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Comment by nokcha | Hacker News Reader

And it's also protected by the right of freedom of speech: the entity operating the git server has the right to inform the public of who committed which changes. The GDPR explicitly recognizes "exercising the right of freedom of expression and information", although I'm not sure how European courts would interpret this provision. But for an American entity without a physical presence or assets in Europe, any EU judgment would be quickly quashed by American courts.

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And Facebook has the right to 'inform' another company about all data it collected from its users (only in exchange for a nice sum of money!)

Except in the EU, freedom of speech and privacy are both considered human rights, which need to be weighed against each other. Freedom of speech will win when someone uses the GDPR to try to censor e.g. an online news article with some personal facts. But it won't for my Facebook tongue-in-cheek example, and I doubt it will for the redacted committer example either.

How would the judgement be quashed by american courts? No american court has jurisdiction over European courts. For an entity without presence or business in Europe, enforcing a european court decision might be a problem, but that’s a different matter. I’m sure the EU will find a way if the sum is sufficiently high.

Sorry, I was sloppy in saying that the judgment itself would be quashed. What I meant is that any attempt to enforce the judgment would be quashed. Since (by assumption) the defendant doesn't any assets in Europe to pay the fine, enforcing the judgment would require going after the defendant's assets located in the US. American courts will typically enforce foreign judgments from 'friendly' jurisdictions, but if the judgment is incompatible with American law, American courts will quash any attempt to enforce the judgment in the US.

Of course, Facebook and other large American corporations can be expected to comply with GDPR, since the cost of compliance is much less than the opportunity cost of being excluded from the EU market.

Sure, but these are two entirely different matters. Having an open, unenforced judgment against you might lead to complications, for example if the defendant happens to travel to the EU. It’s unlikely that a minor fine will be enforced by snatching the defendant at the airport, but it could at least legally an option.

Or the defendant may later open up a German subsidiary or plan on selling to a company with a german subsidiary. Things would get complicated in those cases.

So it’s important to be somewhat precise here - no enforcement doesn’t equal squashed judgment.

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