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This is what I get from France: > This site not available in your country I wonder what makes that website so special it can’t comply with GDPR.
by hk__2 6y ago
This is what I get from France:
> This site not available in your country
I wonder what makes that website so special it can’t comply with GDPR.
- msla 6y agoI wonder what makes Europe so special it can demand companies outside of Europe comply with European law.
- strictnein 6y agoIt can't. A lot of local US press seems to have gotten bad legal advice.
- iso947 6y agoI gather a lot of “local” press is owned by the same conglomerate
- hmottestad 6y agoProbably because advertisement on webpages pay out regardless of if I as a European click on it.
- asutekku 6y agoIf they want to do business in europe they should follow the european laws.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Anon1096 6y agoThis site clearly doesn't want to, but you still have people like the GP and others here complaining. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If commenters here want sites to have the option to not deal with Europe, then they shouldn't also turn around and chide the sites for making that choice.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoWell they could just ignore the GDPR, like probably 80+% of the world's websites (of course then someone would complain how dare they ignore EU law...) It's simply impossible to be aware of all the laws in the world. At some point the simplest and most realistic thing to do is to ignore what does not directly concern you. From what someone else has commented they are accessible from Norway, so they may already be in breach of the GDPR depending on how they track visitors. Are the Norwegian authorities going after a small-ish organization from Virginia? Nope. They are not even aware that those guys exist and won't bother anyway. I do agree with you, though, that it is absolutely fair for non-EU websites that don't want to have anything to do with the GDPR to block EU visitors.
- jgwil2 6y agoI wish I could upvote this twice. They're literally trying to comply with European law by disabling the site for Europeans.
- hk__2 6y agoNote I’m not complaining; my comment was not sarcastic. This is a simple news website run by a nonprofit. Its data collection is probably limited to an off-the-shelf analytics solution.
- jgwil2 6y agoYou probably should have added that context in the original comment. It came off as quite sarcastic.
- LordDragonfang 6y agoWell, the US certainly seems to think the rest of the internet should follow their laws, so fair is fair.
- hmottestad 6y agoFunny. Works fine in Norway, where GDPR also applies due to EEA. I guess their lawyers don't know that.
- hmottestad 6y agoJust checked their privacy policy: > By using Virginia Mercury, you consent to the collection and use, in accordance with this policy, of the information you provide to us. This means they don't comply with GDPR.
- KingMachiavelli 6y agoAlthough unless they do business in Europe, there would not be any legal recourse for the EU right? I'm always surprised that any business that can block all EU/GDPR users without impacting their business would even need to care about the laws in those places.
- hmottestad 6y agoI guess the EU could fine them and then force Google to hand over this newspapers advertisement income, and Google would probably comply since they want and need to do business in the EU.
- pkulak 6y agoNo attorney on retainer?
- castis 6y agoIt's a wordpress installation containing news for Virginia in the US. No one outside this area is the target market.
- DanBC 6y agoWhich means they can safely ignore GDPR. But they're not, they're blocking visitors. That's an incoherent response: if they need to pay attention to GDPR blocking doesn't protect them, and if they don't need to pay attention to GDPR blocking visitors just deprives them of page views.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago> Which means they can safely ignore GDPR. Strictly speaking, this depends on if and how they track visitors. In practice, though, they can ignore the GDPR because they won't get into any trouble.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago> if they need to pay attention to GDPR blocking doesn't protect them Could you explain why? I thought that GDPR was applicable only to residents of the EU, and blocking them was a “good enough” way used by websites who do intensive personalized data tracking to avoid having to follow it. I don't personally approve of this way, but fail to understand why it's supposedly ineffective.
- IncRnd 6y agoThe site is run by nonprofit online news organization covering state government and policy in Virginia.