Regardless of whether the cause is ignorance or cynicism; have there been other examples of times in US or EU history that governments passed such clearly 'anti-people' (for lack of a better term) laws?
As someone who runs dozens of side-projects with thousands of users, I didn't even have to change anything. All it took was to not be shitty to begin with.
Have you learned anything interesting from that?
> If I say no, they have to refrain from using it, they can't just say "well tough luck, we have it now".
Have you been doing that?
> If I give my email for a contest, they can't keep spamming me with crap.
That was already a thing in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
> If I tell them to forget I exist, they have to do it.
That could be useful, I suppose. Although to be honest, it's likely to be used to erase bad behavior that we'd rather have public much more than any legitimate privacy concern, i'd guess.
No, the few I asked turned out to have as much data as I shared, which is almost nothing.
> Have you been doing that?
Yep.
> That was already a thing in the US:
Good to know.
> it's likely to be used to erase bad behavior that we'd rather have public much more than any legitimate privacy concern, i'd guess.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but I also don't agree that people's bad behaviour should remain public forever.
Not "hire", "designate". The data protection officer is just a role that someone in the company takes on, it does't have to be their only role.
Oh, and I understand that some don't realize it, but some of us out here running and working for companies affected by these rulings are people too. I wish everyone would stop pretending who they hoped would be affected and see who actually are so we can move from politics to reality.
And as an individual consumer, I'm comfortable in saying that it is a really not great law for me (ie, YMMV). It's impeded some of the content I access and for many sites it's like having cookie notices on steroids. It's a pain in the arse.
You also always have recourse against unjust or excessive fines, as per established EU law.
It's not "you will be fined 4% for every breach". It's "you can be fined up to 4%", the GDPR actually states that the punishment should be proportional to the damage caused.
Here's the specific language form the English language version of the GDPR [1] (I suggest you read the whole page):
> Each supervisory authority shall ensure that the imposition of administrative fines pursuant to this Article in respect of infringements of this Regulation referred to in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 shall in each individual case be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
If you accidentally send customer data to Google Analytics without their permission, and rectify the issue when it's discovered, you're not going to get slapped with a multi-million dollar fine.
Hopefully. It seems like the law is completely open to the judge's discretion, so for risk assessment purposes it should be assumed that the full fine will be granted, because you can't bank on a lenient judge - especially if you're one of the earliest cases and they decide to make an example of you.
Can you list others besides GDPR? I'm ignorant, but interested.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eus-strict-new-privacy-law-is-s...
Not surprising, expensive regulations reduce competition and benefit the largest players.
No, the issue is not advanced technology but special interests. When the later take priority over resolving troubling consequences, you get results like those two articles.
Politicians are not meant to understand the areas they regulate. Even if they were IT professionals, they still would not understand all the other professions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts
They hang the man and flog the woman Who steals the goose from off the common Yet let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.
In fact the history of European and American law tended to emphasize draconian punishments for minor crimes against the landed gentry, nobility, and aristocracy. If you want a present example consider the real impact of the war on drugs, and cui bono.
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. John Erlichhman
Most voters don't vote for a candidate on the basis of the candidate's tech-literacy. Most voters don't understand complex tech issues themselves, so they couldn't even if they wanted to.
Few companies I work for have their stuff stolen and posted on youtube constantly. It took 3 months to get any response from Youtube. That times goes down to 3 weeks IF you have attorney representing you. Over 70 vidoes I have worked with lawyers to get removed, we always been looked at as the real criminals; we have to upload and prove all sorts of things just to get pass by the submit form. Longest case took us 5 months and $3,000 to remove a 45 seconds of stolen material.
Yes, DMCA works pretty decent; for lawyers that charge per hour.
On the other hand, the 45 seconds of stolen material you refer to sounds like you may be going after uses that may fall under fair use, in which case you should absolutely expect to have a fight on your hands, though only after going through the DMCA takedown notice and counter-notice dance.
Can you explain what 45 seconds of video was worth $1 to get off the internet. 45 seconds isn't a song length let alone a video of note.
Here is a random guess here. The 45 seconds was damaging in some way to the client and they really wanted to bury something.
Only innovations that neatly fit the copyright industries' business models. Innovations that totally break business models based on centralized distributors selling to consumers -- P2P filesharing systems, for example -- have been stifled. If you want to build your own DVR using an HDMI capture device, get ready to do business with some Chinese electronics makers, because nobody in the US can innovate in the market for that sort of hardware.
Just because the EU is doing something worse does not mean the DMCA is "decent." It is still a terrible law even if the EU manages to create something worse.