7 ms·

Well bye bye European tech industry. Why the hell would anyone want to do business with such a risk in place?

by hughrr 5y ago

elevenoh 5y ago
I'm not in the EU, but I'd exit any jurisdiction that implements this.
Goety 5y ago
The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit. EU adopting this measure means the enforcement will likely be corrupt and impossible to enforce standards.
- oblio 5y ago
  > The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. Unprecedented compared to who? Every sovereign state has more control than the EU does: US, China, etc. > Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit. How did the EU chop up the UK?
  - throwaways885 5y ago
    I believe GP is referring to the EU 'forcing' the UK to put a border between Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU wanted a hard border somewhere and wouldn't budge on that.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      Well, the UK wanted Northern Irelend to benefit from a have-your-cake-and-eat-it semi-membership of the EU, while actively denying that to the rest of their own people elsewhere in the UK. The EU have offered many opportunities for the UK to harmonise with the EU on many issues, while continuing with Brexit. For the most part, UK rejected repeated offers that would grant UK people and businesses more rights. For example, the rights of British people to freely travel in EU countries could have been kept, but the UK said we don't want our people to have that, as the price of mirroring it by allowing EU citizens the ability to travel in the UK is too high. EU offered to let students from the UK travel through EU under the Erasmus scheme. UK said no. EU offered a customs union, where standards were more harmonised and the would need to be far fewer checks at borders. That would have been far cheaper for every business in the UK that sells into the EU. UK rejected that. UK actively wants to diverge from EU standards (e.g. for things like food). It shouldn't be surprising that EU will protect businesses that conform to those standards over those seeking to undermine them. Businesses in Northern Ireland currently have advantageous access to the EU in ways no other part of the UK does. I don't mean the physical access to Ireland, I mean administrative access to the EU markets. You can see it in tax and import/export forms. There are currently reasons to set up businesses in Northern Irelend to get that foot-in-both-worlds advantage. A lot of businesses in the UK mainland would love to have the same rights as businesses in Northern Ireland. Especially those in Scotland who didn't vote to leave anyway, and see it as an England-imposed harm on them. What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere?
      - throwaways885 5y ago
        > What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere? Of course not. That's exactly GGP's point I was trying to prove. > The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. And I agree with it.
        estaseuropano 5y ago
        But the issue was not EU control, rather the Ireland situation. The situation due solely to brexit required checks somewhere. Do you want new riots and civil war due to checks within Ireland? Should Ireland accept to effectively leave the common market and all its benefits just so there's no check between UK and Northern Ireland? Or this option. The UK killed all other scenarios by insisting that it wants to freely deviate from everything - if it had gone the Norway route or just stayed in the Union no such checks would be needed. Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences?
        throwaways885 5y ago
        > Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences? I'm not saying that I agree with how things have turned out, nor am I blaming the EU, rather, just pointing out that they do have much control over global commerce. And this is anecdotal evidence of that. The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. Both the EU and UK had the same desire, but the EU had the upper hand due to their economic size and control.
        jlokier 5y ago
        > The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. That's not an EU decision as you're suggesting there. Ireland isn't some vassal state. It's an equal partner. Ireland itself doesn't want to cut Ireland off from the EU. It's not for the EU to decide something like that. It's an Ireland decision, and in fact the power to do so resides with Ireland. If Ireland had wanted to align with the UK and separate from the EU, they could have, and they still have the power to do so. Of course they don't want to, why would they. They've benefited enormously from EU membership, and one of those benefits now is that the EU often protects the interests of Ireland - as determined by Ireland - in negotiations with the UK. It is important to remember that the EU is not actually a top down system, even though it can seem that way. Any member country is free to leave simply by giving notice, and cease to partake of the benefits of membership. The EU's laws are clear on this.
    - oblio 5y ago
      You have it the other way around. Brexit was FOR a hard border. One that would keep the EU out. But the central British government, which does not seem to care much about their Northern Irish citizens, either forgot or just didn't care at all, about the fact that Northern Ireland is in limbo, stuck between Ireland and the UK. So any kind of EU - UK split would have reopened old wounds. Wounds which actually the EU helped heal, back in 1998.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      That’s really more a situation that the UK put itself in. The EU didn’t force it to ratify the Good Friday Agreement. Given that the UK is a party to the Good Friday Agreement, AND it wants to leave the EU and no longer comply with EU law, the current situation, or something very similar, is inevitable. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
  - Goety 5y ago
    The EU is not a sovereign state. The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power. I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament. >72% of citizens oppose digital monitoring, while 77% of their representatives vote for laws they emphatically do not want
    - oblio 5y ago
      > The EU is not a sovereign state. It represents sovereign states. > The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power. How, exactly? > I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament. Please expand on this.
      - Goety 5y ago
        >It represents sovereign states. not in every case. >How, exactly? There are a variety of good articles out there should you choose to examine the subject. I'll concede the point because I dont have time. >Please expand on this. This is seemingly a very unpopular law. The EP's support from citizens in the eurozone is dubious at best
      - estaseuropano 5y ago
        The EU is intragovernmental, not intergovernmental. It is less than a sovereign state and more than just a representative Union.
    - Glawen 5y ago
      Brexit is now the EU's fault, right.
      - Goety 5y ago
        The EU's behavior during Brexit is at the very least suspect.
        5y ago
gman83 5y ago
Wait, this is something that American and Chinese companies do on a regular basis, but when European companies do it it would mean the end of the industry? I'm certainly not in favour of this, but I don't follow your logic.
- hughrr 5y ago
  The point is really that European technology industry needs some differentiating characteristic to succeed. It is quite far behind both the American and Chinese side of things. The EU has promoted privacy and human rights first which was a very good differentiator but has instantly shot that entire concept down. So the question on the table now is if there is no differentiating factor, do we go with the established US company or the new EU company when a product has to be selected? It's not going to be the EU company.
alkonaut 5y ago
The situation even after this, is worse in the US, correct?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  The US is not (so far as we know) commanding Signal to install a backdoor.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Nor is the EU as far as we know
BjoernKW 5y ago
It's not like the EU so far has been home to a significant tech industry anyway. With GDPR, a notoriously convoluted set of rules and regulations that fails to achieve what it set out to, yet at the same time pesters SMEs while allowing large corporations with legal departments to continue to do as they please in terms of privacy, the EU has made sure it stays that way. Laws like this one are just the icing on the cake that is the fundamental misunderstanding by most MEPs of how technology and the technology business works, not to mention the very real downsides such laws have regarding privacy.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  Whats convoluted about GDPR?
  - BjoernKW 5y ago
    See these articles, for example: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/25/17395210/gdpr-spam-funny-memes https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/25/17395210/gdp... https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17378688/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-eu https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17378688/gdpr-general-dat... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/gdpr-europe-data-protection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/gdpr-europe-data-... Becoming GDPR-compliant is no small task if you take it seriously.

