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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

#91

Post by 3pt14159 »

tarr11 wrote: post #7
neya wrote: post #2

I think this has been discussed before - The whole foundation of SalesForce is absolutely tracking every inch of a user, who you were what whitepaper you downloaded, where you're from, which stage of the funnel you're in, which industry you belong to, what's your company size, what's its revenue and the list goes on.. So, this is pretty ridiculous coming from a CEO of such a company, but hey, any publicity is good pu…

I don't think he's lying. But the reasons he wants GDPR are probably just as calculating as you would expect: 1. They already had to do most of this work for GDPR already so the cost will be lower 2. By saying this, he can be invited to meet with legislators who will shape the law. 3. Smaller competitors or startups will be discouraged from entering the market due to an increased regulatory environment (similar to PC…

There are three reasons in addition:

1. Insulating himself from future lawsuits. Judges look very favourably towards corporations that try to work with regulators before a crisis.

2. Legislating a fix reduces market demand for a technical fix. Imagine a world where a competitive platform to the internet / the web arises. In such a case if the public feels safe because of legislation then they're less likely to abandon the previous web.

3. Realistically speaking any action that would be devastating for Salesforce would be devastating for the US economy / intelligence apparatus; so either way there is going to be some measure of tracking for some amount of time. The real issue that Saleforce needs to handle is to ensure that it's ahead of its competitors and to do that it needs to see where the regulatory environment is going and plan its strategy around that.

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

#92

Post by duxup »

epicmellon wrote: post #34
duxup wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not trying to be dense here.... but what do you mean exactly?

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

#93

Post by jellicle »

epicmellon wrote: post #15

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

I would guess most home internet users could be uniquely and instantly identified by their IP address. Google, Facebook, the NSA, Experian, Transunion, Equifax, no doubt many other entities could run this function: identify_home_user(1.2.3.4) and get your name, address, SSN, etc. Even if the identification is not unique, it probably narrows down to a married couple, rarely as many as 5-6 adults. That's pretty good ID from one number.

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

#94

Post by bmelton »

dbasedweeb wrote: post #81
bmelton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, des…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17188353 Seriously, if you don’t know what something means, don’t use the the damned phrase. “For insulting” “For wearing” are not thought crimes. A handy rule to detect a thought crime is this: unless someone was jailed just for thinking it wasn’t a thought crime. Please, actually read 1984.

I've read 1984, thanks. As I mentioned (in an edit) to my post; in the first case, they weren't convicted for wearing T-shirts, because wearing T-shirts is perfectly legal. They wee convicted because of the presumption of anti-semitism in the message on the T-shirts, which is neither obvious nor absolute.

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

#95

Post by DanBC »

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.

Why do you think this is required by GDPR?

Here's the actual bit of law. Note how many exceptions there are. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/

It's not surprising you fear it so much if you think it forces you to do all the stuff you've said. What is surprising is that almost everything you've said isn't in GDPR or has been exagerated beyond recognition.

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

#96

Post by Mahn »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #8
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."

The hope is that in a new regulatory landscape we will see the emergence of new companies. Just because the tech unicorns of the last 10-15 years, like uber and facebook, were backed on odious behavior doesn't mean that a more palatable business model won't be discovered.

Since when has more regulation translated in more entrepreneurship?

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

#97

Post by whatshisface »

dnomad wrote: post #69
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."

What you don't realize is that the lawlessness around user data hurts big corporations too. If you're a big corporation collecting significant data than you've taken on a significant liability but the nature of this liability is amorphous. How much will it cost you if your data gets hacked? What will be the impact if you share the data with a partner and the partner gets hacked? How much can you share in your api? Wh…

>How much will it cost you if your data gets hacked? What will be the impact if you share the data with a partner and the partner gets hacked?

Historically, these numbers have been $0.0+/-0. Executives aren't exactly bumbling around with hazardous materials.

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

#98

Post by coding123 »

epicmellon wrote: post #56
jellicle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Patents, yeah. Copyright and trademark are really about fraud than theft. Trade secrets are trade secrets: the violation comes from trying to circumvent security, not having the data itself. So I'd say it is very nuanced ;)

In copyright law you can still be caught holding illegally some data you obtained even if you did not personally steal the data and was simply given to you by the thief.

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

#99

Post by mbesto »

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."

This is exactly why he's saying it. Anyone who follows Benioff and the Oracle ilk knows this. Which is why GDPR needs to be scaled appropriately so that it fosters innovation while still protecting customers interests. Having a lower bound of €10M in penalties with no respect to how much data the company holds is what makes this taxing for startups.

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

#100

Post by woogle »

Mahn wrote: post #96
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hope is that in a new regulatory landscape we will see the emergence of new companies. Just because the tech unicorns of the last 10-15 years, like uber and facebook, were backed on odious behavior doesn't mean that a more palatable business model won't be discovered.

Since when has more regulation translated in more entrepreneurship?

I think the point was something like “constraint forces creativity”
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