The Cookie Law in Sweden – Self regulation committee started by the IAB

The Swedish arm of the European Trade Association of the Digital and Interactive Marketing Industry (IAB) has created a self regulating committee in response to the introduction of the new Swedish law ‘Better Rules for Electronic Communication‘.

This law is a response to the recent EU directive which places tough standards on the use of cookies and has serious implications for, for example, the effectiveness of  cookie based tools such as Google Analytics and the various forms of online advertising.

The self regulating committee has created a group with members including Adform, Eniro, Google, Microsoft, Specific Media, Trade Doubler, IAB – Sweden, Swedish Chamber of Commerce, RO, Sveriges Annonsörer, Sveriges Mediebyråer, TU, and Sveriges Marknadsförbund/Näringslivets delegation för Marknadsätt (NDM).

The project is lead by Henrik Nilsson, a lawyer, and I strongly recommend reading  through the presentation he made at the recent IAB conference in Stockholm a few weeks ago, made around the time the new Swedish law was voted in. It’s in Swedish – and gives a background to the cookie law and the self regulating project.

The objective of this project is to create a best practice for the use of cookies. The project aims to deliver a best practice guide in July this year. Hopefully we’ll be seeing updates on the IAB website, you can also follow their legal arm on twitter here.

I work in the Higher Education sector, which is in the not for profit category and is not so well represented in the IAB project- I hope this will change, and I’m happy to say they seem very receptive to getting in other opinions and input. My concern is that limiting the use of cookie based analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, will detrimentally effect the ability  for organisations, such as the university I work for, to effectively manage and optimise their digital marketing activities.

To get a quick overview of the fallout from the EU law (allbeit from a mostly UK perspective) use the search ‘EU cookie‘ in twitter. I recommend checking out Brian Clifton‘s post on the impact of this new directive on the use of Google Analytics and this post, by Paul Hatcher, for a good calm overview – though there is a plethora of posts on this subject out there now.