Well bye bye European tech industry. Why the hell would anyone want to do business with such a risk in place?

by hughrr 5y ago

Well bye bye European tech industry. Why the hell would anyone want to do business with such a risk in place?

elevenoh 5y ago

I'm not in the EU, but I'd exit any jurisdiction that implements this.

Goety 5y ago

The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit. EU adopting this measure means the enforcement will likely be corrupt and impossible to enforce standards.

oblio 5y ago
> The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. Unprecedented compared to who? Every sovereign state has more control than the EU does: US, China, etc. > Notice how they chopped up the UK during Brexit. How did the EU chop up the UK?
- throwaways885 5y ago
  I believe GP is referring to the EU 'forcing' the UK to put a border between Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU wanted a hard border somewhere and wouldn't budge on that.
  - jlokier 5y ago
    Well, the UK wanted Northern Irelend to benefit from a have-your-cake-and-eat-it semi-membership of the EU, while actively denying that to the rest of their own people elsewhere in the UK. The EU have offered many opportunities for the UK to harmonise with the EU on many issues, while continuing with Brexit. For the most part, UK rejected repeated offers that would grant UK people and businesses more rights. For example, the rights of British people to freely travel in EU countries could have been kept, but the UK said we don't want our people to have that, as the price of mirroring it by allowing EU citizens the ability to travel in the UK is too high. EU offered to let students from the UK travel through EU under the Erasmus scheme. UK said no. EU offered a customs union, where standards were more harmonised and the would need to be far fewer checks at borders. That would have been far cheaper for every business in the UK that sells into the EU. UK rejected that. UK actively wants to diverge from EU standards (e.g. for things like food). It shouldn't be surprising that EU will protect businesses that conform to those standards over those seeking to undermine them. Businesses in Northern Ireland currently have advantageous access to the EU in ways no other part of the UK does. I don't mean the physical access to Ireland, I mean administrative access to the EU markets. You can see it in tax and import/export forms. There are currently reasons to set up businesses in Northern Irelend to get that foot-in-both-worlds advantage. A lot of businesses in the UK mainland would love to have the same rights as businesses in Northern Ireland. Especially those in Scotland who didn't vote to leave anyway, and see it as an England-imposed harm on them. What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere?
    - throwaways885 5y ago
      > What would you expect should happen, that UK should be allowed to use Nothern Ireland as backdoor to send unchecked goods to the EU, imported from say the USA and Australia and re-exported into the whole EU market with no border checks anywhere? Of course not. That's exactly GGP's point I was trying to prove. > The EU already has unprecedented control over commerce. And I agree with it.
      - estaseuropano 5y ago
        But the issue was not EU control, rather the Ireland situation. The situation due solely to brexit required checks somewhere. Do you want new riots and civil war due to checks within Ireland? Should Ireland accept to effectively leave the common market and all its benefits just so there's no check between UK and Northern Ireland? Or this option. The UK killed all other scenarios by insisting that it wants to freely deviate from everything - if it had gone the Norway route or just stayed in the Union no such checks would be needed. Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences?
        throwaways885 5y ago
        > Brexit was a slim non-binding referendum run ammock for party-internal politics of the Tories. Absurd from start to finish and now you want to blame the EU for the consequences? I'm not saying that I agree with how things have turned out, nor am I blaming the EU, rather, just pointing out that they do have much control over global commerce. And this is anecdotal evidence of that. The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. Both the EU and UK had the same desire, but the EU had the upper hand due to their economic size and control.
        jlokier 5y ago
        > The EU could've had an internal border within it's own market, but that wasn't an option because they didn't want Ireland to be cut off. That's not an EU decision as you're suggesting there. Ireland isn't some vassal state. It's an equal partner. Ireland itself doesn't want to cut Ireland off from the EU. It's not for the EU to decide something like that. It's an Ireland decision, and in fact the power to do so resides with Ireland. If Ireland had wanted to align with the UK and separate from the EU, they could have, and they still have the power to do so. Of course they don't want to, why would they. They've benefited enormously from EU membership, and one of those benefits now is that the EU often protects the interests of Ireland - as determined by Ireland - in negotiations with the UK. It is important to remember that the EU is not actually a top down system, even though it can seem that way. Any member country is free to leave simply by giving notice, and cease to partake of the benefits of membership. The EU's laws are clear on this.
