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Comment by germanyhater | Hacker News Reader

EU is a nightmare for any startup. Instead of developing new products, you have to spend >50% of your time just to comply with all those laws. and it keeps coming. Soon, every company will also be required to build copyright filter for all uploaded media files (content-id)...

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I trust the EU to respect my rights far more than some startup trying to get an exit as fast a possible.

If they get bankrupted by a GDPR fine then their business model needs a review.

> I trust the EU to respect my rights far more than some startup

This is an odd statement to continue seeing, given we’ve now seen GDPR weaponised by an EU member to stifle journalists investigating corrupt politicians [1].

We need regulation protecting privacy. The debate is whether GDPR does that effectively (i.e. causes the intended effects) and efficiently (i.e. with minimal undesirable side-effects). Saying “if they get bankrupted by GDPR...then their business model [is bad]” is extreme because it assumes without evidence GDPR’s efficiency.

[1] https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss-releases/8...

In my opinion, compliance with the law is, in general, a nightmare for startups (as long as you don't like spending more money on your lawyer than on your product).

But the GDPR gives small companies at least some extra privileges, so I don't see that one as a particular harmful law.

Building codes are a nightmare. Instead of building bridges you have to spent >50% of your time complying with these laws.

Food safety laws are a nightmare. Instead of serving dishes you have to spend >50% of your time making sure the kitchen is clean and food is uncontaminated.

Although I think you're trying to use these examples to highlight that regulation can indeed be valuable (and to insinuate that such an idea should be obvious to anyone), I think that even these examples have subtlety. See the following article for an interesting exploration of how building regulations contribute substantially to urban blight in America: https://granolashotgun.com/2017/11/13/mind-the-gap-2/

Good regulations are very useful and bad regulations are not. The GDPR seems to be good where as the cookie banners were not.

You have EU funds to help bootstrap your company, either directly or via subsiding the institution which is funding you (even if it can be harmful), cheap or even free medical services for when you're getting sick and you don't have any insurance since you've put all your money in your startup. Allowing people to come to work for you without having to handle the visa nightmare means you're not giving them insanely hight amounts of money every months. Price for incorporation is <1000$ in almost every EU country. Your employees don't have to pay taxes on stocks they haven't sold yet. There are some upsides too.

First of all, the copyright laws int he entire world were forced by the US companies and the US state.

Second thing, I did not seen enough evidence that in general EU has more birocracy then other similar countries.

I assume you also complain about don't spam me law, because you have to actualy do some work to comply,

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