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There is a third option beyond go bankrupt or pivot, as this story shows very clearly - cease trading with the EU or citizens of its member states entirely. Lik

There is a third option beyond go bankrupt or pivot, as this story shows very clearly - cease trading with the EU or citizens of its member states entirely. Like the effect of FATCA but in reverse. That's the decision this small training firm has taken. It's a loss of 5% of revenue, they say. That's not bankruptcy or pivoting. This seems to be the unsurprising outcome of the EU's modern "obey us or we crush you" mentality. The UK is walking away. This small company is walking away. Apparently Microsoft is at least thinking about it for some products (the connect site is back now but looks semi abandoned). How many others will look at this and conclude the risks are too high to justify the costs? GDPR does not seem like a well thought out law. I have always been satisfied with my ability to delete things from the cloud. If I end up being banned from useful services because the costs of complying with the EU's very transparent attempts to bulk up their budget by repeatedly fining tech firms, I will not be happy.

revmoo 9y ago
To me the worst part of the law is that it oversteps the borders of the EU. I don't think US laws should apply to non-US citizens outside of the US and I feel the exact same way about the EU. It's a massive global overreach.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> This seems to be the unsurprising outcome of the EU's modern "obey us or we crush you" mentality. The UK is walking away. When did the EU try to crush the UK? And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Things said by various EU/French/German/British officials at various times about leaving the EU: Leaving the EU is suicide. It's self harm. There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price for leaving (Hollande) "Welcome to hell", said to the UK's negotiator on reaching the negotiation table. "Brexit itself is already punishment enough" (Tusk) Voting to leave will destroy 500,000-800,000 jobs due to "uncertainty" over how the EU will react (this claimed turned out to be false in the end). The UK financial industry will be forced by the EU to move tens of thousands of people/jobs to the EU. Also all flights will be grounded. This is the "price" of leaving. -- It is fair to say that in general everything said and done by the EU is designed to cause maximum damage, always with the caveat that continued automatic obedience to EU law and courts will make the "pain" go away (as they put it). And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations The primary "benefit" of complying with those regulations is the EU does not impose bans on your products. The regulations themselves are often badly thought out - that's what this whole thread is about, badly thought out GDPR regulations causing US businesses to give up trying to sell to the EU (effectively the EU has created massive new trade barriers with the rest of the world).
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    >> The primary "benefit" of complying with those regulations is the EU does not impose bans on your products. The EU is not banning any products from the UK. The benefit that the UK gets is is tarriff-free access to the common market. Any trade, with anyone is subject to tarriffs, so that's a real benefit- unlike any imagined harm coming from "bans" that never happened.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      Well this is getting a bit off topic but that is not correct. The EU has been quite clear that it will ban people and companies in its jurisdiction from buying financial products from the UK: not impose tariffs but rather implement outright bans. And they are not willing to negotiate on that point. It is seen as a necessary 'punishment'. They are also talking about banning member state citizens from buying tickets from British airlines in situations where they currently can. And possibly banning all flights from the UK to the EU. Again, bans, not tariffs. Lastly, I note that the effect of GDPR is that effectively "Europeans" are now banned from buying training products from this US training firm. It's not technically a government ban, it's more like major encouragement to the outside world to implement their own private sector bans, but the end result is identical: you cannot buy at any price.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        Like the trade ban you mentioned above, any other sort of ban, such as banning the buying of financial products from the UK, or banning flights from the UK to the EU is pure fantasy. What is really the case is that Brexit risks causing British financial instutitions to lose their financial passporting rights, that allow them to trade in the EU. As to flights, the risk here is that, without other international flight agreements for some UK companies (such as Ryanair and EasyJet) other than EU agreements, such companies risk losing the right to fly outside of Europe, or within the EU. Both of the above are the result of international agreements being rendered invalid because of Brexit, and not some sort of punishment that the EU decided to bestow upon the UK. Obviously EU competitors will step in immediately and eat the UK's lunch, wherever they find the opportunity. But I don't know what else anyone could expect. I understand the British are great believers in a free market, after all. Indeed, as far as the UK is concerned, the market after Brexit is going to be almost completely unregulated.
- karpodiem 9y ago
