I’m pretty close to the rough-end of GDPR in my current job, but it represents real benefits for millions of people. If you asked them what’s a reasonable way to treat their data, I believe the GDPR is close-ish to what a lot of Europeans would want. Or, at least a shift in the right direction.
Article 13 on the other hand is what you get if you ask rights-holders groups what they want, and poses a direct threat to freedom of expression for millions of Europeans.
I'm pretty sure that if you asked people whether they would prefer to pay for Facebook and Google with cash or by sharing data for ad targeting, most would choose the latter. The GDPR specifically forbids that option.
Article 13 on the other hand is what you get if you ask rights-holders groups what they want, and poses a direct threat to freedom of expression for millions of Europeans.
And it demonstrates the impossibility of having a powerful bureaucracy that does only the things that you want.
They were rather happy to do so since one of its selling points is that they do not track users for advertising. Do not underestimate the general publics tracking/advertising fatigue.
You won't get the majority of people on Facebook to pay for the service after you've been giving it to them for "free" for 10 years, you'd maybe convert 10% if that, at which point what use is facebook with most of the users gone?
But a competitor can emerge by providing an alternative service, for a fee, marketing it as "the service that doesn't spy on you".
Now, sure, that will be a niche service, and social networks can't be niche services. The protonmail of facebook or twitter will probably never emerge.
I couldn't care less about anyone outside my family, if they want to contact me they can email or call me by phone.
But I agree with you on the principle that bureaucracy very seldom does only the things I want.
Do you have a source for that?
Permission must be freely given in order to be valid. It is not freely given, if access to a service requires the permission and that permission is not strictly necessary for the service.
However I believe it is good that such option is forbidden, after all the years of abuse of user data at the hands of Google, Facebook and other advertisement companies. Note that ads can still be shown without all the creepy targeting, and ads could still be used to pay for the service, without stealing user data (yes, I call it stealing, because these companies go to great lengths to trick the user into giving the permission). It remains to be shown if ads without tracking could be sustainable to keep services free.
First, it's important to distinguish between the types of lawful bases with which you are processing data. For example, if you were to provide a service of targeting ads to people, you do not need consent to collect the data you need to target your ads: because you are simply fulfilling the contract. One of the problems with the current Facebooks and Googles of the world is that they assume you don't want targeted ads. I think this is an enormous mistake. Sign me up for targeted ads! I want them! I will freely give you information so that I can get targeted ads! In reality, the Faebooks of and Googles of the world are not offering targeted ads. They are offering indiscriminate ads and also selling your data. This is incredibly important to understand.
Next, even if we decide to offer a service and ask for consent for collection of non-related information, there is nothing stopping us from paying for that collection (as far as I can tell). The law states that consent must be "freely given", however this "freely given" means that you can't threaten consequences for non-consent. There is no provision for thanking your customers.
In other words, I'm pretty sure you can charge $5 a month for a service and then give $5 a month worth of credit as a thank you for being able to use your data. (Note: I tried to find some kind of verification of this, but was unable to find a discussion of it either way. I would be grateful for some evidence even if it contradicts my thesis ;-) )
However, there are massive caveats. First you must inform the customers what you are doing with their data and who your are sending it to. Second you must allow them to withdraw their consent. If they withdraw their consent then you must also do everything in your power to notify the downstream data processors to also stop using that data.
And I think that's the real reason you don't see the Facebooks and Googles of the world trying this. They don't want to work with the data in a trackable way. They want to do whatever the heck they want with your data forever. They don't want to inform you that they've sent your data to an organisation that you might disapprove of. They don't want to allow you to cancel your consent without cancelling your service and also do whatever is necessary to stop the downstream processor from using your data if you object.
There is usually a lot of vitriol here when we discuss GDPR however usually this is a result of distilling the argument down to an either/or situation. Either the company is an abusive monster or the law is trying to remove a legitimate business model. It overlooks the idea that there are serious problems with the way this business model works right now and the law attempts to improve that situation in ways that are both useful and frustrating.
Edit: At the risk of bringing the wrath of the EU down upon my employer, I just realised that we offer a 25 GBP voucher for agreeing to sign up to our newsletter. So, there is at least 1 company who does this and I really don't think there is anything wrong with it.
The same I was getting at here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805856
in fact I think I used to get more relevant ads some years ago.
Well, it's never gone to court yet, so I guess you can't say for sure. But that's how it's widely interpreted.
"To access this website you agree to all our privacy invasion and to sell us your soul. We are not asking you, just informing you."
What is now forbidden is to gather identifiable data about people without consent and ability to remove it.
Yes, in the same way (as an exaggerated example) it forbids people selling their organs for profit or jobs with no salary etc
But the parent is right, this is not only about companies, this has a direct impact on users and freedom of expression
They would chose not to have Google and Facebook. The basic principals of capitalism that products are something people want or need. Surveillance capitalism gets around this by exploiting the fact that an average citizen does know nothing about data collection and its scale and the implications for their privacy. GDPR is trying to fix this and also the fuck all attitude to security that most companies have.
All I can say is that this is not my lived experience of Google and Facebook in the EU. This is also not those companies’ interpretation of that law (nor a common one).
There are real arguments against the burden the GDPR puts on companies who hold/process significant PII (which I am sympathetic to), but this is not one of them.
> ... powerful bureaucracy that does only the things that you want.
The same could be said of any democracy. My point is that there is no democratic basis for Article 13. It’s only getting support because IP law is too boring and abstract for most people to get worked up about.
the two aren't mutually exclusive and Europe is right now in a deep growth slump also caused by middle class not moving into entrepreneurship due all the red tape and inefficiencies around having to deal with the particularities of every European state, with the EU aggregating without unifying a mess of regional particularities (i.e. vatmoss)
we desperately need the EU to cater both to the individual and the small business interests working out the kinks of the common market.
