Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 231 posts

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#31

Post by xevb3k »

epicmellon wrote: post #13
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

That's exactly what this is. GDPR is untenable and creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data. The only reasonable thing I can see out of it is getting companies to clarify (simplify) their EULAs.

I used to think more like this.

Then when I thought about it I decided that essentially all “ownership” rights are like this. Intellectual property and physical property laws are artificial. There is no basic right, they are all rights created where “none exist”.

They can be useful though, and part of how we decide what kind of society we want to create. Seems like Europe has decided that privacy and control of data personal data is something they want.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#32

Post by TremendousJudge »

epicmellon wrote: post #13
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

That's exactly what this is. GDPR is untenable and creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data. The only reasonable thing I can see out of it is getting companies to clarify (simplify) their EULAs.

why should every company on the planet know everything I do on the Internet?

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#34

Post by epicmellon »

duxup wrote: post #24
epicmellon wrote: post #15

Can we just take a step back and admit that treating an IP address as personal information is patently ridiculous?

What does that have to do with the article?

Well if the USA were to have a law that is GDPR "like", that's in there.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#35

Post by kinsomo »

epicmellon wrote: post #13
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

That's exactly what this is. GDPR is untenable and creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data. The only reasonable thing I can see out of it is getting companies to clarify (simplify) their EULAs.

> GDPR...creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data.

You could literally say that about any property right ever. For instance: common law creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own your toothbrush. Matter is matter.

The law can create rights. That's how most rights are created.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#36

Post by angott »

epicmellon wrote: post #15

Can we just take a step back and admit that treating an IP address as personal information is patently ridiculous?

No, it is not ridiculous. Yes, an IP alone is probably worthless. But take an IP together with even a seemingly insignificant piece of information, and you have the potential to know a lot more. I think that's why the EU regulators decided to consider IPs as personal data.

Example: you run a website and in your log file you only collect IP addresses, apparently anonymous. Log lines come with a timestamp. You now know that a user at IP X visited your website at time Y. Sounds like this should be personal information in my opinion, and that log file should be protected.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#37

Post by jellicle »

epicmellon wrote: post #13
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

That's exactly what this is. GDPR is untenable and creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data. The only reasonable thing I can see out of it is getting companies to clarify (simplify) their EULAs.

You also oppose copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret and official secrets laws, I suppose. DATA IS DATA. There's no nuance possible. It's just DATA, completely removed from the human realm.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#38

Post by snomad »

epicmellon wrote: post #13
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

That's exactly what this is. GDPR is untenable and creates magical rights where none exist. You don't own information about you. Data is data. The only reasonable thing I can see out of it is getting companies to clarify (simplify) their EULAs.

> You don't own information about you. Data is data.

This seems like a strange stance. Clearly some data is not just data and must be protected, for example Top Secret information. From a broad consumer perspective, we have FERPA and HIPAA, which place restrictions on educational and health information.

Have you considered the wild west of no data restrictions was the anomaly, not the other way around? Or, are you of the mind that HIPAA and FERPA should be scrapped?

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#39

Post by trjordan »

jiggliemon wrote: post #22

Can’t all this GDPR stuff be abstracted away into a framework? Or at least some kind of pattern/generator tooling? It seems like there’s room for an enterprise framework that does all the compliance work for you (for US gov contacts, i18n, user info download etc). Maybe calling it enterprise is a misnomer. Maybe it’s a spec that framework’s can target or comply with?

Salesforce, roughly speaking.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#40

Post by wyldfire »

Frondo wrote: post #14
wyldfire wrote: post #3

A consumer protection law like GDPR would probably be a good thing for US, but it's hard not to see this as SFDC saying, "As a multibillion-dollar SaaS vendor, we welcome regulation that might slow down or prevent a competitor from unseating us."

Like I said the last time this subject came up, fine. That's totally fine. I don't care which incumbents will be okay in a world with better laws around privacy. I want better laws around privacy. If your startup to unseat Salesforce requires doing tricky or infelicitous shit with my personal data, I don't want you to be able to operate, full stop. Your business shouldn't exist, if its existence requires schlepping o…

> If your startup to unseat Salesforce requires doing tricky or infelicitous shit with my personal data, I don't want you to be able to operate, full stop.

Yeah, I'm onboard (like I said, I think the intent of the law is good) -- but regulatory compliance is expensive and in general creating a SaaS business is not. Compliance is more than just doing the right thing, BTW, it's creating processes, audits, attorneys, etc to prove that you're doing the right thing. One of SFDC's risks is that today a competitor could probably arrive and eat up their business by emulating their business model and undercutting their costs. They're very well placed to establish or enhance their existing regulatory compliance team(s).

Post reply on HN