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Comment by encoderer | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it’s my American DNA but I don’t want European laws. I don’t suspect this to be a popular sentiment here.

Not wanting European laws is likely the core of your American DNA.

American's national identity is wrapped up in founding of their government and throwing off "oppressive" European laws is at the center of that narrative.

I don't think it's about adopting European laws, it's about following a set of principles on how they handle personal data. These set of principles happen to be inspired in an European law, all they're asking is to use them as a baseline.

Why the distinction? A good law is still a good law, regardless of its origin.

Same is true of a bad law as well. GDPR has good intent, but it’s not clear that it’s a good law yet.

How is the country/continent of origin of a regulation that is entirely in your best interest of any relevance?

> How is the country/continent of origin of a regulation that is entirely in your best interest of any relevance?

Laws carry their culture. GDPR is, from an American perspective, an overworked mess designed to support a big bureaucracy. This side of the Atlantic, we'd do something slimmer, more reliant on privately-funded cases (and regulatory complaints) versus public ombudsmen, and better attuned to start-ups’ needs.

Indeed. A law is just a text in a hierachy of norms, and so is this text. Accordingly, its weight may vary from country to country in the EU, first because the relationship between the Constitution of a country and the EU norms may not be the same. Moreover, one should not forget that enforcing a law requires a whole judicial system, and once again, this judicial system may vary from country to country in the EU. Think of the GDPR as a program : it runs with some privileges in a given software context and requires some hardware ressources to run.

IMHO, as an EU citizen, an American perspective would be welcome. A text must fit the local hierarchy of norms and the local judicial system.

You may read this article related to this point of view : https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21739961-gdprs-premis...

This correctly represents my feelings about it.

How many pages are there in your tax code?

>a regulation that is entirely in your best interest

doesn't exist

I don't fully understand what you mean. Do you want Europe to be a lawless continent? Or do you not want a private, multi-national company to voluntarily apply a data protection framework uniformly to all of its users simply because the EU requires them to apply it to EU residents?

Both of these things are out of scope for you, no? I suppose you could vote with your shares if you own stock in Facebook...

I generally agree with your statement of not wanting European laws due to cultural differences, but America is in sore need of privacy laws for citizens. People will be rallied to oppose said laws for the exact reason of not wanting Euro-style laws passed, which IMO is a huge shame.

Plenty of EU people are forced to follow certain US laws, from DMCA etc, to banking laws.

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