Jason: Sorry, but you're simply off-base on this one. Cookies placed by third-party ad vendors are there for one central reason... to track the user's movements within a site, and between sites.
That's not a conspiracy by pro-privacy software developers (many of whom toil for free, by the way)... it's just a fact.
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and that one thing isn't malicious or even capable of generating income for the distributor of the cookie
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Profiling users and monetizing those profiles are what ad networks are all about.
Now, with that said... I agree that cookies aren't spyware. They're not any kind of "ware", for that matter. They are potential privacy hazards, but they have no inherent ability to hijack a machine or otherwise interfere with the normal use of the OS.
They are simply text files that uniquely identify a browser in some ad agency's database. And as such, are appropriate targets for deletion by pro-privacy applications.