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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

1) you're simply wrong, or just don't understand the meaning of the word trading block:

https://inshorts.com/m/en/news/european-union-is-worlds-larg...

2) I don't think you understand how GDPR works at all. GDPR says how data about EU citizens has to be processed in a certain way. If you want to do business with EU, you have to comply. If you don't want to comply, you don't get to trade with EU. No one is claiming jurisdiction over other countries - it's simply a matter of agreements. Just like EU respects certain American laws just because it wants to trade with USA and it was requested. It's a mutual thing.

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I was quite clear what I meant by trading block, I wasn't aware that was a specific term of art, but that's not what I meant regardless and that's clear from my response.

I understand it just fine, perhaps you don't understand what I'm saying. No, if an EU citizen comes to my US website, that does not grant the EU authority over me no matter what they claim. I live under US law, not EU law, not Chinese law, not North Korean law. Those countries are free to pass laws claiming they have jurisdiction over me when I do business with their citizens, but claiming it doesn't make it true. No I do not have to comply, the EU has zero authority over me no matter who I do business with _unless_ I'm in the EU where they can do something about it. They can attempt to stop their citizens from using my website, but it is not upon me to do so.

There is no agreement between the US and the EU to respect the GDPR, it's an untested assertion of global authority that cannot stand. The world cannot function if every country can assert every citizen in the world must comply with its laws because their citizens came to my US website. That's a violation of national sovereignty and it will fail when the EU tries to assert that authority and the US courts say, sorry, but no, you don't have jurisdiction over our citizens which is what's going to happen.

The EU can and will enforce the GDPR within its borders, that's expected; outside its borders, it has no jurisdiction and no teeth; I don't have to give a damn about EU law while operating my US business in the US. That a visitor comes from someone outside the US does not change that my business is in the US. I do not have to obey other countries laws.

>>No, if an EU citizen comes to my US website, that does not grant the EU authority over me no matter what they claim.

You have it backwards. It's not an EU citizen coming to your US website - it's your US website choosing, willingly, to serve EU citizens. You can also choose to not serve them - that's fine. And yes, EU cannot fine you in any way, there's no legal possibility to do that. However, if your operation was detrimental to EU citizens in any way, EU could ask US to cooperate in asking you to stop. Obviously US has the jurisdiction to do something about it, there's no question about that.

To maybe give a different example - if you were selling something that is legal in US but not legal in EU, advertising it, selling it and shipping it to EU customers could still get you in trouble, because at a certain point EU will ask US authorities to stop you from sending illegal products to their territory. You are not breaking US law, but countries do cooperate in this manner. Same would happen in the other direction - if someone was sending drugs that are completely legal in EU over to US, they wouldn't be braking EU law - but US definitely and absolutely would ask local authorities to find you and politely ask you to stop. Does that mean US suddenly has jurisdiction in the EU? No - but EU would most likely comply with such a request as a matter of international cooperation.

And yes, the same request sent from North Korea or from China would likely be ignored - that boils down to what I said earlier about negotiating power and international respect. EU countries are very likely to comply with requests like these coming from US, and EU can and does request things from US. It has nothing to do with the issue of jurisdiction that you are so very keen on.

>> I don't have to give a damn about EU law while operating my US business in the US.

Again, if your US business does serve EU customers, then you kind of have to give a damn. Just like an EU business has to give a damn about US laws when doing business with US customers. It's really not a difficult concept to grasp.

The US will generally not cooperate unless said thing is also illegal in the US. The EU can ask, they cannot enforce, and the US doesn't make a habit of enforcing laws of foreign nations on citizens when said thing is perfectly legal in the US. If what I'm doing is legal under US law, the EU request will be denied. Only when the thing is illegal in both countries are such requests generally conceded to.

> It's not an EU citizen coming to your US website - it's your US website choosing, willingly, to serve EU citizens.

Wrong, they're coming to my site; I have no way to know they're EU citizens or not, there's a thousand reasons I wouldn't know, it's not like IP is a reliable means. People use vpn's, or EU citizens travel. The burden is not and cannot logically be on me to know where my customers come from. It's impossible to know the citizenship of your customers.

Perfect example, according to the GDPR, an EU citizen travelling in the US who uses my site from the US is still protected by the GDPR; that's horseshit and a technical impossibility; I can't know they're an EU citizen. This law was written by technically illiterate morons.

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