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The post here on hacker news mentioned the down sides for one receiver. That person was stressed out thinking that they were about to be sued. They considered r
by codazoda 5y ago
The post here on hacker news mentioned the down sides for one receiver. That person was stressed out thinking that they were about to be sued. They considered retaining council, which could have cost them a few thousand dollars, in order to get ahead of the threat. It didn’t come to that, so it’s a “what if”, but I could see myself trying to retain council too. Hopefully, a lawyer would have talked me down and advised me to wait it out. On the flip side, they may have offered to respond on my behalf (which would cost money).
I would not respond to such an email myself, ignoring it until I was able to defer to an attorney.
I publish a simple personal blog and I worry about the _worldwide_ legal implications of doing so. As one example, I have some old information about making model rocket fuel at home. At the time I had carefully reviewed U.S. law and knew how much I could legally make and have in my possession. Then I got questions from people in other countries and I got spooked. What if I break a law somewhere else?
- kstrauser 5y agoI assume that I’m breaking other countries’ laws all the time, say be criticizing the actions of their governments. I don’t worry about that. I’m much more worried about, say, CCPA compliance while living and working in California. (Not that I’m especially worried it. My personal projects don’t meet any of the criteria which would make it apply to me.)
- codazoda 5y agoYeah, me too. I don’t collect stats on visitors anymore (using Google Analytics for example) because I now understand the privacy implications of doing so. I do use a simple impression counter but I capture no information (not IP, not browser, nothing). I definitely think about the CCPA and ADA laws, but I’m relatively sure they don’t apply to me. Still, I certainly think about them.
- dhimes 5y agoI go as far as saying in the TOS that my sites are for users in the US.
- phonebanshee 5y agoWhy? What would make you think this has any impact?
- dhimes 5y agoI don't think I understand the question.
- tatersolid 5y agoIf the EU wants an extra-territorial legal framework, why can’t a US website owner do the same in their TOS? That’s a perfectly legal thing to do in the US. The knife cuts both ways.
- kstrauser 5y agoI personally use a self-hosted analytics app so I can still get some useful feedback without sharing my visitors’ data. I get pretty graphs, and my visitors get to keep their privacy.
- matkoniecz 5y agoThe problem for people outside USA is that this country repeatedly demonstrated ability to enforce law for example in Europe. I would not be worried about say Sri Lanka privacy/blasphemy law but USA court can take down my email, website, important accounts, less important accounts starting from HN, gmail and github accounts.
- wruza 5y agoWhat if I break a law somewhere else? Who knows? I can imagine that an innocent picture of uncovered legs may be illegal in some religious states, but do you have to worry about it? Is that even a thing? (I’m aware of the chances that you may visit that country some day and find out that you’re a wanted criminal, but not sure if that applies to non-felonies world-legal-wise)
- nautilius 5y agoIn that case I'd be mostly worried about breaking law in the U.S. by making rocket knowledge available to foreigners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...