers can do with our data.

[pif]

> Everyone's needs would be better served if we could pay for content the same way we did back in the day of printed newspapers.

This is one option. Another is that advertisement goes back to those days: you associate advertisement to a content and to a rough geographical location, and that's it. No personalised ads is still possible.