Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

> Article 3(2), a new feature of the GDPR, creates extraterritorial jurisdiction over companies that have nothing but an internet presence in the EU and offer goods or services to EU residents[1]. While the GDPR requires these companies[2] to follow its data processing rules, it leaves the question of enforcement unanswered. Regulations that cannot be enforced do little to protect the personal data of EU citizens.

> This article discusses how U.S. law affects the enforcement of Article 3(2). In reality, enforcing the GDPR on U.S. companies may be almost impossible. First, the U.S. prohibits enforcing of foreign-country fines. Thus, the EU enforcement power of fines for noncompliance is negligible. Second, enforcing the GDPR through the designated representative can be easily circumvented. Finally, a private lawsuit brought by in the EU may be impossible to enforce under U.S. law.

[snip]

> Currently, there is a hole in the GDPR wall that protects European Union personal data. Even with extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. companies with only an internet presence in the EU, the GDPR gives little in the way of tools to enforce it. Fines from supervisory authorities would be stopped by the prohibition on enforcing foreign fines. The company can evade enforcement through a representative simply by not designating one. Finally, private actions may be stalled on issues of personal jurisdiction. If a U.S. company completely disregards the GDPR while targeting customers in the EU, it can use the personal data of EU citizens without much fear of the consequences. While the extraterritorial jurisdiction created by Article 3(2) may have seemed like a good way to solve the problem of foreign companies who do not have a physical presence in the EU, it turns out to be practically useless.

The failure mode I see very often is that the frontend apparently doesn't know what the backend's doing: The part which ingests URLs and tells you what URLs have been archived does not know what archives the backend has, so it will tell you a page has been archived and give you a link to the archive, but when you click the link, it tells you it does not have the page archived, oh, look, it exists online, would you like to archive it now? Archive it again, and it will tell you that you can only archive a page once every 45 minutes. If you're a weird little obsessive like myself, you go through this process a half-dozen times for one page before it acknowledges that, yes, it does have the page archived (once, mind you) and you can actually see it.

While I'm filing bitch reports...

The Wayback Machine apparently loves setting cookies. It will set cookies until it has exceeded its own ability to accept cookies, at which point it will give you a blank page and you have to look in the developer console to figure out that it sent you a "too many cookies" error in the response header. I've had to force my browsers to not accept any cookies from the Internet Archive to fix this.

“Any sufficiently long Internet discussion will propose blockchain as a solution.”

rather than

“Blockchain is eating the world.”