If you read into the EU cookie directive it is a badly drafted piece of online legislation.
A website owner is responsible for all third party cookies on their sites and responsible to describe how the information they gather is used.
So if I have a facebook like button on my site am I supposed to tell people visiting my site how facebook uses that information?! Not to mention GA, Twitter, Pinterest, etc, etc, etc.
It reminds me a lot of the late 90's when making your website accessible to blind/deaf/impaired people became a big thing. That fell out of offline legislation that (correctly) required buildings to be accessible. Sure loads of noise was made about it and companies spent lots of money making their websites accessible but was anyone ever charged? Few ,if any, were ever charged because it's impossible to police. There are sites (BIG Sites) out there now that are not accessible to impaired users. Are those websites being sued by the thousands? No.
The new cookie law probably means a few big sites might get the fine. The legislators will be looking at amazon, ebay and other massive sites. Fining small businesses, stand alone webmasters or even bloggers is ludicrous. I recommend if you are worried put the same bit of code Toble has on his site. (nice find btw Toble)
Toble said:
From here:
http://www.civicuk.com/cookie-law/index
Then just wait a few months and see how the powers that be try and (and fail) to enforce this.
I wouldn't be surprised if GA and facebook embed codes get updated to comply with this legislation. A popup that says hey we're {facebook|Google} it's our cookie is that ok? Sure it's not directly in their interest but they want people to keep using analytics and keep putting like buttons on their websites.
In the next few months you'll probably see cookie providers adjusting their systems so out of the box the comply with biscuit law.
2p