NukeCops - Privacy and Cookies

Dear Nukers, Recently I received a letter full of noble resentment from a group of distinguished academics, part of a H-NET list, to the effect that Nuke-based sites are dangerous to the general visitors, since they do indiscriminately set cookies and, in fact, are tracking their guests, irrespectively of their wish or lack of whatever desire to become members. Here is what they say:

It is not clear to me as to why a site that is ostensively academic in its focus would have a need to track its users, but in any case, you (the members of the list) should probably be aware of this.

To this I replied:

Indology Net uses an advanced content management system with member's registration, topical subscriptions, private messaging, personal web mail and other extras which are impossible without setting cookies. Without these small pieces of code stored on your computer, not in our system, the CMS server would not be able to recognize you and to offer you the survices one has subscribed to. Cookies are not for tracking users - this is impossible, delete your cookies and you will see that the system will not recognize you, - they are for member's convenience and do not present any harm to one's hardware, software or moralware. I am very much sorry for having to discuss such issue, but since there can be always questions, I'd like to assure you that using cookies is harmless. Cookies are not spies, please, treat them as friendly gobetweens.

The reaction was that I am underestimating the issue, that this CMS is doing a bad service to the community, that setting cookies is justified only "as long as one has explicitly agreed to subscribe, requested to receive such services, or overly declared the intention to become a member of the site in some manner or another... Cookies do store personal user information, and do make computer user habits available to the cookie owners, which is why browsers include settings for blocking their usage." So, good friends, advise me what to reply and, most importantly, what to do. Can we disable setting cookies for guests? Or this is something without which Php-Nuke will not properly work? Anyway, my targeted community is generating suspicions in the good will and net-morality of our Nuke sites. And this suspicions and blames come from a List hosted by the university that invented Internet. Are they justified?