  "When did the EU try to crush the UK?" Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These people need to go from where they came'. Someone will have to provide links on whether migrant quotas were part of the original agreement in the formation of the EU. So if Britain decides its more important to retain their ability to make this decision vs. remaining in the EU, that's a decision Britain can make. And they did. The African Union/OPEC (probably the only actual authority with any economic leverage in the ME) should designate areas where refuges can be returned. Morality aside, might/power defines reality in this world. The reality is that the US stirred the pot in the ME, and the EU suffers because of it. In the absence of war crime charges/damages brought before the ITC, this is the only recourse that is within Britain's best interest, based on the election they held.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    >> Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be >> able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These >> people need to go from where they came'. The refugee quotas you're talking about were decided by the EU interior ministers voting in the Justice and Home Affairs Council. The UK (along with Denmark and Ireland) has an opt-out so although its interior minister (at the time, Teresa May) did participate in the vote [1] it was not allocated any refugees [2]. Not a single one. The UK instead had volunteered to take in 20,000 people [3], primarily children from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Despite volunteering, as far as I'm aware it's still prevaricating about actually taking them in. They're still languishing at Calais, or being held at detention centres in the UK. I don't see how any of this shows that the EU "crushed" the UK, or that it caused the UK to lose sovereingty. The UK absolutely said "no, we have decided not to receive these migrants"- via the opt-outs I mentioned. A very British thing, opt-outs. The UK has opt-outs for every little EU regulation, it seems. Yet the UK is always "losing its sovereignty" in the EU. How does that work? ___________________ [1] List of participants in the 22 September 2015 Justice and Home Affairs Council: http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/22968/2015-09-22-jai-liste-de-presse.pdf http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/22968/2015-09-22... [2] Council decision estabilishing provisional measures in the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy and Greece; see Annexes I and II, with allocations from Italy and Greece, respectively, to member states: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12098-2015-INIT/en/pdf http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12098-2015-I... [3] For a sense of perspective, France offered to take in 24,000; Germany famously has thrown its gates wide open; and about 2.7 million refugees are currently in Turkey, willingly or not.
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toomuchtodo 9y ago
> If I end up being banned from useful services because the costs of complying with the EU's very transparent attempts to bulk up their budget by repeatedly fining tech firms, I will not be happy. Not a EU citizen (unfortunately!), but I would rather lose access to services that are violating data privacy laws. As always, vote with your feet and your dollars. Apologies to PG, but it's time to "Regulate Things That Scale".
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meredydd 9y ago
> There is a third option...cease trading with the EU... This is the direct equivalent of demanding the right to dump whatever I like into the river, because some other company in another country can. More generally, this is an example of "all regulation bad" thinking. If it is inherently evil to impose any rules on companies operating under your jurisdiction (and that's what you're implying with phrases like "obey us or we crush you")... Well, now you're arguing that no government should try to solve any coordination problem. No auto efficiency standards, no pollution regulations, no product safety standards...not a world I want to live in. (I'm going to ignore the Brexit stuff, as that's a long-standing flamewar that's already producing more heat than light in this thread.)
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  GPDR doesn't impose rules on companies under EU jurisdiction. It tries to impose rules on all companies everywhere. The blog post is written by an American. The rest of your argument reduces to "all regulation is good" thinking. I haven't made any arguments about regulation in general. However, passing a law so vague there are continuous arguments about how it affects backup strategies and attaching a 10-20 million euro penalty to it is absolutely a punishment out of proportion to the severity of the "crime" (which is itself not even remotely close in severity to polluting a river - which one has the chance to actually damage somebody's health? not data processing!).
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    Why is it out of proportion? Leaking, exposing or selling personal data can have much worse and immediate effects on someone’s lives than river pollution.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      These rules aren't about leaking data accidentally (everyone already tried to stop that), "exposing" it is vague, not sure what you mean by that. And as for selling personal data - er, how? People get drinking water from rivers. If they're polluted you can get very nasty symptoms. I've never heard of anyone being sent to hospital because someone sold their data. At any rate, if the goal was to tackle data trading then there'd be no need for a "right to be forgotten" which is where most of the confusion and ambiguity comes from.

