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I understand the author's frustration. But until someone finds out how a company that operates globally can satisfy the laws of the countries their customers ar
by Jaygles 5y ago
I understand the author's frustration. But until someone finds out how a company that operates globally can satisfy the laws of the countries their customers are located in without associating the accounts with a country, I'm not sure what we can do.
> What I find curious is that it says the services are essentially the same between different countries. So, there is no advantage to me as a consumer for anything to change.
The advantage to the consumer is that they have access to the services at all. Countries have the ability to completely cut off their citizens to a service if they don't follow their laws.
- nerdponx 5y agoI don't mind sharing my country of residence, of all things.
- ketamine__ 5y agoIf someone rents an Airbnb for a few months in a new location are they now a resident of that new location? If we aren't talking about residency then changing an association (whatever that means) seems arbitrary.
- jfrunyon 5y agoWe clearly are, in fact, talking about residency. > As someone who travels a lot (not recently!)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CydeWeys 5y agoProbably, yeah. You could say it's temporary residency or whatever, but by the several months point this is clearly more than a mere vacation. If you've been living in one place for several months now you more live there than anywhere else.
- ketamine__ 5y agoSo three out of twelve months is more than anywhere else? Nomads move every few months.
- jsnell 5y agoWhy do you think this is a matter of a few months? All we know is that the author hasn't traveled "recently". But yes, those kinds of thresholds are common when it comes to residency as an official concept for e.g. taxation. Usually the threshold is around 183 days, but there is no reason why it'd be obviously less arbitrary than other choices.
- _nalply 5y agoWhere do you have this strange number from? The factorization is 3 * 61.
- Wingy 5y agoIt’s 365 / 2, ~half of a year :)
- __zack 5y agoIt’s just over half a year
- cldellow 5y agoAs others have said, it's half of a year. But most importantly, it's the number that the US government uses on form 8840, the Closer Connection Exception Statement for Aliens: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8840.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8840.pdf
- _nalply 5y agoThis answer is why I asked my somewhat stupid question. You know 183 days is weirdly specific. Why not just say 6 months or half a year? And know I know why, it's because US goverments uses this number as a cut-off for some legal consequences. Thank you!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ketamine__ 5y agoWhy do you think I'm talking about the author and not in general?
- lbotos 5y agoActually, in many countries, yes, a "tax resident". For the UK it's 31 days of more than 3 hours of work. I think it's the same for the US.
- 692 5y agoit's bit more complex than that (I've suffered regarding this) The Automatic Overseas Test You would normally be considered a non-UK resident if you meet any one of the following elements of the Automatic Overseas Test: You were considered as a UK resident in one or more of the previous three tax years, but you spend fewer than 16 days in the UK in the current tax year You spend fewer than 46 days in the UK in the tax year AND you were non-UK resident in the preceding three tax years You work full time outside the UK and spend fewer than 91 days in the UK and you work fewer than 31 days in the UK for three hours or less in any given day.
- lbotos 5y agoYou're right, I shortcutted it. I've read this page so many times and just jumped to the "hyper conservative take".
- judge2020 5y agoRegardless, google might have to follow privacy laws of countries even if you set foot there for a layover or for only a few hours - google itself isn’t a country and thus other countries can effectively bully them into doing anything if Google wants to stay in business there. Not a problem for random island nations that have few citizens, but you can bet any sizable nation blacklisting them could mean an appreciable loss in revenue (and maybe triggering other countries to make similar demands).
- remram 5y agoYes I find it weird that they both resent having local laws apply (when it's Malaysia) but value being covered by GDPR (when it's Germany). I can't really understand what they are wishing for.
- croes 5y agoBoth are german citizens and both are not in the country to which they are now to be assigned. The latter wasn't even in Thailand at all. So I guess they just don't want that Google makes some bullshit associations for them which undermie the GDPR.
- rsj_hn 5y agoSo you are saying if a German citizen travels to Mexico, they don't need to obey Mexican law because they are German citizens? Suppose a law in Mexico requires Google to store search queries and make them available to the government for 1 year, or it requires the collection of certain types of personal information, and a law in Germany bans Google from storing search queries or collecting the information. Now a German citizen travels to Mexico, and does a web query in Mexico, do you think Google should apply Germany's Laws or Mexico's laws? It will apply Mexico's laws because that is the jurisdiction in which the query is made. Similarly if a Mexican travels to Germany and makes a query, then Google will not store the results. Btw, this is the whole point of international VPNs. People want an internet presence in different countries in order to access content that is not available in their own country or to be treated differently than if they were in their own countries. So if you, as the German traveller, don't want your query stored, you'd VPN to a server in Germany and run your queries through that VPN. If you ran your query through the Mexican ISP, you can be sure that the information would be collected. Thus as much as European governments may want the GDPR to be a type of shield that you can carry with you when you cross over to other jurisdictions, the reality of that portability is limited to the ability of European nations to convince other nations to go along and treat Europeans differently in their own legal system. It may work, it may not, but whether it works is not a question of the GDPR but of the ability of Europe to project power and override laws in other jurisdictions.
