Hacker News Reader

Why would GitHub as an American company follow EU law? Or are they just really trying to prevent bad laws?

Because they have users and business in EU. If you want to sell stuff in EU, that product must comply with EU law.

Yes I understand that they want to offer their services in Europe, but the servers are in the US and billing is also not handled by a European branch company afaik. I’m really just wanted to know if and how the EU could force GitHub to comply with this law. Ban their service?

Or could it have to do with the successor agreement of safe harbor?

The EU can impose penalties. For example the new EU data protection laws have this as the maximum penalty: a fine up to €20 million or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year in case of an enterprise, whichever is greater

I guess Github could decline to pay. But then they could do no business in the EU, and then there is the likely impact on Github employees - similar to how BetonSports' CEO was arrested when he changed planes in the US: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...

> Why would GitHub as an American company follow EU law?

Because they might be interested in doing business in EU?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com