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Comment by tw1010 | Hacker News Reader

It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws. I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies, the internet) having come from there. But seeing how much different my attitude is towards all these laws, compared to articles like this one, totally gives me a whole new source of specific little value updates I aught to make if I want to escape from a mindset I suspect isn't optimal in the current economic climate (an EU-based one), to one that is (i.e. an american attitude to things).

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My perception and view of the US and it's culture also slightly shifted after GDPR came into spotlight (same conclusions as yours).

Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it gives you freedom". The problem is - the argument (my understanding of the interlocutor) was about companies, and what they can do.

In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.

Idk how you can argue the EU values people over corporate interest while this copyright law is on it's way to being passed.

Here's one of the many articles about what's wrong with it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal...

It's one of thousands of laws, but sure, this one is the definitive indicator of the EU's values.

Maybe we could try to find a single US law that we don't like and dismiss America just as readily?

We all know you're going to pick the Patriot Act :)

Or maybe The Hague Invasion Act? ;-)

Never heard of this one, and didn't know anything about it. I tried reading the Wikipedia page. Now I've heard of it, but still don't know anything about it.

How about the Second Amendment ;)

I find that article uncompelling. Cory Doctorow makes some pretty bold statements that appear to be at odds with the directive as I read it. Some of it feels like wilful misinterpretation.

In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.

I think it’s more about two different definitions of freedom. The U.S. defines it as the freedom to choose, where harmful outcomes are an accident of letting people freely choose. The E.U. sees it more as the freedom to live, where choices that harm quality of life need to be restrained.

I'm going to guess you're not from Europe based on that definition?

The EU constrains companies to the benefit of individuals. It's not stopping people from hurting themselves, it's stopping them from being hurt by companies who have phenomenal power over us, more power in some ways than states themselves have.

There are over 30,000 [1] paid lobbyists in Brussels, and you think "the EU constrains companies to the benefit of individuals". And these latest outrageous copyright and link proposals are widely regarded to be for the benefit of certain German media magnates.

Whatever criticism the EU attracts for its spending, the PR budget looks to be pretty good value. I'm really baffled by some of these perspectives.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...

The EU actually has extensive law about lobbying.[1] It actually tries to be transparant in regards to how lobbying happens and what kind of lobbying happens.

Also, your 30K figure also includes lobbyists from civil rights groups and other NGO's. Not just purely companies.

Lobbying happens, it is how people influence politics. Better to be transparant and open about it them to hide it.

[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2015/57280...

Relative to the US, yes it does

Well take the Working Time Directive as an example; relative to my own government in the UK, the EU certainly appear to do more for the demos (with the possible exception of the current copyright directive; which I've not read the draft legislation on yet).

The freedom to conduct business is one of the core freedoms that Americans value. When Americans talk about freedom, they are including the freedom to form a business and create whatever business arrangements you want.

To American values, restrictions on how you do business are as infringing as restrictions on individual rights.

This is an excellent point.

Along that same line of thinking, I think another historical American value/attitude is that a business is a person. More precisely, businesses only exist because individual people decide to take risks with their lives in the pursuit of whatever values they hold. Since they hold the risk privately, they get to hold the rewards privately.

That many people who take such risks value financial profit may be a concern to some, but is a non-concern to society as long as the marketplace is free of coercion.

Yep, one of our fundamental rights is the 'freedom of association', which the Supreme Court has ruled is protected by the first amendment. You are free to join together with others to pursue any lawful interest, and that includes commercial interests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...

This proposed copyright law is about as far from benefitting individuals instead of companies as you can get.

I agree with those points and I'd like to add that both approaches (US and EU) have their drawbacks (and advantages).

