5 ms·

People seem to forget that the more legislation there is around something the more it is only feasible to do if you are a corporate person. Human persons just d

People seem to forget that the more legislation there is around something the more it is only feasible to do if you are a corporate person. Human persons just don't have the same rights or protections from liabilty.

SteveNuts 2y ago
It also raises the barrier to entry for newcomers, ensuring established large players continue to consolidate power, since they have the means to deflect and defend themselves from these regulations (unless there are specific carve-outs in place, of course).
- morkalork 2y ago
  This effectively makes censorship much simpler for the government, no need to chase down a million little sites,just casually lean on the few big ones remaining.
  - SteveNuts 2y ago
    Skying too! Way fewer taps required.
mattigames 2y ago
It's not like there are laws that are more lenient with non-profits or with tiny companies right?
- superkuh 2y ago
  The EU's digital markets act is one that got that right and I love it. But it's the exception to the rule. The vast majority of such laws are for the benefit of the corporations themselves, despite any ostensible purposes. And this is definitely in that latter category.
  - arlcode 2y ago
    Also a lot of other EU regulations do the same. Sometimes it's explicitly mentioned but oftentimes it's behind "appropriate and proportionate measures"
    - superkuh 2y ago
      But most don't. GDPR for example. It's pretty wack that random people coming to my neighborhood BBQ can demand I give them the backyard surveillance camera recording or force me to delete it (a metaphor for a personal website logs). Such makes perfect sense for a corporation but none when applied to a human person and context. We should make the laws for our digital spaces for human person use cases first, not corporate person use cases. Even if it's in the sense of trying to protect humans from corporations.
      - jokethrowaway 2y ago
        Indeed, or VATMOSS, which made all small merchants move their ecommerces to Amazon, Gumroad (and Paddle) to avoid the complexity
        tzs 2y ago
        Is VATMOSS more complicated for small merchants in the EU than it is for foreign merchants that sell online into the EU? I work for the latter kind of merchant, and "complexity" is not a word I would associate with VATMOSS. Here is what we've had to do to deal with VATMOSS: • Register with the tax authority in a country that was part of VATMOSS. We registered with Ireland. We did this online via the Irish tax authority's web site. It took something like 15-30 minutes. • Collect VAT. VAT rates are country wide and don't change very often so it is easy to simply have a rate table in our database. No need to integrate any third party paid tax processing API into our checkout process. Once a month I run a script that uses a free API from apilayer.com to get the rates for each country and tell me if any do not match the rates in our database, but that's just because I'm lazy. :-) It's not much work to just manually search to find news of upcoming VAT rate changes. • At the start of each quarter we have to report how much we sold and how much VAT we collected for each country. I run a script I wrote that generates a CSV file with that data from our database. We upload it to the Irish tax authority's web site and send them the total VAT. They deal with distributing the data and money to the other countries. It was a bit more complicated before Brexit. Back then we made the mistake of picking the UK as our country to register with. Instead of going online by making a web-based way to do things like Ireland did, the UK did it by making available OpenOffice versions of their paper forms for download. You could download those, edit them to contain your information, and then upload them.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
This is something the EU got right for once in the DMA/DSA: It only applies starting from a certain, large size - if you're that big, you can afford the overhead.
KaiserPro 2y ago
If you read the guidance: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/risk-assessment-guidance-and-risk-profiles.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... It amounts to your basic terms of service. It means that you'll need to moderate your forums, and prove that you have a policy for moderation. (basically what all decent forums do anyway) The crucial thing is that you need to record that you've done it, and reassessed it. and prove "you understand the 17 priority areas" Its similar for what a trustee of a small charity is supposed to do each year for its due diligence.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Most people don't have time to wade through that amount of bureaucratic legalese, much less put it into practice.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Is the trustee of a small charity on the hook for £18,000,000 in minimum fines?
  - KaiserPro 2y ago
    Trustees for small charities can be personally liable for unlimited amounts. GDPR, Safeguarding, liability for the building you operate in, money laundering. there are lots of laws you are liable for.
  - andrewaylett 2y ago
    The maximum fines are 10% of "qualifying worldwide revenue", or £18M, whichever is larger. This is an exercise in stopping companies from claiming tiny revenues when they're actually much larger, rather than fining genuinely tiny companies (or individuals) a ridiculous multiple of their value (or wealth). Plenty of things in UK law attract "an unlimited fine", but even that doesn't lead to people actually being fined amounts greater than all the money that's ever existed.
    - 2y ago

