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

theregister.co.uk

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

#71

Post by Mahn »

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…

What if my startup does not require tricky or infelicitous shit with your personal data, but due to strict regulation I now require to hire a full time lawyer just to redact the company terms and keep up with regulations, and since my company does not yet make any revenue and I have no investors that means a lot more risk on my side, which in turns leads me to not start or not go on with that company at all? And what if this decrease in garage startups leads to less competition and more concentration of power for the big companies, which then can happily lobby and influence laws to their own interests with no one to contest them? Is that the deal that we want in exchange for mildly inconveniencing Facebook and Google?

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

#72

Post by CamTin »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #59
duxup wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what?

When can Congress pass a law requiring newspapers to delete information it has collected about somebody?

They've done so in other industries a couple times with HIPAA and FERPA. What makes newspapers different?

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

#73

Post by vertex-four »

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.

Note that in the US, you have certain rights over a variety of sorts of data - a large and well-known field being that of healthcare data about yourself.

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

#74

Post by dbasedweeb »

Mahn wrote: post #71
Frondo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if my startup does not require tricky or infelicitous shit with your personal data, but due to strict regulation I now require to hire a full time lawyer just to redact the company terms and keep up with regulations, and since my company does not yet make any revenue and I have no investors that means a lot more risk on my side, which in turns leads me to not start or not go on with that company at all? And what…

Is it really so hard to believe that people are all out of trust and goodwill at this point? It’s like having a classroom full of toddlers who all play with matches, and every few weeks they burn the whole school down. Finally the teachers makes rule: no one gets to play with matches. A couple of kids say they’re very responsible and never set fire to anything.

Nobody cares.

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

#75

Post by grive »

epicmellon wrote: post #45
xevb3k wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I 100% agree. The problem is that practically rights have to be reasonably respectable (able to be respected) by people at little cost to them. Like, it's not difficult for me to not steal something from you. Erasing everything I ever wrote down about you is difficult. But also: > Seems like Europe has decided that privacy and control of data personal data is something they want. The problem here is that governments…

> Erasing everything I ever wrote down about you is difficult.

It is not difficult to avoid storing data you don't need.

You don't need a user phone number? Easy, don't ask for it.

Of course you argument is that it is difficult to change existing systems to follow this principle. Except that your starting position was that this regulation was about stifling competition, which is thus in direct contradition with this argument.

Existing systems were built on the assumption that "misappropriating" PII was a lucrative thing to do. This led to abuse from the industry.

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

#76

Post by andrepd »

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 swear I don't understand the point of this comment. What you say can be said about private property: it's just a social construct, dependent on government enforcement; or indeed about pretty much any law ever. We decided that people own information about them, and have a right to decide when and how to allow others to use it, and enshrined that right in law.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by wooter »

bhaak wrote: post #50
Karunamon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubly so when legal precedent exists that IP isn’t sufficient enough to identify a person.

There's also legal precedent that IPs can be sufficient enough to identify a person.

and its absurd, rejected, and overturned. if i use your laptop, am i you?

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

#79

Post by bmelton »

dbasedweeb wrote: post #53
jrs95 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that these rules don’t apply to governments, and that European governments generally seem to be slipping towards jailing people for thought crime, I’m skeptical as to how serious they are about privacy and control of personal data.

Please if you can, give one example of a European government jailing someone for a thought crime. To save us both time and aggravation please keep the actual definition of “thought crime” in mind, and don’t conflate it with something people actually did .

France convicted 12 pro-Palestine activists for wearing "Boycott Israel" T-shirts.

Azhar Ahmed, a British Muslim, was charged with treason, and ordered to pay a fine and complete community service because of a Facebook post he made wishing "All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL"

Herve Eon was convicted in France for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy by holding a sign that said “get lost, jerk”

And, despite your narrow definition, I posit that all of these are thought crimes in the common parlance, and even to your narrow definition, the first example showcases the assumption that being pro-Palestine is automatically anti-semitic, whether or not it actually is.

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

#80

Post by dbasedweeb »

sandworm101 wrote: post #70
dbasedweeb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please if you can, give one example of a European government jailing someone for a thought crime. To save us both time and aggravation please keep the actual definition of “thought crime” in mind, and don’t conflate it with something people actually did .

Expression of thoughts can definitely be a crime. Saying that you support X Y or Z organization or ideology can definitely see you jailed. There is also a trend, even in the US, towards keeping some prisoners behind bars for thinking certain thoughts. Sex offenders in many US states can be held long after their sentences based on mental health determinations, determinations that turn on their response to questions: t…

This is why I said, “To save us both time and aggravation please keep the actual definition of “thought crime” in mind, and don’t conflate it with something people actually did.“

Thought crime = the thought itself is a crime, i.e. simply having the thought. Expression is a totally separate thing, and using “thought crime” this way is just announcing that you didn’t actually read 1984.

Governments aren't crawling into people's heads just yet, but they are certainly willing to criminalize the communication of thought.

No shit. Communication has been subject to government intervention and overreach since th dawn of recorded history. The 1st Ammendment in the US was created for a reason.

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