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If the fundamental thesis is that "the market fails" or that "corporations are irresponsible", then at the very least it should be predictable that some of thes
by tolmasky 7y ago
If the fundamental thesis is that "the market fails" or that "corporations are irresponsible", then at the very least it should be predictable that some of these regulations will have the real negative consequences (which I think we can agree some of these are) expressed in this article. The goal of this realization is not necessarily to disparage the GDPR, but hopefully to learn and perhaps put together a more precise or better iteration in place that avoids these pitfalls. For example:
> Spotify not asking for 2FA/email confirmation for the bulk download
I'm not extremely familiar with the letter of the law, but if it doesn't specify that you need 2FA/email, and there are clear fines/downsides to not complying, I do not see how this is not a predictable issue that would come up. The incentive is to comply, since you've already put in the work to make it possible, and there are onerous punishments for not doing so. In other words, a false negative (disallowing the download) can be potentially perceived as much worse than a false positive (allowing the download). This seems built-in: the goal of the law was to give it teeth to allow the user to get this data. If we just default to "its the companies fault for not applying an additional layer of thought to all this", then whether its true or not (and I agree it is!), it does not realistically solve the problem - establishing blame doesn't necessarily provide a path to making this less likely in the future as long as the equation is still heavily weighted towards disincentivizing false negatives. This is another way of saying: if we want to characterize corporations as lazy/malicious/what-have-you, then we can't then be Pikachu-surprised-face when they act that way under the letter of the law like some monkey's paw scenario: we should instead "aw shucks, fool me once" and try to come up with something better.
> companies deleting articles even when there would sufficient public interest
Similarly, we should try to predict that it is entirely plausible that the rights will be attempted to be abused, or leveraged, by those that it provides an obvious benefit for, even if it is malicious. Here again it is interesting that we begin with the thesis that "we need these laws because companies have proven not sufficiently responsible enough on their own" and yet then immediately make a law that is vague and thus defers major parts of the decision to these same companies. Many times this ultimately comes down to litigation where the boundaries of laws are worked out, and this is a very reasonable response: its only been a year, the courts will hopefully work out when these rules are mis-applied. However, it is on us to make sure we litigate "too much" right to forget (as in the cases here) and not just cases where companies refuse to forget. If not, the courts will send a clear message that it is perfectly fine to blindly abide by every request as the path of least resistance. Again: the premise is that they don't care, and we still haven't figured out how to legislate caring.
- icebraining 7y ago> I'm not extremely familiar with the letter of the law, but if it doesn't specify that you need 2FA/email The Regulation doesn't mandate specific technical implementations anywhere; it leaves that to the industry, which is the expert in that regard. But on the subject of the Right of Access it does explicitly say: "The controller should use all reasonable measures to verify the identity of a data subject who requests access, in particular in the context of online services and online identifiers" It seems to me that not using 2FA/email means they haven't used all reasonable measures to verify the identity.