SteveNuts 2y ago

It also raises the barrier to entry for newcomers, ensuring established large players continue to consolidate power, since they have the means to deflect and defend themselves from these regulations (unless there are specific carve-outs in place, of course).

morkalork 2y ago
This effectively makes censorship much simpler for the government, no need to chase down a million little sites,just casually lean on the few big ones remaining.
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  Skying too! Way fewer taps required.

mattigames 2y ago

It's not like there are laws that are more lenient with non-profits or with tiny companies right?

superkuh 2y ago
The EU's digital markets act is one that got that right and I love it. But it's the exception to the rule. The vast majority of such laws are for the benefit of the corporations themselves, despite any ostensible purposes. And this is definitely in that latter category.
- arlcode 2y ago
  Also a lot of other EU regulations do the same. Sometimes it's explicitly mentioned but oftentimes it's behind "appropriate and proportionate measures"
  - superkuh 2y ago
    But most don't. GDPR for example. It's pretty wack that random people coming to my neighborhood BBQ can demand I give them the backyard surveillance camera recording or force me to delete it (a metaphor for a personal website logs). Such makes perfect sense for a corporation but none when applied to a human person and context. We should make the laws for our digital spaces for human person use cases first, not corporate person use cases. Even if it's in the sense of trying to protect humans from corporations.
    - jokethrowaway 2y ago
      Indeed, or VATMOSS, which made all small merchants move their ecommerces to Amazon, Gumroad (and Paddle) to avoid the complexity
      - tzs 2y ago
        Is VATMOSS more complicated for small merchants in the EU than it is for foreign merchants that sell online into the EU? I work for the latter kind of merchant, and "complexity" is not a word I would associate with VATMOSS. Here is what we've had to do to deal with VATMOSS: • Register with the tax authority in a country that was part of VATMOSS. We registered with Ireland. We did this online via the Irish tax authority's web site. It took something like 15-30 minutes. • Collect VAT. VAT rates are country wide and don't change very often so it is easy to simply have a rate table in our database. No need to integrate any third party paid tax processing API into our checkout process. Once a month I run a script that uses a free API from apilayer.com to get the rates for each country and tell me if any do not match the rates in our database, but that's just because I'm lazy. :-) It's not much work to just manually search to find news of upcoming VAT rate changes. • At the start of each quarter we have to report how much we sold and how much VAT we collected for each country. I run a script I wrote that generates a CSV file with that data from our database. We upload it to the Irish tax authority's web site and send them the total VAT. They deal with distributing the data and money to the other countries. It was a bit more complicated before Brexit. Back then we made the mistake of picking the UK as our country to register with. Instead of going online by making a web-based way to do things like Ireland did, the UK did it by making available OpenOffice versions of their paper forms for download. You could download those, edit them to contain your information, and then upload them.

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

This is something the EU got right for once in the DMA/DSA: It only applies starting from a certain, large size - if you're that big, you can afford the overhead.

KaiserPro 2y ago

If you read the guidance: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/risk-assessment-guidance-and-risk-profiles.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... It amounts to your basic terms of service. It means that you'll need to moderate your forums, and prove that you have a policy for moderation. (basically what all decent forums do anyway) The crucial thing is that you need to record that you've done it, and reassessed it. and prove "you understand the 17 priority areas" Its similar for what a trustee of a small charity is supposed to do each year for its due diligence.

baggy_trough 2y ago
Most people don't have time to wade through that amount of bureaucratic legalese, much less put it into practice.
mulmen 2y ago
Is the trustee of a small charity on the hook for £18,000,000 in minimum fines?
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  Trustees for small charities can be personally liable for unlimited amounts. GDPR, Safeguarding, liability for the building you operate in, money laundering. there are lots of laws you are liable for.
- andrewaylett 2y ago
  The maximum fines are 10% of "qualifying worldwide revenue", or £18M, whichever is larger. This is an exercise in stopping companies from claiming tiny revenues when they're actually much larger, rather than fining genuinely tiny companies (or individuals) a ridiculous multiple of their value (or wealth). Plenty of things in UK law attract "an unlimited fine", but even that doesn't lead to people actually being fined amounts greater than all the money that's ever existed.
  - 2y ago