revmoo 9y ago

To me the worst part of the law is that it oversteps the borders of the EU. I don't think US laws should apply to non-US citizens outside of the US and I feel the exact same way about the EU. It's a massive global overreach.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> This seems to be the unsurprising outcome of the EU's modern "obey us or we crush you" mentality. The UK is walking away. When did the EU try to crush the UK? And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Things said by various EU/French/German/British officials at various times about leaving the EU: Leaving the EU is suicide. It's self harm. There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price for leaving (Hollande) "Welcome to hell", said to the UK's negotiator on reaching the negotiation table. "Brexit itself is already punishment enough" (Tusk) Voting to leave will destroy 500,000-800,000 jobs due to "uncertainty" over how the EU will react (this claimed turned out to be false in the end). The UK financial industry will be forced by the EU to move tens of thousands of people/jobs to the EU. Also all flights will be grounded. This is the "price" of leaving. -- It is fair to say that in general everything said and done by the EU is designed to cause maximum damage, always with the caveat that continued automatic obedience to EU law and courts will make the "pain" go away (as they put it). And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations The primary "benefit" of complying with those regulations is the EU does not impose bans on your products. The regulations themselves are often badly thought out - that's what this whole thread is about, badly thought out GDPR regulations causing US businesses to give up trying to sell to the EU (effectively the EU has created massive new trade barriers with the rest of the world).
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> The primary "benefit" of complying with those regulations is the EU does not impose bans on your products. The EU is not banning any products from the UK. The benefit that the UK gets is is tarriff-free access to the common market. Any trade, with anyone is subject to tarriffs, so that's a real benefit- unlike any imagined harm coming from "bans" that never happened.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Well this is getting a bit off topic but that is not correct. The EU has been quite clear that it will ban people and companies in its jurisdiction from buying financial products from the UK: not impose tariffs but rather implement outright bans. And they are not willing to negotiate on that point. It is seen as a necessary 'punishment'. They are also talking about banning member state citizens from buying tickets from British airlines in situations where they currently can. And possibly banning all flights from the UK to the EU. Again, bans, not tariffs. Lastly, I note that the effect of GDPR is that effectively "Europeans" are now banned from buying training products from this US training firm. It's not technically a government ban, it's more like major encouragement to the outside world to implement their own private sector bans, but the end result is identical: you cannot buy at any price.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      Like the trade ban you mentioned above, any other sort of ban, such as banning the buying of financial products from the UK, or banning flights from the UK to the EU is pure fantasy. What is really the case is that Brexit risks causing British financial instutitions to lose their financial passporting rights, that allow them to trade in the EU. As to flights, the risk here is that, without other international flight agreements for some UK companies (such as Ryanair and EasyJet) other than EU agreements, such companies risk losing the right to fly outside of Europe, or within the EU. Both of the above are the result of international agreements being rendered invalid because of Brexit, and not some sort of punishment that the EU decided to bestow upon the UK. Obviously EU competitors will step in immediately and eat the UK's lunch, wherever they find the opportunity. But I don't know what else anyone could expect. I understand the British are great believers in a free market, after all. Indeed, as far as the UK is concerned, the market after Brexit is going to be almost completely unregulated.
karpodiem 9y ago
"When did the EU try to crush the UK?" Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These people need to go from where they came'. Someone will have to provide links on whether migrant quotas were part of the original agreement in the formation of the EU. So if Britain decides its more important to retain their ability to make this decision vs. remaining in the EU, that's a decision Britain can make. And they did. The African Union/OPEC (probably the only actual authority with any economic leverage in the ME) should designate areas where refuges can be returned. Morality aside, might/power defines reality in this world. The reality is that the US stirred the pot in the ME, and the EU suffers because of it. In the absence of war crime charges/damages brought before the ITC, this is the only recourse that is within Britain's best interest, based on the election they held.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be >> able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These >> people need to go from where they came'. The refugee quotas you're talking about were decided by the EU interior ministers voting in the Justice and Home Affairs Council. The UK (along with Denmark and Ireland) has an opt-out so although its interior minister (at the time, Teresa May) did participate in the vote [1] it was not allocated any refugees [2]. Not a single one. The UK instead had volunteered to take in 20,000 people [3], primarily children from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Despite volunteering, as far as I'm aware it's still prevaricating about actually taking them in. They're still languishing at Calais, or being held at detention centres in the UK. I don't see how any of this shows that the EU "crushed" the UK, or that it caused the UK to lose sovereingty. The UK absolutely said "no, we have decided not to receive these migrants"- via the opt-outs I mentioned. A very British thing, opt-outs. The UK has opt-outs for every little EU regulation, it seems. Yet the UK is always "losing its sovereignty" in the EU. How does that work? ___________________ [1] List of participants in the 22 September 2015 Justice and Home Affairs Council: http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/22968/2015-09-22-jai-liste-de-presse.pdf http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/22968/2015-09-22... [2] Council decision estabilishing provisional measures in the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy and Greece; see Annexes I and II, with allocations from Italy and Greece, respectively, to member states: http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12098-2015-INIT/en/pdf http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12098-2015-I... [3] For a sense of perspective, France offered to take in 24,000; Germany famously has thrown its gates wide open; and about 2.7 million refugees are currently in Turkey, willingly or not.

