@Charlie Clark
"While the ICO is tardy in following up on the reports, it's approach is generally to be welcomed"
What you meant to say there was, while the ICO has prooved time and again is that they are utterly toothless in the face of any real issues. Its approach is generally to be seen as a form of smoke screen hiding other issues behind walls of talk and misinformation.
Check out past performance on ACTUAL problems (Phorm anyone?, did the UK ever reply to Vivian?) My example of a wedding site is to describe the average web user, and from my experiance within the world of websites and marketing those sites, ANY bone that can be used as a weapon, and automated (as in the case for this complaints system) WILL be abused, in seconds till it breaks.
Good on the big boys trying to follow the spirit of the law, its a pity that the law is stupid to the point of uselesness, and even If someone DOES understand about what a cookie does, and clicks NO!! theres a bloody good chance that their presense and sites visited are being sold off by BT to some advertising company using their own deep packet sniffers.
Then again, if the ICO will accept that a company like this "didn't realise it was a crime" then they are hardly going to waste any energy setting some precedents and enforcing this bobbins law over a text file recording some basic information for adsense even the site owner doesent realise its making.