  - oblio 5y ago
    You have it the other way around. Brexit was FOR a hard border. One that would keep the EU out. But the central British government, which does not seem to care much about their Northern Irish citizens, either forgot or just didn't care at all, about the fact that Northern Ireland is in limbo, stuck between Ireland and the UK. So any kind of EU - UK split would have reopened old wounds. Wounds which actually the EU helped heal, back in 1998.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    That’s really more a situation that the UK put itself in. The EU didn’t force it to ratify the Good Friday Agreement. Given that the UK is a party to the Good Friday Agreement, AND it wants to leave the EU and no longer comply with EU law, the current situation, or something very similar, is inevitable. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
- Goety 5y ago
  The EU is not a sovereign state. The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power. I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament. >72% of citizens oppose digital monitoring, while 77% of their representatives vote for laws they emphatically do not want
  - oblio 5y ago
    > The EU is not a sovereign state. It represents sovereign states. > The EU chopped up UK business marketshare, business leadership, professional lives for little more than a gram of power. How, exactly? > I feel like it is necessary to point out the similarities between the CCP and European Parliament. Please expand on this.
    - Goety 5y ago
      >It represents sovereign states. not in every case. >How, exactly? There are a variety of good articles out there should you choose to examine the subject. I'll concede the point because I dont have time. >Please expand on this. This is seemingly a very unpopular law. The EP's support from citizens in the eurozone is dubious at best
    - estaseuropano 5y ago
      The EU is intragovernmental, not intergovernmental. It is less than a sovereign state and more than just a representative Union.
  - Glawen 5y ago
    Brexit is now the EU's fault, right.
    - Goety 5y ago
      The EU's behavior during Brexit is at the very least suspect.
      - 5y ago

gman83 5y ago

Wait, this is something that American and Chinese companies do on a regular basis, but when European companies do it it would mean the end of the industry? I'm certainly not in favour of this, but I don't follow your logic.

hughrr 5y ago
The point is really that European technology industry needs some differentiating characteristic to succeed. It is quite far behind both the American and Chinese side of things. The EU has promoted privacy and human rights first which was a very good differentiator but has instantly shot that entire concept down. So the question on the table now is if there is no differentiating factor, do we go with the established US company or the new EU company when a product has to be selected? It's not going to be the EU company.

alkonaut 5y ago

The situation even after this, is worse in the US, correct?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
The US is not (so far as we know) commanding Signal to install a backdoor.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Nor is the EU as far as we know

BjoernKW 5y ago

It's not like the EU so far has been home to a significant tech industry anyway. With GDPR, a notoriously convoluted set of rules and regulations that fails to achieve what it set out to, yet at the same time pesters SMEs while allowing large corporations with legal departments to continue to do as they please in terms of privacy, the EU has made sure it stays that way. Laws like this one are just the icing on the cake that is the fundamental misunderstanding by most MEPs of how technology and the technology business works, not to mention the very real downsides such laws have regarding privacy.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Whats convoluted about GDPR?
- BjoernKW 5y ago
  See these articles, for example: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/25/17395210/gdpr-spam-funny-memes https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/25/17395210/gdp... https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17378688/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-eu https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17378688/gdpr-general-dat... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/gdpr-europe-data-protection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/gdpr-europe-data-... Becoming GDPR-compliant is no small task if you take it seriously.