How does the website cookie law work?

[Daniel]

From what I've heard, the cookie law means that websites have to give users a choice of whether to allow cookies or block them. But a lot of the websites I've visited just have a box that says something like "We use cookies to improve your viewing experience", and then just have a close button. They don't give users the choice of whether to allow or block cookies.

I'm creating my own website which uses cookies, so I'm not sure about whether I need to give users the choice of whether to allow or block cookies, or whether I just need to let them know that my website uses cookies, and just have a close button (not giving them the choice of accepting or blocking cookies). What does the cookie law say about this?

Thank you for any help.

P.S. I'm in the UK, but I don't know if that makes any difference.

[teeny-tinyKiller794]

http://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/
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[Tiki]

Well I'm in the US and I've never heard of such a thing but that's kind of dumb in my opinion. Anyways if you're really scared of what to do then be on the safe side and go old school.
In the old days there were a ton of people still on dial-up but a lot of people were getting DSL. Because of this websites started having a landing page where you could click on "I'm still on a slow connection" or "I have a fast connection".
Just do something like that to keep things simple, one link says "I like cookies" and one says "I don't like cookies" or something. Obviously you can put some wording on it and drop some graphics into it to make it appealing and such.
Since you haven't seen anyone do that in accordance with the cookie law you could even slap a blurb up about you're seeint the trend in it or you're raising the bar in personal privacy - something to make it seem like you're the utmost in respected business online.