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How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

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Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#121

Post by M2Ys4U »

bflesch wrote: post #57
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see this as yet another tax on (European) startups who have to invest even more resources into regulatory compliance. This also affects American companies and the degree it affects you primarily depends on how much of your business model was depending on you doing nefarious things with customer data.

Of course this affects american companies, as the whole thing is primarily designed as a weapon for the EU against US dominance in the consumer space. The big problem for the EU is that consumers actually choose the best product in a free market (the internet of free services), and they overwhelmingly decided to use the US-based options. All the framing as "nefarious" is propaganda, consumers choose freely the option…

> Of course this affects american companies, as the whole thing is primarily designed as a weapon for the EU against US dominance in the consumer space.

It really isn't.

The EU are global leaders in data protection, and it comes from a belief that the right to a private life is a fundamental human right.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#122

Post by raugustinus »

danarmak wrote: post #16
dordoka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that sentence is referencing article 43. IANAL. See http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5419-2016-IN...

Article 43: > In order to ensure that consent is freely given, consent should not provide a valid legal ground for the processing of personal data in a specific case where there is a clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller, in particular where the controller is a public authority and it is therefore unlikely that consent was freely given in all the circumstances of that specific situation. Consent…

That's like a 50+ word sentence. I do hate these legal shenanigans. If you can't write it in plain English is not worth the bytes taken.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#123

Post by cm2187 »

antoncohen wrote: post #94

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies. Take the right to be forgotten . First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't…

I believe that in many countries there has been laws for a while mandating the deletion of personal data after a certain number of years (for instance I believe this is the case in banking). This is not new and if your backup system does not comply with regulations, it's probably more of a design problem.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#124

Post by M2Ys4U »

pascalxus wrote: post #61
bflesch wrote: post #41

I see this as yet another tax on (European) startups who have to invest even more resources into regulatory compliance. This prohibition of freely using all available data will create great arbitrage opportunity for the shadow economy, and will have a net negative effect on innovation. I think prohibition has very bad side effects, and that MORE transparency is the way forward in politics, economy, and also society.…

It's true. GOOG/FB have the economies of scale to deal with this. Start ups don't. This will hurt start ups more than it does GOOG/FB.

It's not hard to comply.

Don't collect data you don't need. Don't collect data you don't have explicit consent (or a legitimate need) for. Don't use data collected for one purpose for another purpose.

That'll get you almost all of the way to complying.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#125

Post by tajen »

keldaris wrote: post #67
golemotron wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood what would happen if Google or Facebook just ignored EU regulations, claimed that they were not under the EU's jurisdiction, and ignored any judgement. Would the EU erect a great firewall at that point?

Couldn't they just take the money owed the usual way, by freezing accounts, confiscating assets, etc.? None of these corporations can feasibly avoid that without exiting EU markets altogether.

Plus, as long as both EU and US are part of WTO, they are required to enforce each other's laws. Otherwise Europe could legitimately raise tariffs for the whole IT sector...

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#126

Post by Silhouette »

shadowtree wrote: post #32

And if you think GDPR is a toothless joke, let's take a look at the defined fine stucture. It is pretty simple, only 3 levels (strikes for the fellow Americans): Strike 1 - Stern warning letter Strike 2 - 2% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher) And now you know why GDPR is a board level topic. Keep in mind that the EU/US Safe Harbor agreement got…

For startups - GDPR is like Y2K at the time, a GOLDMINE.

Unless you're a start-up that handles personal data, in which case it's another bureaucratic overhead that also carries a risk of draconian penalties if you make a mistake, even if you have perfectly sensible reasons for working with that data and you're not doing anything at all surprising or dubious with it.

Of course, the EU has form for this, given its similar approach to both consumer protection and VAT rules in recent years. It does seem to have an unhelpful habit of imposing regulations at big business scale to deal with big business scale problems, but not considering that both of these may be wildly disproportionate for smaller businesses.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#127

Post by antoncohen »

bjl wrote: post #102
antoncohen wrote: post #94

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies. Take the right to be forgotten . First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't…

> You will basically need to hire full-time compliance officers to deal with this. The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers. Or they could, I don't know, just not collect that data in the first place.

It isn't that simple. When people think about these privacy laws that is what they think about, some evil corporation tracking tons of private info.

The company I work for has no ads. It does no analytics on personal info. It does nothing you would care about. What it is is a SasS product for businesses. We aren't the controller, so we don't need permission from end users, our customers need to get permission from their customers. But end users can ask our customer (the controller) to delete data, and our customer can ask us (the processor) to delete it.

Fine, we now have an engineer building GDPR features instead of features that benefit our customers. Oh well. But it isn't as clear a win for end users as people make it out to be when they only come at it from an anti-Google and anti-Facebook perspective.

It sounds good in theory, but things like Article 28 certainly make it harder to move quickly.

> The processor shall not engage another processor without prior specific or general written authorisation of the controller. In the case of general written authorisation, the processor shall inform the controller of any intended changes concerning the addition or replacement of other processors, thereby giving the controller the opportunity to object to such changes.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#129

Post by M2Ys4U »

fixermark wrote: post #3

So, how long until this one also also gets neutered when European governments realize they can't even bring their own websites into compliance with the new law? ;)

They'd have a tough time doing so; this is a Regulation (as opposed to a Directive) which means the legislation is written by the EU and applies in all EU territories automatically without being transcribed into national legislation.

That means in order for it to be changed then the European Commission would have to propose a new law, and the European Parliament and Council of the European Union will have to agree to it. The former doesn't really care about whether national governments can get on with their jobs or not.

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