In limiting businesses more in the EU I found out that it generally means less competition and fewer companies (per capita) than the US, in my limited experience of having lived in the EU most of my life before moving to the US and still visiting Europe every year. One of the most common shocks of moving to the US from Europe is the sheer number of options/choices that you have/can make for every little thing. Back in Europe there was 1-2 supermarket chains, here there are much more. Same for food (fast or otherwise), insurance agencies, banks/credit unions, broker services, pension funds plus countless small stores (not national chains). In most interactions I have in the US I really do feel that "the customer is always right" (there are lots of exceptions to that rule but you will generally see those exceptions also happen because of lack of competition) while in Europe most of the interactions I had as a customer meant I would have to either beg for something or get angry about it/make a scene in order to make progress on an issue.

There are also deeper cultural differences in criteria customers use to pick one company or the other. In the US people seem more willing to vote with their wallets and do not look back while I feel much less of that happening in Europe.

It's hard of course to generalize across such large and varied populations and economies but this has been my experience and it does align with logical explanations of consequences of limiting businesses more or less in a free market environment.

> In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.

The sentence reads funny as if people/individuals don't own companies. A better way to put it would be that they value some kinds of people over other kinds of people. Or users over entrepreneurs, or something besides just the ambiguous "people".

I also found the reaction interesting because even techies here were overwhelmingly in favour of GDPR. Mainly because it is so similar to data protection that's been in place for 20 years and they have been used to implementing without problem. That included founders and executives within companies. Thanks to the profile of people I know that's been mainly in smaller companies. Most of the negative opinion I heard was that the regulations wouldn't be enforced strongly enough to achieve enough change.

Yet a common US reaction was to view GDPR as something draconian and anti small business, and to deliberately misunderstand that a maximum penalty wasn't going to be the always penalty. Much like this blog post does.

On the copyright proposals those same people here in the EU are unanimously against.

>and to deliberately misunderstand that a maximum penalty wasn't going to be the always penalty.

This is the only way to view penalties like this that don't have clearly defined criteria. It's all up to a judge, and when so much is at risk, a company will assume the worse.

A very American view!

This just sort of proves the point the poster was making. People here don't assume that the worst case is going to happen. Most sorts of these laws so far result in initial action taken to help (or force) the company to comply. Fines are usually only considered for those who repeatedly refuse to come into line.

My view of the US is that there are many more aggressive public prosecutors who will swing for maximum penalties, in order to make a name for themselves.

But maybe I just watch too much tv.

I agree, a very American view.

Nobody but the national regulatory instance of each country can sue, and they are in general not very happy on legal procedures.

In practice, a common Euro-pattern is this: First, a sternly worded private letter is sent to the target company. If that doesn't help, a public statement is made. After that, basic legal procedures for a small amount. The amount gets larger when the abuse is more flagrant and previous messages did not help. When the target company seems to co-operate reasonably well, no legal procedures are even started.

It isn't about assuming that the worst will always happen, it is just NOT assuming that the worst WON'T happen.

How is that a bad thing to do? Pretending that the worst result couldn't happen is just delusional - it is like people who don't wear seat belts or helmets, or don't buy insurance. Just because something is unlikely doesn't mean you should ignore the risk, especially when the consequences of the unlikely even are so high.

Yes, the maximum penalty is probably pretty unlikely; on the other hand, if you GOT the maximum penalty, it might be a death sentence for your company. When the stakes are that high, you can't just ignore the risk.

> it is just NOT assuming that the worst WON'T happen.

But it won't. You attempt to comply with the rules, show good faith and you won't be in danger.

It's not a real risk.

You have no way of knowing if it is a real risk or not. The law is the law; all it takes is a shift in power, with a group coming into power that wants to make an example of your company, and suddenly the risk is very real.

Except we do. One of the EU's laws is that all EU penalties be proportionate [0]. All other laws are subject to that requirement.

So the moment some group "wants to make an example of your company", not that I have ever heard of anyone being made an example of that's remotely akin to US punitive damages awards or 999 year Texas jail sentences, you appeal to the national or EU court. The judge will be delighted to rule the regulator's (or government) actions illegal or disproportionate. It may well also trigger a judicial review.

