4 ms·

the spirit of such a law is great, but there's a huge problem - what does the implementation even look like? Are we going to have regulatory committees oversee

by toolz 5y ago

the spirit of such a law is great, but there's a huge problem - what does the implementation even look like? Are we going to have regulatory committees oversee which types of data should be portable and when? Who writes the protocols? The implementation of such a law is impossible as far as I can tell and opens up huge vulnerabilities to smaller companies. Just imagine when large companies can hire lobbyists that can force a data protocol on the smaller businesses. The spirit of many laws is great, the implementation is unfortunately, what actually matters and I don't see solutions to these hard problems. Allow me to go on a soapbox here, but far too many laws are created with good intentions that are destroying competition and hurting the end users.

capableweb 5y ago
> The implementation of such a law is impossible as far as I can tell and opens up huge vulnerabilities to smaller companies. Have you actually read the article from GDPR about "Data Portability"? (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/) It's easier than you think. Offer a endpoint that spits out a ZIP file with JSON/multimedia of all the data you have associated with the user. Now you're done, you don't have to do anything else. If possible, you should provide a good format (see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27278816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27278816) but you're not strictly required to. The intent of the article is not to allow people to import Facebook posts into Twitter, the intent of the article is to force businesses to allow people to export their data in a machine-readable format. What that entails exactly is up to each company to decide, and court of law to determine if it was followed properly.
- toolz 5y ago
  I hadn't read the law yet, thanks for the link, but I don't think that solves any problems at all and has potential for plenty of issues. The devil is in the details and the people already have the power to only use services that allow data exporting. You're attempting to force companies to behave in a pro-social manner but if that company never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner we'll have just given them another attack surface with their lobbyists to use to kill their competitors. I'll withhold judgement until I see how this plays out, it could end up being a great thing, the issue with laws isn't that they can't help - the issue is that laws that end up hurting almost never go away.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > but I don't think that solves any problems at all and has potential for plenty of issues It does solve the problem with some businesses not offering exports in machine-readable formats in order to stop users from being able to move to other services together with their data. Or which problems do you think they are aiming to solve here? > the people already have the power to only use services that allow data exporting. Yes, but the directives are not meant to help people to chose services, it's meant to help people already using a service and being able to move to a different one with their data. By forcing companies to follow these directives, users no longer have to chose an inferior product just because they offer exports, because all the products have to offer export. > You're attempting to force companies to behave in a pro-social manner but if that company never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner we'll have just given them another attack surface with their lobbyists to use to kill their competitors. I don't really understand this line of reasoning, but I'm interested in understanding it. We already have bunch of laws and directives to make companies behave more ethical, since they made it clear that they need laws sometimes to do the right thing. How is this adding another attack vectors to kill their competitors? If company A is "anti-social" (I guess), doesn't offer an export and want to kill their competitor B (who does offer export), how does the export tie into company A being able to kill company B? As I understand it, company B is following the directives while company A isn't, so users of company A could sue that company, but that doesn't affect lawful company B. But I might misunderstand something so please, elaborate :)
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > We already have bunch of laws and directives to make companies behave more ethical, since they made it clear that they need laws sometimes to do the right thing. How is this adding another attack vectors to kill their competitors? I'd go as far as saying that such regulation fixes an attack vector. Before, a company behaving pro-socially was at a competitive disadvantage - their competitors that "never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner" could adopt antisocial strategies that the pro-social company couldn't. Banning those strategies levels the playing field.
    - toolz 5y ago

by toolz 5y ago

capableweb 5y ago

> The implementation of such a law is impossible as far as I can tell and opens up huge vulnerabilities to smaller companies. Have you actually read the article from GDPR about "Data Portability"? (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/) It's easier than you think. Offer a endpoint that spits out a ZIP file with JSON/multimedia of all the data you have associated with the user. Now you're done, you don't have to do anything else. If possible, you should provide a good format (see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27278816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27278816) but you're not strictly required to. The intent of the article is not to allow people to import Facebook posts into Twitter, the intent of the article is to force businesses to allow people to export their data in a machine-readable format. What that entails exactly is up to each company to decide, and court of law to determine if it was followed properly.

toolz 5y ago
I hadn't read the law yet, thanks for the link, but I don't think that solves any problems at all and has potential for plenty of issues. The devil is in the details and the people already have the power to only use services that allow data exporting. You're attempting to force companies to behave in a pro-social manner but if that company never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner we'll have just given them another attack surface with their lobbyists to use to kill their competitors. I'll withhold judgement until I see how this plays out, it could end up being a great thing, the issue with laws isn't that they can't help - the issue is that laws that end up hurting almost never go away.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > but I don't think that solves any problems at all and has potential for plenty of issues It does solve the problem with some businesses not offering exports in machine-readable formats in order to stop users from being able to move to other services together with their data. Or which problems do you think they are aiming to solve here? > the people already have the power to only use services that allow data exporting. Yes, but the directives are not meant to help people to chose services, it's meant to help people already using a service and being able to move to a different one with their data. By forcing companies to follow these directives, users no longer have to chose an inferior product just because they offer exports, because all the products have to offer export. > You're attempting to force companies to behave in a pro-social manner but if that company never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner we'll have just given them another attack surface with their lobbyists to use to kill their competitors. I don't really understand this line of reasoning, but I'm interested in understanding it. We already have bunch of laws and directives to make companies behave more ethical, since they made it clear that they need laws sometimes to do the right thing. How is this adding another attack vectors to kill their competitors? If company A is "anti-social" (I guess), doesn't offer an export and want to kill their competitor B (who does offer export), how does the export tie into company A being able to kill company B? As I understand it, company B is following the directives while company A isn't, so users of company A could sue that company, but that doesn't affect lawful company B. But I might misunderstand something so please, elaborate :)
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > We already have bunch of laws and directives to make companies behave more ethical, since they made it clear that they need laws sometimes to do the right thing. How is this adding another attack vectors to kill their competitors? I'd go as far as saying that such regulation fixes an attack vector. Before, a company behaving pro-socially was at a competitive disadvantage - their competitors that "never wanted to behave in a pro-social manner" could adopt antisocial strategies that the pro-social company couldn't. Banning those strategies levels the playing field.
  - toolz 5y ago