- croes 5y agoAnd how does google satisfy a countries laws if they associate a customer with the wrong country?
- reaperducer 5y agoUnlike computer code, laws tend to have wiggle room. IANAL, but I expect in this case "best effort" is good enough.
- croes 5y agoHow but just asking your customer instead of guessing by unreliable factors?
- compiler-guy 5y agoIf they had asked the OP, he would have told them Germany, not Thailand, so they likely would not be in compliance with the law.
- croes 5y agoThey could demand proof of residency, that's the correct way.
- seoaeu 5y agoIs there any reason to believe that asking would be remotely reliable? There's a reason that liquor stores don't just ask people whether they're over 21.
- alexeldeib 5y agoYet, online that’s all websites 18+ and 21+ do.
- croes 5y agoDoes the liquor store estimate your age or do they ask for your id? Google should ask and then could demand proof.
- croes 5y agoBTW companies like Paypal enforced US boycotts on cuba even if the customer is a EU citizens. "The ticket retailer Proticket, for example, filed a lawsuit against the blocking of its account after offering tickets for the musical "Soy de Cuba" and the concert of a Cuban artist. Although Proticket won its case at the Dortmund Regional Court in spring 2016, Paypal still did not change its approach."
- monkeybutton 5y agoDoesn't the law block PayPal from being involved in such a transaction?
- croes 5y agoNot the EU branch. Global boycott laws, like US ones, are forbidden.
- cptskippy 5y agoPayPal LU, the bank that makes PayPal EU possible is a Subsidiary of PayPal Holdings Incorporated in the US. > All US persons, including US-incorporated entities, their foreign branches (including non-US entities owned or controlled by a US person that are also subject to US sanctions with respect to certain sanctions programs, such as the US's Iran, Cuba, and North Korea sanctions programs) and employees, are prohibited from transacting with sanctioned parties. - https://insightplus.bakermckenzie.com/bm/compliance-investigations_1/international-navigating-the-currents-of-us-and-prc-sanctions-compliance-and-best-practice-for-financial-institutions#cntAnchor1 https://insightplus.bakermckenzie.com/bm/compliance-investig... I am pretty sure the EU and US have treaties requiring them to respect one another's sanctions.
- croes 5y agoPaypal has already lost in german court. And global sanctions are still invalid. Paypal explicitly violates applicable EU law, namely the EU Blocking Regulation. This EU directive was explicitly issued in response to the US embargo against Cuba. It prohibits European companies from complying with the embargo and threatens all those who engage in the US blockade with severe penalties. And PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. is a european company.
- twirlock 5y agoThe issue of contention is how they determine the country, apparently even as the user in question is contesting. i.e. your comment is an irrelevant deflection that adds nothing to the discussion, and you are functionally doing PR for Google for free.
- 988747 5y agoI live in Europe, but past few years I've been working for US-based company, using their VPN a lot. Google wants to associate me with USA instead of my home country, and when I tried to fill support request to correct them their answer was basically "shut up, we know better". I created another mailbox and am slowly migrating to it. Fuck you Google.
- dredmorbius 5y agoGoogle wishes to enjoy the investment, employment, legal, and cultural benefits of being physically located in the United States for its key operations, but wishes to associate itself with Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bermuda for tax purposes. Why shouldn't its users seek similar geographic arbitrage?
- remus 5y agoBecause Google has to satisfy the legal requirements of the country the user is actually in.
- southerntofu 5y agoNo, they only have to satisfy the legal requirements of countries where they have established organizations. That's why GDPR was a game-changer: it made Europe-wide strong privacy regulations that were previously local to a few countries. France's CNIL has always been a farce, but at least on paper provided privacy rights... that Google was free to ignore because it was based in Ireland & such. Of course as an Internet service you don't have to comply with every single national law there is. Would that even be possible? Of course, if a nation State believes you don't respect their laws, they are "free" to try and censor your website, as many do with The Pirate Bay, Sci Hub, etc.
- chki 5y ago> No, they only have to satisfy the legal requirements of countries where they have established organizations. Which for Google and other companies means basically most countries, right? For example they have an office in Malaysia (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/googles-malaysia-office-photos-2014-3%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/googles...). If you have an office, the state will be able to seize your assets, or potentially jail your executives. This is not like Pirate Bay or Sci Hub.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThe strategic significance of a given office may be small, and may well be larger to the country in which it exists than to the firm it represents. I suspect Google would be more aggreived concerning actions taken against 1600 Ampetheater Parkway, or one of it major datacentres, than against a one-person sales front operating from a bedroom in a remote location. It might well seek to safely extract its personnel, but would have little concern with the facilities or operations it represents themselves.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y agoI'm from Italy and moved to Canada. Buying italian books is a nightmare. You can't buy them with your canadian account, but you can make an italian account only if you have an italian address and an italian credit card. So I had to resort to some serious hacks to access some of this ebooks. Horrible. And there is no legal path, to be clear, your only option is not buying ebooks, but the physical one require me to travel to Italy, which is insane.