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Comment by taysic | Hacker News Reader

Running on 'i would be really surprised if', and 'aren't likely to be' aren't really how businesses work.

Risk management is part of every decision a business faces, legal or compliance risks aren't any different. Can we risk the CEO and chairman travelling on the same airplane? Can we risk having our disaster recovery site in the same city as our main? Same country? Same continent? Can we risk buying all this trends-sensitive inventory? Etc.

(Potential savings or revenue) - (Somewhat easy to calculate cost) * (Difficult to assess risk) = Profit. More or less.

That's not what I was referring to at all. I mean that the sentiment of 'probably'/'likely' from a random stranger online, to a business which might have EU users but never interacted with EU regulators doesn't mean much.

Of course Instapaper shouldn't take advise from me, a random stranger online, but from lawyers.

But from my shoes (someone that run a business in the EU, is not compliant right now and is talking to a lawyer), Instapaper decision is a bad risk-management decision.

Isn't it? We're in talks with lawyers right now about some stuff (not GDPR) and they've used both those phrases. We have to assess a risk and do what seems like the best risk/reward assessment, and the lawyers can only give us advice and guidance not 100% solid answers. With GDPR not having a single enforcement action yet I can imagine the guidance there being even more vague.

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