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The European Union versus the Internet

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Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#101

Post by Dormeno »

davidhyde wrote: post #39
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…

I 100% agree with this. GDPR is a shining beacon of success and it blows my mind that it came from the same clowns that made the cookie law. They covered my internet with cookie banner graffiti and now they want to mess with something as fundamental as a hyperlink.

> GDPR is a shining beacon of success

I can't browse the internet with cookies disabled anymore because of all these horrible banners taking up the screen to take my consent.

For people who care about privacy, it's made the experience worse, not better, I even send a DNT header and still get this.

I am blocked from accessing certain sites, so now I have to route my connections through countries outside of the US, this is not a success for people like me.

If they had involved technical people, we wouldn't see such horrible implementations.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#102

Post by phobosdeimos »

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…

Yeah I always laugh when people talk about "the West". Globalization is far, so far away. Truth be told there was more unity in the world when dynastic royal families ruled the world- not democratic nation states.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mdex wrote: post #81
packet_nerd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still tracked, analyzed, and targeted both on and off the web by thousands of companies. Not to mention government snooping and surveillance. Even the social media giants which you deliberately never signed up for are still collecting and monetizing data on you.

Oh I see what you mean. Does this change if you don't use any of Google's products ie. web browser, youtube or search engines?

If you never run JavaScript, don't use an IP traceable to you, then you're probably safe from tracking. But GDPR applies offline too, so your insurance company can't increase your bill because you drink too much coffee and have a loyalty card, without you being able to trace that link.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#104

Post by tomp »

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…

It's even worse. Copyright Directive is technically bound by copyrighted content, which can grow indefinitely even without the company doing anything!

E.g. imagine a company like Snap, say that they have a constant number of users and users post a constant number of snaps per day.

Therefore the amount of content posted/stored on the site doesn't grow, but you still need to be able to keep scaling the system, as the amount of copyrighted content that you should be able to potentially recognize continues growing!

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#105

Post by ttepasse »

The author's strange interpretation of the motivations behind the GDPR makes me ask if he never spend any thought on the preceding data privacy directives and national privacy laws of EU members. It's a rather small update, not big paradigm change and the GDPR is rather in the same spirit like the privacy laws of the 90s and 80s.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#106

Post by tomp »

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…

They're just complaining because it's EU and not US. American DMCA law is much worse than GDPR, predates it by like 2 decades, and basically the whole world is subjected to some of it (because US companies are global monopolies).

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#107

Post by phobosdeimos »

r_smart wrote: post #90
Tomte wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of thousands of laws, but sure, this one is the definitive indicator of the EU's values. Maybe we could try to find a single US law that we don't like and dismiss America just as readily?

We all know you're going to pick the Patriot Act :)

How about the Second Amendment ;)

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#108

Post by AdamM12 »

"Internet tech giants including Google and Facebook could be made to monitor, filter and block internet uploads under amendments..."

Should read.

"Countless companies that do not have the resources of Google and Facebook could be made to monitor..."

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#109

Post by simion314 »

Tharkun wrote: post #78
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…

I disagree with the GDPR "success story" part of your comment. So far it's backfired entirely. The goal was to provide users with more control, and (from the standpoint of such a user) to reduce relentless personal data harvesting. That hasn't happened. What's happened is more annoying "we use cookies and track you"-banners all over the internet. As a user who doesn't use cookies, these damned things won't even go aw…

The law was not created to piss off the minority of users that do not use cookies or use plugins or extension to protect themselves, the law is intended for all users to be informed and to allow them to protect themselves.

There are many people, like my father that don't even realize that his data was collected and sold behind his back, hopefully we get some fines soon so the websites implement the law right.

What I do if I really want to read a news article I will open it in a private window, accept that crap and close the window when done, but most of the time I will not read that website and go to ones that respect the users like Europen new websites.

Re: The European Union versus the Internet

#110

Post by AdamM12 »

tomp wrote: post #100
Tharkun wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the GDPR "success story" part of your comment. So far it's backfired entirely. The goal was to provide users with more control, and (from the standpoint of such a user) to reduce relentless personal data harvesting. That hasn't happened. What's happened is more annoying "we use cookies and track you"-banners all over the internet. As a user who doesn't use cookies, these damned things won't even go aw…

Yea, I agree. AFAIK GDPR does explicitly legislate against all that - dialogues should be "opt-in" and should include a simple "no" option, and that sites shouldn't "ban" you for not clicking "yes". But unless EU actually starts delivering some hefty fines, the law is just a dead tree.

How do you suppose the site make money off their visits? To me what you want sounds like freeloading.
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