> The cookie-blocking features in modern browsers (except Chrome, probably, haha) effectively make tracking opt-in anyway, don't they?
Browsers are generally only working on stopping cross-site tracking, but cookie banners are needed even for first-party cookies (ex: local telemetry, shopping carts).
You do for the way shopping carts are usually implemented. Say you put something in your cart, close the browser, and reopen it the next day. On basically all sites, the item is still in your cart, but that requires cookie consent because it isn't "strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user".
I agree with the interpretation that you can just leave it in the cart forever.
Mechanically if you add something into a physical shopping cart it will remain there forever until you take it out. But legally the pdf has the claim "a merchant could set the cookie either to persist past the end of the browser session or for a couple of hours" [1] and to me that means indefinitely or a few hours.
Yes, but usually cross-site tracking is the creepy stuff that people are concerned about. I don't have much of a problem with first-party cookies, personally, but some browsers (Firefox) are now offering "Enhanced cookie clearing", which can automatically clear first-party cookies at the end of each session, configurable per site.
And every browser offers a private browsing mode which is more or less the same effect.
Browsers are generally only working on stopping cross-site tracking, but cookie banners are needed even for first-party cookies (ex: local telemetry, shopping carts).