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toomuchtodo 9y ago

> If I end up being banned from useful services because the costs of complying with the EU's very transparent attempts to bulk up their budget by repeatedly fining tech firms, I will not be happy. Not a EU citizen (unfortunately!), but I would rather lose access to services that are violating data privacy laws. As always, vote with your feet and your dollars. Apologies to PG, but it's time to "Regulate Things That Scale".

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meredydd 9y ago

> There is a third option...cease trading with the EU... This is the direct equivalent of demanding the right to dump whatever I like into the river, because some other company in another country can. More generally, this is an example of "all regulation bad" thinking. If it is inherently evil to impose any rules on companies operating under your jurisdiction (and that's what you're implying with phrases like "obey us or we crush you")... Well, now you're arguing that no government should try to solve any coordination problem. No auto efficiency standards, no pollution regulations, no product safety standards...not a world I want to live in. (I'm going to ignore the Brexit stuff, as that's a long-standing flamewar that's already producing more heat than light in this thread.)

peoplewindow 9y ago
GPDR doesn't impose rules on companies under EU jurisdiction. It tries to impose rules on all companies everywhere. The blog post is written by an American. The rest of your argument reduces to "all regulation is good" thinking. I haven't made any arguments about regulation in general. However, passing a law so vague there are continuous arguments about how it affects backup strategies and attaching a 10-20 million euro penalty to it is absolutely a punishment out of proportion to the severity of the "crime" (which is itself not even remotely close in severity to polluting a river - which one has the chance to actually damage somebody's health? not data processing!).
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  Why is it out of proportion? Leaking, exposing or selling personal data can have much worse and immediate effects on someone’s lives than river pollution.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    These rules aren't about leaking data accidentally (everyone already tried to stop that), "exposing" it is vague, not sure what you mean by that. And as for selling personal data - er, how? People get drinking water from rivers. If they're polluted you can get very nasty symptoms. I've never heard of anyone being sent to hospital because someone sold their data. At any rate, if the goal was to tackle data trading then there'd be no need for a "right to be forgotten" which is where most of the confusion and ambiguity comes from.