For an alternative outcome you would require a change in representation at the EU from 27 nations, and repeal of one of the founding principles. Not as unthinkable as the US repealing the constitution, but not very far off.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#European...

If you are always going to assume that the worst case scenario might happen, you should probably worry about the things that will actually kill you, many of which are far more likely than getting the maximum fine as a small company that is not intentionally violating the law. Something like getting killed in a car crash is much more likely and much higher stakes.

I think the maximum penalty = always penalty sort of misunderstanding tends to appear when programmers look at the law. Technical people tend to look at the laws in a technical way. Does this equal a violation or does it not? If it does, what will it cost? Judicious opinion or "We'll know it when we see it" rarely sits well with those of us who are used to cementing behavior into lines of code.

Existing laws we already operate under have much more severe maximum penalties than people realize, and judges are (relatively) reasonable at applying them correctly. Right here in the US, nearly everyone is technically violating some law every day, the key is ensuring that our justice system has the mechanics in place to deal with clear violators, while having adequate redress for improper application of the law.

The copyright law is much the same. No, memes will not get banned by it. Yes, Google News will have to pay for the content they scrape. No, you will not get hunted down by the copyright gestapo for sending a link to a friend.

Existing laws we already operate under have much more severe maximum penalties than people realize, and judges are (relatively) reasonable at applying them correctly.

I don't think the system is working well at all. We have a situation where vague laws with severe penalties allow prosecutors to grossly overcharge. This is then used to coerce the accused into waiving their rights to a trial, in return for the certainty of a more limited punishment.

In America.

In Germany "deals" are very much not liked by the law profession, and only a very limited form of it has been put into law. And even that is very sharply debated in the profession.

Add to it that prosecutors actually do look for mitigating circumstances, and do not regularly appeal a verdict that they feel is a bit too low, thus preventing the appellate court from handing down a harsher sentence, making the appeal risk-free for the defendant.

It's not all roses here, but you also shouldn't assume that this "either plead guilty and accept five years or risk three hundred years" is a universal property of judicial systems.

To echo the other comment - this isn't familiar to me in the UK either.

Guilty pleas do usually result in lower tariffs, but AFAICT we have little to none of the horse-trading that's continually portrayed on US television.

For what it's worth, an early complaint about GDPR was that it benefited the large, incumbent companies like Google and Facebook at the expense of their smaller competitors.

Be careful about assuming too much consistency in the US populace. I'm born-and-raised US, and our attitudes can be very hard to describe. We'll hate "Obamacare" but actually support all the individual parts. We'll complain about govt spending then complain when the govt doesn't function. We'll complain that people don't trust science about global warming but avoid vaccines and expect GMOs to actually mutate us. We'll complain about "participation trophies" but want benefits for seniority without regard to performance. We'll celebrate a rancher facing off against the govt and then rail against someone else "taking the law into their own hands".

Then we'll reverse any of these positions at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying we're RANDOM, I'm saying it can look so. There might be dozens of upcoming responses to this comment, each suggesting a different "simple" solution ("It's about self-interest" "It's about freedom" "it's about personal responsibility") but they will all either fail to reconcile, or give you a simple explanation that is nonetheless hard to extrapolate how the public will respond to a given topic.

My personal opinion is that neither the EU nor the US has an optimal economic outlook, but it may not be possible to have one - it's hard to combine the benefits of rugged individualism with the benefits of communal cohesion. Hard to mix diversity with unity.

> Hard to mix diversity with unity.

It's actually not that hard. You can have a mexican restaurant, hibachi restaurant, cajun restaurant and winery all in the same city and patronize a different one each day. That's the benefit of diversity.

What doing it wrong looks like is accusing the mexican restaurant of a moral failing because their staff is mostly latino, or the winery because their staff is mostly English or French. You don't maintain diverse cultures by requiring every place to be formed of exact proportions of statistically precise homogenized diversity paste, you get them by having clumps of different cultures near each other that trade and learn with each other while continuing to possess their own discrete cultural identities.

