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GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

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Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#521

Post by Sargos »

mrmekon wrote: post #136

I'm in the EU, and a couple of the corporate VPNs I have used here have had their exit IP in the U.S. or Canada. Which means that when I'm at work, I appear to be in Seattle, and these sites are not blocked. Based just on that, I'd argue that "Blocking 500M Users Easier Than Complying with GDPR" is probably not even a true statement. I doubt EU regulators will go after these sites because they really aren't that cons…

Intent matters. The website clearly indicates that they do not want to serve EU users. EU law does not apply to them unless they have a physical presence in the EU.

It's trivial for end users to bypass any restriction through technical means (whether legal or illegal). The fact that they bypassed the block is an act that indicates that they are bypassing the rules and thus are forfeiting some of the protections they would enjoy otherwise.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#522

Post by ryanwaggoner »

packet_nerd wrote: post #448
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False equivalence. I don't misuse any user data, never have or will. But I'm still not compliant, nor will I be for the foreseeable future, unless someone can tell me why I should care about a law from some other country that has no mechanism of enforcement?

You may handle my data appropriatly, but how the hell do I know? Take some guy on the Internet's word for it? What I do know is that massive numbers of services like yours are missusing, mishandling, or lossing my data every year. I'm not OK with that.

OK, if you don't trust me, then please avoid using my service. It's no problem for me.

But I won't jump through hoops to reassure you. The cost is too high for too little benefit.

Two things could swing this in another direction:

1. The EU figures out how to levy fines or force compliance against small businesses in other countries.

2. The revenue loss from EU users and possibly others is so large that the benefits once again outweigh the costs.

Very skeptical on both counts.

Until then, the GDPR goes on a large pile of perhaps well-meaning laws passed by foreign governments that don't apply to me and that I can safely ignore.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#523

Post by toyg »

fixermark wrote: post #449
maushu wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised when my adblocker didn't bleep once. This is like looking what the internet could be. It could've been great.

Of course, that vision of what the internet could be never really answered the question of where the money was coming from to pay for the servers that are delivering that content.

Look at it: that's an RSS feed, basically. They could have had paywalled feeds with a standard payment system that people could write clients and aggregators for. No ads, just subscriptions.

The irony is that we'll get there, eventually: Apple and Google are slowly agreeing a payment system and then they will push it into the browser, and everyone will use it.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#524

Post by eyeinthepyramid »

eyeinthepyramid wrote: post #378
bmelton wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snark aside, that doesn't dispute the thesis that regulations tend to favor incumbents. Some regulations are good. Some regulations are bad. Some regulations are smart. Some regulations are dumb. Reasonable people can disagree on the quality or intelligence of a given regulation, or its impact on a given industry, but that doesn't change that most regulations do tend to make products more expensive to manufacture and…

There are benefits to washing the eggs, isn't there? I have read that in Europe as a consumer it's a lot more important to wash the eggs before using them.

Actually I found this post about it: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/66957/is-salmone...

Apparently there is some evidence that egg-related salmonella is 7x more prevalent in Europe vs the US.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#525

Post by Tomte »

We're so acclimated to having no choice that I was genuinely surprised when I clicked on "Do not accept" at the http://politico.com web site and... nothing bad happened. I could read it as always.

Clicking "Do not accept" made me nervous and feel somewhat rebellious.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#526

Post by ryanwaggoner »

stale2002 wrote: post #469
mrmekon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment doesn't make a statement about how things should be. It's a statement about the complexities of a technical implementation: _If_ it is true that the GDPR covers an EU person's data held by any company worldwide, regardless of how or whether it should, an IP block might not be accepted as compliance. Or it might, if the EU regulators decide that best-effort is enough. The important point is that many Europe…

Well then these EU users are illegally accessing a computer and have broken the computer fraud and abuse act. These users should be prosecuted to the fullest extent in the US for their illegal computer usage.

Eh, I'm not sure we want to go down that road either, but it's an interesting thought experiment. If you declare that EU visitors are unwelcome and unauthorized, are they violating the law by working around that? I find the idea both horrifying and interesting. So many GDPR fans here seem outraged at sites blocking access to them, which seems an acknowledgement that they want to have their cake and eat it too. What if criminal penalties for attempting such enter the mix?

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#527

Post by rasz »

flohofwoe wrote: post #48

Alternatively there's this: https://eu.usatoday.com/ No ads, no tracking, no cookies, not even Javascript. Just plain HTML+CSS and JPEG images. The whole front page is around 650 KByte, and by far most of this is in the image files. As a result the page looks very clean and loads very fast. This is what all news web sites should look like, not just for EU readers (although I fear that this is just a temporary solutio…

>https://eu.usatoday.com/ is fantastic, loads instantly, no clutter, smooth experience, I love it.

I am willing to believe it to be someones idea of sarcasm, lets strip our website of all the "goodies", give viewers poorer experience and watch the cries!!1 Except its actually better, and I wouldnt be surprised if it vanishes really quickly once they realize it backfired by reminding users how fast and clean web once was.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#529

Post by [deleted] »

flohofwoe wrote: post #48

Alternatively there's this: https://eu.usatoday.com/ No ads, no tracking, no cookies, not even Javascript. Just plain HTML+CSS and JPEG images. The whole front page is around 650 KByte, and by far most of this is in the image files. As a result the page looks very clean and loads very fast. This is what all news web sites should look like, not just for EU readers (although I fear that this is just a temporary solutio…

[deleted]

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#530

Post by nxc18 »

rasz wrote: post #527
flohofwoe wrote: post #48

Alternatively there's this: https://eu.usatoday.com/ No ads, no tracking, no cookies, not even Javascript. Just plain HTML+CSS and JPEG images. The whole front page is around 650 KByte, and by far most of this is in the image files. As a result the page looks very clean and loads very fast. This is what all news web sites should look like, not just for EU readers (although I fear that this is just a temporary solutio…

> https://eu.usatoday.com/ is fantastic, loads instantly, no clutter, smooth experience, I love it. I am willing to believe it to be someones idea of sarcasm, lets strip our website of all the "goodies", give viewers poorer experience and watch the cries!!1 Except its actually better, and I wouldnt be surprised if it vanishes really quickly once they realize it backfired by reminding users how fast and clean web once…

It force redirects me to www. on mobile for me :(
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