It's possible to identify a user based on only browser characteristics with a pretty high success rate. While in the white paper they mainly talk about using it to re-set cookies, there's no reason a site couldn't collect all of this information and sell it to 3rd-party advertisers. At that point they've gotten mostly the same results, and completely circumvented the law.
Writing laws that regulate the internet is extremely difficult.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/help-eff-research-web-b...
It's possible to identify a user based on only browser characteristics with a pretty high success rate. While in the white paper they mainly talk about using it to re-set cookies, there's no reason a site couldn't collect all of this information and sell it to 3rd-party advertisers. At that point they've gotten mostly the same results, and completely circumvented the law.
Writing laws that regulate the internet is extremely difficult.