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Comment by fiddlerwoaroof | Hacker News Reader

If you’re not subject to the EU (I.e. don’t have any offices, servers, etc. in the EU) I don’t see how the GDPR is relevant: non-EU citizens generally aren’t subject to the laws of the EU.

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Then you cannot have ue customers. Or make wire transfer through the ue.

You can also forget vacation trips in EU.

If thoroughly enforced, which is currently not the case.

"The GDPR also applies to data controllers and processors outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) if they are engaged in the "offering of goods or services" (regardless of whether a payment is required) to data subjects within the EEA, or are monitoring the behaviour of data subjects within the EEA (Article 3(2)). The regulation applies regardless of where the processing takes place. This has been interpreted as intentionally giving GDPR extraterritorial jurisdiction for non-EU establishments if they are doing business with people located in the EU."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

Countries or groups of countries don't get to impose their law on other countries.

That's called colonialism, and Europe is supposed to have given it up.

I am not a lawyer, and I don't claim I understand the legal mechanisms involved. I don't even claim GDPR is perfect.

But, as I see it, EU is protecting its citizens. If you want to do business with EU citizens you must abide by EU regulations. It's that simple. I don't get how this came to be all of a sudden about colonialism. Any business is free to stay out of EU.

And any EU citizen is free to not do business with a company outside the EU.

Do you think the EU laws should apply to people selling things to EU citizens while they are on vacation in other parts of the world? If someone from Germany travels to Brazil and buys something from a store, are they required to abide by EU rules?

If someone from the EU leaves the EU digitally to buy something in another country, it isn't up to the seller to enforce EU rules.

Unless you have an entity (either yourself or your business) under EU jurisdiction, you don't have to follow their rules.

There's an asymmetry of information and power in the relationship between a business and a citizen. Governments, generally, attempt to mitigate this asymmetry. Hence, we have consumer protection laws, GDPR and the likes.

While these solutions may be incomplete, or imperfect, having none is definitely worse.

> If someone from the EU leaves the EU digitally to buy something in another country, it isn't up to the seller to enforce EU rules.

> Unless you have an entity (either yourself or your business) under EU jurisdiction, you don't have to follow their rules.

Please _do_ read the link I already posted in a previous comment [0]. It clarifies many things, but I don't want to paste too much content here.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

I am not sure what you are trying to argue here. I am not making any moral claim about whether a GDPR-type regulation is good or bad. I am simply saying that the EU saying the law applies outside their borders doesn’t make it so.

If I am a US citizen living and working in the US, and break the GDPR by storing data illegally from visitors to my website from the EU, the EU can certainly try to fine me or issue a summons or whatever they want to do.

However, there exists no extradition treaty for this law, and there would be no way for the EU to enforce judgement.

Yeah, this is the really frustrating thing about conversations about the GDPR: whatever you think about how companies should act, legislation doesn’t really matter unless there’s some way the government can take retributive action against those who ignore it. When someone asks about what this mechanism is, you inevitably get a whole host of people assuming you dislike the legislation.

This article basically confirms my suspicion that this provision is basically unenforceable:

http://slawsonandslawson.com/article-32-the-hole-in-the-gdpr...

> If you want to do business with EU citizens you must abide by EU regulations.

No, no more than if I want to do business with Saudis I'm liable for punishment if I drink a beer.

But that's not really a good analogy (not that analogies are proof). A better analogy would be you selling beers in Saudi Arabia.

I urge you to read this, it should clarify things:

Applicability outside of the European Union:

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

They claim it applies. That doesn't make it so:

http://slawsonandslawson.com/article-32-the-hole-in-the-gdpr...

I wonder when the USA will follow suit?

If some of your users are in the EU you need to be GDPR compliant.

This is what the law says, but I don’t understand how this is expected to work: without some kind of treaty from the US government, the EU has no way to make US companies comply.

The US and EU have a treaty specifically about enforcing each other's laws. (More accurately, the nations that comprise the EU are individual signatories to such treaties.)

Source? This lawyer seems to think that there’s no applicable treaty.

https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/you-re-not-the-bos...

Here's the one between the US and the largest economy in the EU:

https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/108th-congress/27

There is no legal mechanism because such exist mostly for criminal law and civil and public debt collection. So the EU maybe cannot use most of the enforcement mechanisms, except one: You can be fined some amount of money, creating a public debt which can then be collected if there is a treaty about such collections.

There's a slew of individual things that can be done. EU companies can be prevented from doing business with a (willfully) noncompliant company. Wire transfers going through the EU and other operations can be blocked. And, of course, the service itself, its apps, its sites, its traffic, can be blocked from accessing the EU internet (or being accessed from it).

That's not even getting into international pressure levers.

I don't know that we've seen any of those kinds of actions yet, but they're clearly on the table if a company breaking the rules became a real "problem".

The thing is, if you're just completely avoiding doing any business with the EU, having any EU customers or users, and just not touching the EU with a 1000 mile pole and avoiding the GDPR in such a fashion - well, then there's no reason to go after you. The legislation has done its job.

> And, of course, the service itself, its apps, its sites, its traffic, can be blocked from accessing the EU internet (or being accessed from it).

In other words, the EU can attempt to extend its internet regulations over the rest of the world by implementing a China-style firewall. Well, we'll see if that happens.

It is more akin to the US Sanctions. You don’t have to abide. If you do trade with sanctioned countries, you should not do any kind of business with the US, or pay a hefty penalty.

Here’s a case example, BNP Paribas dealings with sanctioned countries. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bnp-agrees-to-pay-over-8-8-bill...

Have you not heard of extradition treaties?

For example, that's what the US is using on Kim Dotcom.

If you're operating a business that interacts with customers in the EU, GDPR applies.

The EU says it applies but, AFAICT there’s no legal mechanism by which it applies.

Here’s a lawyer’s take on this: https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/you-re-not-the-bos...

I thought US companies had to agree to Privacy Shield if they wanted to be considered GDPR-regulated.

https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome

Why any US company would voluntarily agree to this is beyond me, unless one of its EU customers insisted on it.

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