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It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

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Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#161

Post by veltas »

argvargc wrote: post #137
veltas wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, you're not a lawyer. IANAL either but I know enough to know people can't generally waive their rights. If they could then every website would just say "you are waiving your GDPR rights if you continue using this site" and be done with it.

I simply thought jurisdiction would be relevant here. The EU can make whatever rules it wants to cover its own citizens, and beyond that - they can't enforce them.

Apologies by the way, re-reading my post it comes across overly dismissive. I didn't intend it that way.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#162

Post by denton-scratch »

bradleyjg wrote: post #148
denton-scratch wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course regulations are not without cost to those being regulated. Lawmakers and voters would prefer not to have regulations; they would prefer if businesses just did the right thing. But they don't, so they have to be regulated. And nobody wants the cost of that regulation to fall on voters; so it falls on businesses. Hey, who makes money out of these websites? Voters? Nope. Why should anyone but businesses pay th…

It is magical thinking to believe that a law can impose a cost on businesses and it will come straight out of the pockets of the owners of that business. There’s an entire sub-field of economics devoted to studying where the incidence of taxes and regulations fall, but voters don’t care to read the literature. If it sounds like we are sticking it to the people that their oversimplified model of the world has decided…

That may well be "magical thinking"; but nobody said that costs imposed on businesses don't deplete consumers' wallets, eventually.

There's a libertarian, anti-regulation line of thought to which some USAians seem to be particularly prone.

Europe, and especially the EU, runs on regulations. Without all kinds of regulations, the EU would fall apart. Most people here understand that. They also understand that imposing costs on businesses results in marginally more expensive products (although GDPR compliance isn't expensive, especially if your gesture towards the GDPR is just a cookie wall).

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#163

Post by bradleyjg »

denton-scratch wrote: post #162
bradleyjg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is magical thinking to believe that a law can impose a cost on businesses and it will come straight out of the pockets of the owners of that business. There’s an entire sub-field of economics devoted to studying where the incidence of taxes and regulations fall, but voters don’t care to read the literature. If it sounds like we are sticking it to the people that their oversimplified model of the world has decided…

That may well be "magical thinking"; but nobody said that costs imposed on businesses don't deplete consumers' wallets, eventually. There's a libertarian, anti-regulation line of thought to which some USAians seem to be particularly prone. Europe, and especially the EU, runs on regulations. Without all kinds of regulations, the EU would fall apart. Most people here understand that. They also understand that imposing…

Europeans would rather have the GDPR than be able to read American news sites. American news sites would rather block European readers than comply with the GDPR.

Everything is working as intended, no?

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#164

Post by denton-scratch »

zinekeller wrote: post #147
denton-scratch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is trivially easy for "local american media" to solve: if you can't manage consent, then stop depositing cookies on European computers.

> then stop depositing cookies on European computers. You've got GDPR super wrong. If you think GDPR was only about cookies, you've got it wrong (but that's where Google et al. focuses your attention to be honest- disinformation about GDPR and focusing on cookies even when cookies is NOT what GDPR is about).

I know how to suck eggs already; I was a GDPR compliance officer at my last firm. It's about privacy and data protection; cookies that don't violate privacy or track users, and are needed for the proper operation of the site, don't need consent.

The subject is silly banners. Those are nearly always about cookies, or "We won't serve you because you're in Europe, and GDPR" (and the latter violates the GDPR).

My view is that these banners are partly because some businesses think that by annoying users enough, they can get European users to reverse the GDPR. Ain't gonna happen.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#165

Post by denton-scratch »

bradleyjg wrote: post #163
denton-scratch wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may well be "magical thinking"; but nobody said that costs imposed on businesses don't deplete consumers' wallets, eventually. There's a libertarian, anti-regulation line of thought to which some USAians seem to be particularly prone. Europe, and especially the EU, runs on regulations. Without all kinds of regulations, the EU would fall apart. Most people here understand that. They also understand that imposing…

Europeans would rather have the GDPR than be able to read American news sites. American news sites would rather block European readers than comply with the GDPR. Everything is working as intended, no?

No.

The GDPR requires sites not to discriminate. It is a violation to refuse to serve users because they are in Europe.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#166

Post by ryandrake »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #18

“We care about your privacy.” is also a real joker. Those boxes often provide no “opt-out all” button and force you to “object” to “legitimate interests” one-by-one even if you do “opt-out”.

Or, "We take security very seriously..." after they just got breached and their databases copied because they left a default password on a router.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#167

Post by koheripbal »

PennRobotics wrote: post #56
bradleyjg wrote: post #42

Lawmakers and voters sometimes act as if regulations are free. They think “wouldn’t it be nice” and pass on the costs to businesses. They aren’t in fact free.

Words are free. Stop saying banned customers are great. This is my argument.

The frustration in the EU is the inability to access the content, not the verbiage of the deny message.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#168

Post by koheripbal »

markus92 wrote: post #51
throwaway287391 wrote: post #22

What I don't understand is, why are these local US news sites required to comply with GDPR? I wouldn't think they'd have any obligation to follow it (or any possible recourse for not doing so) unless they have business operations in the EU. Are these local news sites in fact all owned by multinationals that do have operations in the EU? Edit: I'm getting downvoted -- just in case it helps to clarify, I'm not trying t…

Any company that serves EU residents has to comply. If they block users from the EU, they don't have to comply. Fines can be massive (up to 2% global revenue). Nexstar might not have any European assets, but non-compliance might not be a smart move if they get fined and business executives travel to Europe...

A company in the US has no legal obligation to pay fines in the EU. There is no ability to enforce these rules on US companies.

Also, individuals traveling to the EU will never be liable for the fines of their company.

Our company just completely ignores GDPR - and I suspect no one will ever care.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#169

Post by bradleyjg »

denton-scratch wrote: post #165
bradleyjg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans would rather have the GDPR than be able to read American news sites. American news sites would rather block European readers than comply with the GDPR. Everything is working as intended, no?

No. The GDPR requires sites not to discriminate. It is a violation to refuse to serve users because they are in Europe.

King Canute required the waves to stop. How did that work out for him?

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#170

Post by mmarq »

tzs wrote: post #156
mmarq wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on and lead 3 GDPR compliance projects, I can say that the cost of GDPR compliance is close to zero if your business is not tracking users or selling their data without consent. This assuming you are following best practises for storing users’ data (ie encryption, limited access to authorised personnel, etc…). If you store data without encryption, allow randos to access users’ personal data, you shouldn…

For small organizations, even if they are not tracking or doing anything with data that would need to be changed to comply with GDPR, the couple hundred or so Euros a year to comply with Article 27 [1] might be enough for them to block EU access. [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-27-gdpr/

If you are not doing anything with the data, you should just not collect it. A newspaper doesn’t need to collect my personal information.

Besides if you don’t have a regular client base in the EEA or you process and collect data only occasionally and on a small scale, you don’t have to appoint a GDPR representative.

In a few words: don’t collect data without permission, don't spy on your users, don’t profile them, don’t process or sell their data without permission, delete all data about them if they ask you to do so, and you’ll be OK.

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