Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#41

Post by rdiddly » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #3

So the author would rather see each state/country implement it’s own laws so that a small startup needs to ensure they comply with hundreds of regulatory jurisdictions... awesome.

That's how it is with lots of things governed by laws though. Even murderers have to deal with a confusing patchwork of laws and penalties. "Do they have to prove premeditation in this state? Can the degree of the charge be changed at trial? Is there a death penalty?" It's getting so small-time murderers have to have a wall of law books just to do business!

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#42

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

tspike wrote: post #7

A significant part of the fear comes from how poorly worded it is.

Broad wording means companies have to be conservative (collect less data) and less loopholes. That's a win for the ordinary person.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#43

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #3

So the author would rather see each state/country implement it’s own laws so that a small startup needs to ensure they comply with hundreds of regulatory jurisdictions... awesome.

If your business is operating so close to the boundary of the law that you could be breaking it in some places but not others, then yea, you should be worried.

If your business operates well above board and is not doing anything close to what might be the danger zone, then you should have nothing to worry about.

It's always the folks walking right next to the cliff complaining about how complicated their path needs to be.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#44

Post by corebit » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #11

gojomo wrote: post #8

So many NYC-based journalists who love to spit all over "Silicon Valley". Is there room for a TechCrunch-like publication with a more Silicon Valley-influenced editorial bent? (There's already a massive surplus of sneering Brooklyn-based scolds in "tech media".)

>Is there room for a TechCrunch-like publication with a more Silicon Valley-influenced editorial bent? are you actually asking for someone to purposefully preach to the quire? The function of journalism is to speak truth to power, you think facebook et al need any further help? I think they actually paid the telegraph for a series of agitprop articles, you might want to check those out.

"are you actually asking for someone to purposefully preach to the quire?"

He's both rightfully pointing out that TechCrunch is preaching to one minority choir and asking for another publication to preach to a different choir. Ironically the publication he's asking for was TechCrunch before it was bought by AOL and ruined.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#45

Post by GhettoMaestro » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

throawayuk55po wrote: post #16

We need to have a conversation about jurisdictions in the digital age. The way governments have decided that having a website accessible in a country makes you liable to respect the law of this country is a convulted and hacky notion that has been accepted way too fast. The physical establishment rule was the only sound approach. The fact that some countries started to lose shouldn't have allowed them to rewrite the…

Sorry - you aren't going to win this one.

Your argument essentially boils down to "I'm too lazy to do proper business compliance, therefore your rules should be invalidated."

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#46

Post by munk-a » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #3

So the author would rather see each state/country implement it’s own laws so that a small startup needs to ensure they comply with hundreds of regulatory jurisdictions... awesome.

Each state can choose to be as restrictive as they like in their laws, and each startup can chose to invest in compliance on a wide scale or in the narrow scale as they'd like.

It'd be nice if this was unified but it ain't because:

1. Tech companies lobby like hell at a national level

2. The national government is sort of broken right now

so that's how the cookie crumbles. The fact that a number of companies have skirted local regulations and abused data usage so much is why this is happening, so don't blame the victims of this activity that want sane privacy laws - blame the bad actors that have forced this issue to need to be dealt with.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#47

Post by citilife » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

throawayuk55po wrote: post #16

We need to have a conversation about jurisdictions in the digital age. The way governments have decided that having a website accessible in a country makes you liable to respect the law of this country is a convulted and hacky notion that has been accepted way too fast. The physical establishment rule was the only sound approach. The fact that some countries started to lose shouldn't have allowed them to rewrite the…

My favorite example is:

If a purchaser calls a suppler from state Y from state X and ask to buy something. Which laws do I follow?

* The purchaser follow laws from state X

* The supplier from state follows laws from state Y

* We then pay any duties to ship from state Y to state X

This is the way things have been done, since, well... forever. No one thinks it's weird if this kind of business is conducted in person or over the phone.

Now, with the internet - it's believed that the supplier must now take on the burden of knowing the laws for purchaser - that's kind of strange.

The supplier is not operating in country X, so it probably wont be punished by country X.

Anyway, as a developer and maintainer of making a fair amount of cross boarder trade. I host my servers in one location, the state in which I operate. Good luck punishing me.

The reality is that my only burden is the state in which I operate, otherwise we're interfering with the sovereignty of the state in which I reside... don't think they'll like that. Good luck challenging that one.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#48

Post by elondaits » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

javagram wrote: post #21

throawayuk55po wrote: post #16

We need to have a conversation about jurisdictions in the digital age. The way governments have decided that having a website accessible in a country makes you liable to respect the law of this country is a convulted and hacky notion that has been accepted way too fast. The physical establishment rule was the only sound approach. The fact that some countries started to lose shouldn't have allowed them to rewrite the…

Just block your website from being accessed in any country where you aren’t sure you can comply with their laws. A lot of sites are doing that for GDPR.

The GDPR only applies to websites / companies that either have offices / legal status in a european country or that specifically target / sell to europeans (e.g. they place ads in Europe, ship merchandise to Europe, etc.). You don't need to block european countries if you have no business or interest there.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#49

Post by gedy » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

purple_ducks wrote: post #37

throawayuk55po wrote: post #16

We need to have a conversation about jurisdictions in the digital age. The way governments have decided that having a website accessible in a country makes you liable to respect the law of this country is a convulted and hacky notion that has been accepted way too fast. The physical establishment rule was the only sound approach. The fact that some countries started to lose shouldn't have allowed them to rewrite the…

> Can you imagine owning a grocery store and having to ask every customer their nationality to check which law you must follow to do business with them Can you imagine a grocery chain who wants to profit from potential customers all over the world but doesn't want to obey local laws in the jurisdictions it operates in? If people don't want to serve people outside their jurisdiction, do an IP lookup as some US outlets…

It's more like an international customer calling a US business on the telephone and placing an order. That's not 'serving outside their jurisdiction'.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#50

Post by xg15 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

throawayuk55po wrote: post #16

We need to have a conversation about jurisdictions in the digital age. The way governments have decided that having a website accessible in a country makes you liable to respect the law of this country is a convulted and hacky notion that has been accepted way too fast. The physical establishment rule was the only sound approach. The fact that some countries started to lose shouldn't have allowed them to rewrite the…

So, out of couriosity, how would your alternative look? Anarcho-capitalism?