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I'm not the one who commented above, but I can see some problems with freedom of speech related to GDPR. The main problem is that EU legislation is complex and

I'm not the one who commented above, but I can see some problems with freedom of speech related to GDPR. The main problem is that EU legislation is complex and subject to interpretation for which we have no precedents. Such legislation is easily exploited by authorities to silence opposition. As Napolen never said, "A Constitution should be short and obscure." GDPR is long and obscure. That leaves even more power to the executive. This situation benefits large corporations - such as Facebook - who can afford an army of lawyers and can deploy resources to legal fights in any country. Small actors with dissenting views are hopelessly disadvantaged in this kind of a setup, and I forecast that we'll see authorities shutting down blogs and websites using GDPR as their tool.

lucideer 9y ago
> The main problem is that EU legislation is complex and subject to interpretation for which we have no precedents. Such legislation is easily exploited by authorities to silence opposition. As Napolen never said, "A Constitution should be short and obscure." GDPR is long and obscure. That leaves even more power to the executive. I'm not sure what this has to with free speech though. Many laws (in any country / federation / commission / union) are long and complex. Not all are related to speech and/or freedom thereof. GDPR is not. I take your point that complex laws favour the legal establishment and large corporations that can afford them, but again... what does that have to do with free speech in the context of the GDPR? There seems to be no argument here... Is there something in GDPR I'm missing?
- ptaipale 9y ago
  I think it is a free speech issue if "we'll see authorities shutting down blogs and websites using GDPR as their tool" which is what I predict.
  - lucideer 9y ago
    > we'll see authorities shutting down blogs and websites using GDPR as their tool If they're shutting down blogs, there's 2 possible reasons for it: 1. The blog is using a non-compliant commenting system. This may be hand-rolled or 3rd-party: in either case, disabling comments is a common-sense measure to stay up. No legal complexity of any document should obscure the simplicity of this solution. 2. The hosting company hosting the blogging platform is non-compliant and gets shut down completely. In this case, your argument re: the company being small and not understanding legalese hopefully shouldn't apply. If they're shutting down websites, those websites are offering a user-oriented service of some kind, and should get their act together w.r.t. understanding the legal implications of doing this, no matter how small they are. If you're not processing user data, you're not a target. Exercising free speech does not require processing user data.
    - ptaipale 9y ago
      > If they're shutting down blogs, there's 2 possible reasons for it: There are other possible reasons. Like "we don't like it". I live in the country where the corruption index (calculated by Transparency International) is lowest in the world. Still, we have a "black list" of web sites that the police distributes to Internet access providers to block users from accessing the sites. The legal basis of this is supposed to be stopping child pornography, but still, the mechanism is used for blocking sites that criticize the police, and have no pornography at all. And there is no legal mechanism to challenge the police and stop them from doing this. GDPR gives many additional tools for authorities to perform censorship like this.

lucideer 9y ago

> The main problem is that EU legislation is complex and subject to interpretation for which we have no precedents. Such legislation is easily exploited by authorities to silence opposition. As Napolen never said, "A Constitution should be short and obscure." GDPR is long and obscure. That leaves even more power to the executive. I'm not sure what this has to with free speech though. Many laws (in any country / federation / commission / union) are long and complex. Not all are related to speech and/or freedom thereof. GDPR is not. I take your point that complex laws favour the legal establishment and large corporations that can afford them, but again... what does that have to do with free speech in the context of the GDPR? There seems to be no argument here... Is there something in GDPR I'm missing?

ptaipale 9y ago
I think it is a free speech issue if "we'll see authorities shutting down blogs and websites using GDPR as their tool" which is what I predict.
- lucideer 9y ago
  > we'll see authorities shutting down blogs and websites using GDPR as their tool If they're shutting down blogs, there's 2 possible reasons for it: 1. The blog is using a non-compliant commenting system. This may be hand-rolled or 3rd-party: in either case, disabling comments is a common-sense measure to stay up. No legal complexity of any document should obscure the simplicity of this solution. 2. The hosting company hosting the blogging platform is non-compliant and gets shut down completely. In this case, your argument re: the company being small and not understanding legalese hopefully shouldn't apply. If they're shutting down websites, those websites are offering a user-oriented service of some kind, and should get their act together w.r.t. understanding the legal implications of doing this, no matter how small they are. If you're not processing user data, you're not a target. Exercising free speech does not require processing user data.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    > If they're shutting down blogs, there's 2 possible reasons for it: There are other possible reasons. Like "we don't like it". I live in the country where the corruption index (calculated by Transparency International) is lowest in the world. Still, we have a "black list" of web sites that the police distributes to Internet access providers to block users from accessing the sites. The legal basis of this is supposed to be stopping child pornography, but still, the mechanism is used for blocking sites that criticize the police, and have no pornography at all. And there is no legal mechanism to challenge the police and stop them from doing this. GDPR gives many additional tools for authorities to perform censorship like this.