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Comment by bertman | Hacker News Reader

I really hope this will have consequences that shake up ad tech, but the cynic in me says: They're just going to add another disclaimer in their cookie banner and exactly nothing will happen.

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Well part of the ruling is that the "standard contractual clauses", basically an attempt to contract away the regulation is not valid. From the article, it seems to be just conceptually, which gels with my understanding of the GDPR, so it's not going to be just adjusting/appending the legal wording in the TOS to fix that.

> "standard contractual clauses", basically an attempt to contract away the regulation is not valid.

how is this suprising? This has been the case in Civil law since atleast napoleonic times.

Contracts do not declare laws or rights invalid, unless these exceptions are defined in said law.

This is only sort of a half-truth though. The SCC's are created by the European Data Protection Board, and it works for transfers to third countries because the companies legally say "ok we won't do anything shady with your data" - but you have to actually prove that they can't be compelled to do anything shady under local law - which you can in the US.

So the SCC's are a perfectly fine tool, but you just need more than that.

of course, companies will try their luck right up until somebody loses a meaningful amount of money. I assume this ruling is gearing up and posturing towards major judgements against google should they fail to follow through

Judgements against Google and Facebook have started, which I assume will get increased for being repeat offenders the more they try to weasel out of complying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29821386

That's what is great about the GDPR. Just adding another disclaimer in a cookie banner absolves them of nothing.

In fact, this whole case is exactly about that. Some Austrian website tried to use Google Analytics and just added another disclaimer in their cookie banner. Now they are facing the consequences.

The problem is that most people just dont read cookie banners and just click "Accept all"

The real problem is that there is no standardised cookie banner format mandated in EU.

There should be accept all, accept necessary, reject all options.

The cookie banner anti-patters are most infuriating game of gotcha since tiny moving X button on pop-up ads.

The real problem is that ignorant people drag the rest of us with them into the abyss.

You either pay with your data, or you pay with clicks on stupid cookie banners. Or both, if you click on the wrong button.

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