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The European Union versus the Internet

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Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#41

Post by deltron3030 »

mrmekon wrote: post #18

In my network of friends, which is within the EU and comprised entirely of EU citizens and spans multiple EU tech companies from dinky startups to Giant Unicorn, GDPR has been almost universally approved. We had to implement it, and generally feel better for having done so. The Giant Unicorn employees were dismayed by how little time they were given for such a giant task, but were in support of the law. Everybody is…

>GDPR is not a law about "The Internet", it is a law about company records. It applies to Google, but it also applies to the Pakistani food stand on the corner. It affects Google a lot more, sure.

It's about full stack owners vs. people who depend on modules to operate, not size of the company. And controlling or maintaining consistentcy across all those modules might be difficult when it comes to GDPR. Just think about plugin pipelines that many small businesses build with Wordpress and similar, where every service that sits between your app and your database needs to be compliant if you want to comply with GDPR.

The pakistani foodstand might be a full stack owner like Google, but in small, he controls his stack and can manually delete all records if neccessary.

But if you use modules/services you can't really reach into the DB's of your module providers.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#42

Post by panzagl »

Semaphor wrote: post #22
kodablah wrote: post #3

> This brings me to a piece of legislation I have been very critical of for quite some time: GDPR. The intent of the legislation is certainly admirable — protect consumer privacy —although (and this may be the American in me speaking) I am perhaps a bit skeptical about just how much most consumers care relative to elites in the media. Amen. The way Google and FB are using data just doesn't bother the masses the way i…

> although (and this may be the American in me speaking) I am perhaps a bit skeptical about just how much most consumers care relative to elites in the media. The difference in general between EU and USA: in the EU it's seen as a good thing to protect people even when they don't understand why. In the USA, excluding weird outliers like "careful, fresh coffee is hot" it's not.

The US assumes people are capable of understanding things for themselves- my grocery store tracks my purchases in exchange for coupons and discounts, I feel it's worth it. FB holds my family's pictures hostage to show me ads, not worth it. Simple.

The EU also seems to assume that if someone is making money, someone else is being damaged- that every economic exchange is unfair. I don't really think that's true- it's not that Google or FB is taking massive advantage of me, they are taking a teeny-tiny bit of advantage of a massive number of people.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#43

Post by ocdtrekkie »

tw1010 wrote: post #16

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from t…

The "US blogosphere"'s perspective is heavily weighted by people who are employed by companies which lose money because of EU laws, people who have invested in companies which lose money because of EU laws, or people who are paid by companies which lose money because of EU laws.

Which is to say, I'm an American who's wildly in favor of the EU's regulatory changes to reign in big tech, but when you consider how many different individuals or organizations are by FAANG companies, the media perspective on these laws can be... tainted by self-interest.

Also note that movies and TV are often oddly at odds with even the industry that creates them. For instance, Hollywood is notoriously liberal (to the point that conservatives have to hide their political affiliation), and hence very pro gun control. Yet if you've seen many of our movies, you might have noticed that building props for Hollywood is a statistically significant portion of the gun manufacturing industry!

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#44

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ktosobcy wrote: post #33
tw1010 wrote: post #16

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from t…

My perception and view of the US and it's culture also slightly shifted after GDPR came into spotlight (same conclusions as yours). Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it gives you freedom". The problem is - the argument (my underst…

Idk how you can argue the EU values people over corporate interest while this copyright law is on it's way to being passed.

Here's one of the many articles about what's wrong with it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal...

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#45

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #29
tw1010 wrote: post #16

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from t…

I also found the reaction interesting because even techies here were overwhelmingly in favour of GDPR. Mainly because it is so similar to data protection that's been in place for 20 years and they have been used to implementing without problem. That included founders and executives within companies. Thanks to the profile of people I know that's been mainly in smaller companies. Most of the negative opinion I heard wa…

>and to deliberately misunderstand that a maximum penalty wasn't going to be the always penalty.