All unity requires is coexisting without fighting each other.

The fact that some people do it wrong doesn't mean there isn't a way to do it right.

And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue. A diverse country does not have a homogeneous people.

Please don't think I'm dissing diversity - I'm all for it.

> And that's also why you see people on both sides of any given issue

Often that's a great thing. Sometimes it's not. That was the point I was making.

Your last sentence sounds like cargo culting at its best.

I won't claim to know what the "optimal mindset" is, but I think it's obvious that both the US and the EU have made many blunders in recent history, economically and otherwise. I'm sure if there is an optimal mindset, it is one that learns from those of the US, EU, Asia, etc. and takes the best of each (not necessarily in equal proportions, of course).

Knowing different cultures, contrasting them and making your own choices will always be superior to being "indoctrinated" (voluntarily or not) into one.

In my mind the difference is that:

* In the US: Don’t use social media if you don’t want to be tracked, it’s your choice.

* In the EU: We cannot compete against big US companies so we will pass laws that are popular with entitled people to weaken them in the name of social benefits. Win-win for politicians.

I mean, the former attitude is known to be totally ineffective. The latter is possibly effective, at the cost of being (possibly?) extremely damaging.

I don't use any social media, how is that ineffective?

Facebook and Google are known to track non-users around the internet as well.

You're still tracked, analyzed, and targeted both on and off the web by thousands of companies. Not to mention government snooping and surveillance. Even the social media giants which you deliberately never signed up for are still collecting and monetizing data on you.

Oh I see what you mean. Does this change if you don't use any of Google's products ie. web browser, youtube or search engines?

I don't know how wide their web is. I know they have partnerships with some third parties, presumably some involves tracking that data.

If you never run JavaScript, don't use an IP traceable to you, then you're probably safe from tracking. But GDPR applies offline too, so your insurance company can't increase your bill because you drink too much coffee and have a loyalty card, without you being able to trace that link.

Unless every single person you know also strictly avoids social media, you are still getting tracked by social media companies.

One of the criticisms of this directive is that only YouTube et al can afford to comply. If that's true, surely the big US companies will be delighted?

Your mind has a very skewed outlook then.

It's not about weakening companies, it's about keeping them in line, ethically.

I also find it interesting from the inverse perspective. I am of course naive, but I think most of the viewpoint differences boil down to how one views business owners and government. Not necessarily one versus the other, though that does come in to play, but more about whether the former deserves rights/consideration and whether the latter is equipped to reasonably restrict them. This is especially true for big business and big laws.

The "US blogosphere"'s perspective is heavily weighted by people who are employed by companies which lose money because of EU laws, people who have invested in companies which lose money because of EU laws, or people who are paid by companies which lose money because of EU laws.

Which is to say, I'm an American who's wildly in favor of the EU's regulatory changes to reign in big tech, but when you consider how many different individuals or organizations are by FAANG companies, the media perspective on these laws can be... tainted by self-interest.

Also note that movies and TV are often oddly at odds with even the industry that creates them. For instance, Hollywood is notoriously liberal (to the point that conservatives have to hide their political affiliation), and hence very pro gun control. Yet if you've seen many of our movies, you might have noticed that building props for Hollywood is a statistically significant portion of the gun manufacturing industry!

Yeah I always laugh when people talk about "the West". Globalization is far, so far away. Truth be told there was more unity in the world when dynastic royal families ruled the world- not democratic nation states.

They're just complaining because it's EU and not US. American DMCA law is much worse than GDPR, predates it by like 2 decades, and basically the whole world is subjected to some of it (because US companies are global monopolies).

The people complaining about the GDPR have been complaining about the DMCA since before it was passed.

Exactly. It's when the complaining stops (and/or the complainers are demonized) that the mandate to move on to more invasive laws is given.

The DMCA was and is terrible. The GDPR is a great step forwards.

The DMCA was an attack on consumer rights. The GDPR is their extension.

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