As America’s economy continues to suffer meager growth, retailers are doing everything they can to capture consumer dollars as soon as possible.  Despite outcry from both consumers and employees, retailers opened their doors for Black Friday even earlier this year. Wal-Mart™, for example, ran aggressive ad campaigns all last week letting consumers know that Black Friday deals start at 10pm on Thursday.  Toys ‘R Us™ began deals even earlier, at 9pm on Thanksgiving.

Starting late this spring, the naively well-intentioned European e-Privacy “cookie-consent” initiative will start to make its presence felt in Britain. As a result, British Internet users will soon be faced with an onslaught of cookie-consent requests and explanations that will confuse, confound and annoy nearly all users, while ultimately undermining the ability of British companies to compete online. In short, it will make the web worse for everyone.