This is the only way to view penalties like this that don't have clearly defined criteria. It's all up to a judge, and when so much is at risk, a company will assume the worse.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#46

Post by AnimalMuppet »

furgooswft13 wrote: post #14
reacweb wrote: post #12

The usage of natural language to write legislations about internet will always create ambiguities and loopholes. I think regulations should be writen in a mathematical language with proof of consistency and unambigous reference implementation of algorithms that are imposed to FAI.

Lets pass a law that states all laws must be written in Haskell! Best part about it is much fewer laws will be written since so few understand that language.

But the laws that were written would apply to all, even those who don't know Haskell. That's probably not a desirable outcome.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#47

Post by charleslmunger »

deltron3030 wrote: post #41
mrmekon wrote: post #18

In my network of friends, which is within the EU and comprised entirely of EU citizens and spans multiple EU tech companies from dinky startups to Giant Unicorn, GDPR has been almost universally approved. We had to implement it, and generally feel better for having done so. The Giant Unicorn employees were dismayed by how little time they were given for such a giant task, but were in support of the law. Everybody is…

>GDPR is not a law about "The Internet", it is a law about company records. It applies to Google, but it also applies to the Pakistani food stand on the corner. It affects Google a lot more, sure. It's about full stack owners vs. people who depend on modules to operate, not size of the company. And controlling or maintaining consistentcy across all those modules might be difficult when it comes to GDPR. Just think ab…

I am not a lawyer, but GDPR explicitly covers the plugin pipelines - they're "processors". The requirements for processors are basically that you can only use processors that are compliant with GDPR themselves. Any well designed regulation disallows skirting liability by subcontracting out functionality. Is that really unreasonable? It describes pretty clearly how to be a compliant processor, and it's basically saying that you have to have a contract with the "controller" that requires you to fulfill the same responsibilities that the controller would have under GDPR if they were doing the work in house.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-28-gdpr/

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#48

Post by walterbell »

mrmekon wrote: post #36
throwaway122378 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the specifics of the copyright law?

It's all still up in the air, and the wording is vague. GDPR's wording is also vague, as EU laws are. When we read between the lines, GDPR's vagueness sounds promising (hard to over-reach, easy to understand intentions), and the Copyright Directive's vagueness sounds terrifying (easy to over-reach, hard to understand intentions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_... A big difference is in t…

Thanks for the concise scope analysis. This should be a mandatory subsection on the first page of future Internet regulations.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#49

Post by Joeri »

ktosobcy wrote: post #33
tw1010 wrote: post #16

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from t…

My perception and view of the US and it's culture also slightly shifted after GDPR came into spotlight (same conclusions as yours). Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it gives you freedom". The problem is - the argument (my underst…

In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.

I think it’s more about two different definitions of freedom. The U.S. defines it as the freedom to choose, where harmful outcomes are an accident of letting people freely choose. The E.U. sees it more as the freedom to live, where choices that harm quality of life need to be restrained.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#50

Post by ergothus »

tw1010 wrote: post #16

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from t…

Be careful about assuming too much consistency in the US populace. I'm born-and-raised US, and our attitudes can be very hard to describe. We'll hate "Obamacare" but actually support all the individual parts. We'll complain about govt spending then complain when the govt doesn't function. We'll complain that people don't trust science about global warming but avoid vaccines and expect GMOs to actually mutate us. We'll complain about "participation trophies" but want benefits for seniority without regard to performance. We'll celebrate a rancher facing off against the govt and then rail against someone else "taking the law into their own hands".

Then we'll reverse any of these positions at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying we're RANDOM, I'm saying it can look so. There might be dozens of upcoming responses to this comment, each suggesting a different "simple" solution ("It's about self-interest" "It's about freedom" "it's about personal responsibility") but they will all either fail to reconcile, or give you a simple explanation that is nonetheless hard to extrapolate how the public will respond to a given topic.

My personal opinion is that neither the EU nor the US has an optimal economic outlook, but it may not be possible to have one - it's hard to combine the benefits of rugged individualism with the benefits of communal cohesion. Hard to mix diversity with unity.

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