The "consent or pay" model has become the new normal in online media: the visitor must choose between data collection and a monthly fee. Behind it is a tightening EU reading of the rules, under which refusing cookies must be exactly as easy as accepting them. In April 2024 the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) set out that large online platforms must offer a genuinely free alternative that neither requires payment nor relies on behavioural data; for other operators the assessment is case by case, and a fee must not become coercion. Lamit Oy removed cookies from lamit.fi entirely: the site has no cookie banner, no third-party tracking pixels and no consent register to maintain. The decision applies the company’s Zero-Muda principle — remove what is unnecessary — to its digital environment.
Anyone browsing the web has recently run into the same frustrating phenomenon. You want to read a news item or an expert article, and the screen throws up an ultimatum: either accept all data collection and targeted advertising, or pay a monthly fee. This "consent or pay" model has quickly become a new normal that corners the visitor.
At Lamit we followed this development and made a radical but, for us, entirely natural decision in connection with our site renewal: lamit.fi is now one hundred per cent cookie-free. This article is also published in Finnish.
Why "consent or pay" spread
Behind it is a painful shift in the internet's business model. Once EU data protection authorities finally established that refusing cookies must be exactly as easy as accepting them, people logically began to protect their privacy. With refusals rising, the targeted advertising money that large media houses and ad networks had been milking collapsed. The panic response was to put a direct price tag on privacy: if we may not sell your reading habits onwards, you will pay for it out of your own pocket.
What the EU rulings actually said
Consent is not a formality, and two separate points should be kept apart:
- Consent must be genuinely free. Cookies may not be set before a choice is made, refusing must not be harder than accepting, and the choice must be as easy to withdraw as it was to give.
- "Consent or pay" is decided case by case. In April 2024 the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) set out that large online platforms must offer a genuinely free alternative that neither requires payment nor relies on behavioural data. For other operators the assessment is made case by case: a fee must not become coercion or block access to the service.
In practice the model has shifted the price of privacy onto the visitor. We decided not to take part in it at all.
Zero-Muda in the digital environment too
This choice landed perfectly. While the rest of the internet seems to be turning into a paid surveillance network, we decided to carry our company's core philosophy — Zero-Muda, the removal of everything unnecessary — into our digital environment as well. We do not force our visitors into a particular format, and we certainly do not charge for the basic right of not being spied on.
Zero-Muda is not a slogan but a design principle that applies the same rule in computation and on the website: remove the variables you do not need, so the result stays verifiable. On a website that simply means leaving out what serves no purpose.
What being cookie-free means in practice
- No cookie banner and no "accept or pay" wall. The page opens and the content is there.
- No third-party tracking pixels. No retargeting, no following a visitor from site to site.
- No consent register to maintain. No consent management platform, no version history, no withdrawal logic.
- A faster site. Every external script is load time; without them the page loads faster.
- Visitor numbers counted server-side, in aggregate. No individual visitor identifier and no browser profile.
None of this is free, but each item is a one-off. A cookie banner, by contrast, is a permanent cost: it has to be maintained, audited and updated whenever the rules or their interpretation change.
Who the site is built for
As an expert company we place strong trust in the visitor's own judgement. When an architect, a house designer or a property manager is wrestling with the new Building Act, the RAVA3Pro criteria or energy subsidy applications, they need hard physics-based facts and working software tools — not retargeting pixels chasing them around the web.
If our services — such as automatic conversion of 2D drawings into an IFC model or dynamic A-Nodes energy simulation — deliver real value to a customer, they will contact us entirely of their own accord. Trust is built on expertise, superior technology and transparency, not on covert data collection.
Let's focus on what matters
Our task is to solve the most complex challenges of building physics and information modelling. Your task is simply to carry on with your work without distractions. You are welcome to read, learn and use Lamit's tools entirely freely — whenever it suits you, without a single cookie prompt.
Let's focus on what matters. Let's focus on energy.
Author: Ari Johannes Järvinen — CEO, HVAC engineer (30+ years of experience), Lamit Oy
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