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I'm not so sure - how do you make sure the cost isn't so high that it deters people with legitimate reasons to request their data, but also high enough to actua

I'm not so sure - how do you make sure the cost isn't so high that it deters people with legitimate reasons to request their data, but also high enough to actually cover the cost of obtaining it? I would expect that those are two very different amounts.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> I'm not so sure - how do you make sure the cost isn't so high that it deters people with legitimate reasons to request their data, but also high enough to actually cover the cost of obtaining it? I would expect that those are two very different amounts. If the cost of doing something legitimately exceeds the value of doing it to the person asking for it to be done, isn't not doing it then the rational outcome?
- geofft 8y ago
  GDPR is trying to push a change in society's norms regarding privacy. The value of that change cannot be meaningfully measured by multiplying the "value" of one person's privacy by the number of people; there are effects that happen at scale that don't happen when you change privacy/data handling for an individual person for an individual company. And it's definitely unclear that the ability of any individual to pay for their data is a meaningful measure of that value; among other things, it can't be resold without destroying it. Imagine if a city with no roads, with just human-width sidewalks between skyscrapers. The cost of moving all the skyscrapers to fit even a single road is enormous; no single driver would be willing to pay it for the incremental benefit of being able to drive. Would you say that this means that rationally the society should never build roads?
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    You can't justify an auto repair shop with just one customer with just one car either. The way it works isn't that the first customer pays all the fixed costs and every subsequent customer pays only the incremental costs, it's that the fixed costs are amortized over the projected number of customers. What obviously doesn't work is to try to say that the auto repair shop pays all the costs and never charges anything to anyone who wants to have their car repaired, because then they go out of business.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> I'm not so sure - how do you make sure the cost isn't so high that it deters people with legitimate reasons to request their data, but also high enough to actually cover the cost of obtaining it? I would expect that those are two very different amounts. If the cost of doing something legitimately exceeds the value of doing it to the person asking for it to be done, isn't not doing it then the rational outcome?

geofft 8y ago
GDPR is trying to push a change in society's norms regarding privacy. The value of that change cannot be meaningfully measured by multiplying the "value" of one person's privacy by the number of people; there are effects that happen at scale that don't happen when you change privacy/data handling for an individual person for an individual company. And it's definitely unclear that the ability of any individual to pay for their data is a meaningful measure of that value; among other things, it can't be resold without destroying it. Imagine if a city with no roads, with just human-width sidewalks between skyscrapers. The cost of moving all the skyscrapers to fit even a single road is enormous; no single driver would be willing to pay it for the incremental benefit of being able to drive. Would you say that this means that rationally the society should never build roads?
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  You can't justify an auto repair shop with just one customer with just one car either. The way it works isn't that the first customer pays all the fixed costs and every subsequent customer pays only the incremental costs, it's that the fixed costs are amortized over the projected number of customers. What obviously doesn't work is to try to say that the auto repair shop pays all the costs and never charges anything to anyone who wants to have their car repaired, because then they go out of business.