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Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

express.co.uk

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Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#201

Post by toomuchtodo »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #198
toomuchtodo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not hubris to call it "no loss" if, say, 3 hours ago, "Design of a LISP-based microprocessor / Page 22 has a map of the processor layout:" was forever lost to humanity, as collateral damage to some techbros' dispute? https://web.archive.org/web/20230427181813/https://i.imgur.c... (link is already dead at Imgur) Wayback will have them, as is tradition. A crawl (non IA) has been kicked off to reconcile to ensur…

This is much less accessible to the average user and there's no guarantee that archive sites will be here in the future https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-...

The Internet Archive will outlast Imgur. I'm willing to bet on it if you'd like, feel free to propose terms for resolution and preferred forum.

(Accessing Imgur archives in Wayback is as trivial as a browser extension for your average user; Imgur has raised $60M and only does ~$30M/year, they will eventually be sold or close as the user experience degrades as operators and investors attempt to squeeze more from the enterprise)

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#202

Post by Vespasian »

lurk2 wrote: post #165
Analemma_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard you are proposing here ultimately boils down to "you can do business in a country without being subject to its laws, as long as your commercial transactions with the customers in that country are laundered through a sufficiently convoluted network of international companies like payment processors and ad exchanges". I don't think it should be terribly surprising that states don't subscribe to this view o…

The standard you’re proposing would allow Afghanistan to shut down Hacker News on the basis that it provided services to at least one Afghan and the content here violates sharia law.

As Afghanistan has recently disconnected their Internet they seem to have done exactly that within their sphere of influence (which is limited to their borders).

So you are entirely right any country can do that at any time. Most countries don't have a way to enforce it on you or your users.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#203

Post by shagie »

Spivak wrote: post #197
ryandrake wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so ambiguous. Let's say I'm a citizen of country A, currently residing in country B. I'm using a VPN headquartered in country C to make my traffic appear to originate from country D. I access a web site with servers physically located in country E, that uses a load balancer / cache hosted in country F. The company that runs the web site is headquartered in country G but has employees in countries H, I, and J. Wh…

Seems like B and G. Then if you do business with A (what the GPDR calls "UK Establishment") and A has laws governing its citizens abroad like the UK GPDR then also A.

But the traffic is coming from country D rather than country B. There's no way for the company to know that the person and their interactions is subject to the laws of B rather than D.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#204

Post by IshKebab »

fifticon wrote: post #192

imgur itself is an empty husk of its former self. Last time I visited their site, they had fired all their moderators and replaced them with AI. They were bought at some point by .. media labs? I don't recall their name, but I recall that they are moneygrubbing bastards, to phrase it in neutral terms. I don't intend to visit their site again. Instead, I have made an AI agent that can do it for me.

Yeah I think no other sites have done this because fundamentally they like money. Imgur have probably only done this because they're making less money from the UK than it would cost to deal with this law.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#205

Post by Vespasian »

lurk2 wrote: post #170
seanhunter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already need to care depending on what you are serving, and this has been the case for at least 20 years to my knowledge. The most obvious example of this is websites from the UK or Europe which operate any kind of gambling. [1] This may well be legal (based on licensing) in their jurisdiction, but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US'…

> but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US's gambling laws. Why not just avoid travel to the US?

The US has a huge reach in the western (and global) world and can impact you in a lot of creative and legal ways (e.g. prevent Google / Apple / Microsoft from offering services to you).

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#206

Post by chrisjj »

baobun wrote: post #159
chrisjj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must have had a UK bank account or similar How so? None is needed to take revenue from UK-seen ads.

They had more business than that in the UK. UK advertisers as customers for example

I do not see how having UK advertisers necessitates the publisher having a UK bank account.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#208

Post by hamdingers »

pavon wrote: post #182
thegrim33 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how it's always "oh just safeguard people's data", oh "just" don't do anything bad with people's data. Then you look up what the actual regulation says and it's hundreds of pages of pure legaleese (over 100 pages for GDPR, over 300 for Online Safety Act), that you'd need to hire a team of lawyers to parse and interpret to make sure you're not breaking any of the regulations therein.

The US tax code is over 2.5k pages, with an additional 10k pages of regulations. And I manage to file my taxes fine every year without having read all that because most of it doesn't apply to me. Following the GDPR is easy if you aren't trying to maximize tracking with minimal concessions to the law.

> because most of it doesn't apply to me

Maybe, you hope. Unless you've read (and understood!) all of it you can't say this with certainty.

In all likelihood you trust a 3rd party company like Intuit and their team of lawyers to tell you what actually applies to you.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#209

Post by josephg »

shagie wrote: post #203
Spivak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like B and G. Then if you do business with A (what the GPDR calls "UK Establishment") and A has laws governing its citizens abroad like the UK GPDR then also A.

But the traffic is coming from country D rather than country B. There's no way for the company to know that the person and their interactions is subject to the laws of B rather than D.

Most sales aren’t that complicated. Usually UK law targets anything sold to people who are physically in the UK, paying in GBP. Which from the sounds of things, was something imgur did.

Does it also count for people in the UK using a vpn? What about people in the UK paying using American money? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t really matter. These laws target the service providers, not the customers. If you website says “this product isn’t available to UK residents” and you IP block and don’t take GBP as a payment method, nobody will get too angry if a spattering of tech savvy people get around the block using a VPN.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#210

Post by donatj »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #172
chmod775 wrote: post #7

Imgur only has yearly revenues of around $30m. The money they make in the UK specifically likely doesn't justify wasting resources on compliance.

It is an image storage service masquerading as a business. It will be of no loss if it were to fail entirely.

> image storage service masquerading as a business

…

> service

Money is good for goods and services…

If people give them money or cough ad revenue and get the service they want, that’s called a business.

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