Another instance in most EU countries tips (in restaurants/bars) should be subject of VAT, not in the UK for instance.
Different exceptions for deductibles like water for employees (but not coffee and so on)
Add to that mistranslated directives (!), misinformed and uncooperative tax officials and you quickly realize that both "ease of doing business" and the single market are all a bunch of baloney. If I ever launch a B2C service, you can bet your ass I won't be aiming it at the EU market. I'll leave that for when I can afford an expert to handle all the bureaucratic nonsense that doing business in the EU involves.
GDPR was intended to be good for peoples privacy. Pro-climate policies are meant to be good for the climate.
Somethings gotta give. People are generally more important than startups. Climate is generally more important than economy. Because without people, there are no startups. And without climate, there is no economy, people, or startups.
Not the people, not the startups, not the EU companies.
There are things to be said about GDPR and climate, but not so much about article 13. It's just retarded and insane. These people have totally no clue.
"Artificial intelligence can recognize faces today, filter out preferences and even park independently. It should be easy to distinguish between original and parody." - Says the Germany's equivalent to the RIAA
Idiots like this fool are also running the EU, my god was the internet a great place before his ilk got here.
> pro-climate policies are never intended to be good for the economy
> without climate, there is no economy, people, or startups
I happen to be a small business owner in the EU and I have many customers who are the same. We all have registered with the ICO (UK) for something like £60 pa and filled in a short questionnaire. We have read the clear guidance on what records to keep and what to not keep - it's not rocket science. That is GDPR for most small businesses. Now, if your business is predicated on building profiles on people or pestering them on the phone or flogging ads etc then I can't help you there - it may be a pain.
Now Article 13: It is designed to try and make the likes of YouTube responsible for not carrying copyrighted works by putting the onus back on them. I believe they hide behind carrier status. I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations.
In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?
Yes. Let's end the cycle of pretending that we can prevent information from being free.
Copyright is a dinosaur of an idea that belongs in the annals of history and out of the present.
I know of numerous photographers who find their work ripped-off; without copyright protection they would have no comeback on that.
Copyright is a power grab around that fact. It wouldn't matter as much if they didn't extend it to a duration of two lifetimes.
Then don't copyright the content you make, just release it out into the public domain. Be the change you want to see.
But let's be honest, the people most vocal against Article 13 are those who want to leech other people's creations for free. Not those people actually creating the content.
Why would such people be at all concerned about Article 13? Torrent sites and swarms have been in flagrant disregard of the law since forever, one more law isn't going to change much. Likewise the other popular pirate mechanism, the old "upload an archive with the content to Mega or similar" technique, already frequently uses encrypted archives to make sure only people coming through the right channel (often an ad laden website + several even more ad laden URL shorteners) get access to the content, making a filter requirement ineffectual there as well.
News agencies know they are using dark patterns to skirt by GDPR while still using targeted advertising but since they know the fines will eventually start hitting, they want to move to paywalls. However, A paywall for a news company is practically useless as any major story one makes gets linked to and paraphrased by dozens of other news agencies within minutes. Users won't pay for a news website when they can get practically the same stories only slightly delayed at a free one that just paraphrases and links back to the original. Article 11 solves that problem and article 13 is to prevent 1 user who does pay for a website from copying the entire article and pasting it in a comment (I see that and archive/outline links all the time here and on reddit).
If we're going to be completely honest here, this is constructed as a personal attack and therefore doesn't merit the storage it takes up.
When someone plays music at an event, the collecting society will try to collect royalties from them, even if it's just CC or public-domain music, and the organiser is guilty until proven innocent.
That's exactly the problem. Stuff of that is protected, and with good reason. But upload filter that would be mandated by article 13 can't detect that fair use. By enforcing them for all platforms like Youtube all of this will vanish from the european internet.
Do you think I will stay in Europe with my company if this bill passes? You must be crazy.
Yes, you just need to find a way of convincing filters your parody is a parody (or other types of fair use) and not C.I. Oh wait there's no way
Well this is a double edge sword. EU still produces something like 20% of the global GDP and if a company can ignore such a market than let it be. There will be many alternative projects spawn to fill the market need (if there is a real one, not talking about surveillance capitalism products here). Is this that bad for the EU? I don't think so.
Article 13 is straight up impossible to implement.
most startups can and will. but it basically adds up the requirement of lawyering up to every startup that wants to operate here de facto annihilating the possibility for single man operations to bootstrap an idea cashless.
and someone has to write that policy and someone has to be your dpo. and that's operating costs that a garage level startup will not be able to sustain.
If you are of the position that the popular extremely invasive form of "marketing" is something that absolutely has to happen, then what I say will never apply to you. Especially as it pertains to it being self-evident that you're not violating anyone's rights.
It's like Brexit that way.
Also: as said elsewhere, article 13 is probably all good news for YouTube, so I doubt that they do anything deeply confrontational. Plus, even if they did, they would just be portrayed as evil lobbying/scheming bastards arm twisting the EU into giving them what they want.
This part is not clear to me. On one hand they are big enough to prevent copyrighted material being published. They could also offer filtering services to smaller parties.
But on the other hand, YouTube is still full of copyrighted material. You can find basically any videoclip, cd-rip, or anything else on there. There are even entire movie rips on there, that regularly get deleted. Do they currently pay some big license owner a fee for this? I don't think so (but I'm not sure).
So if this article 13 passes, YouTube will have to remove all of this material. Not only that, but they have to prevent such material being published in the first place. Or somehow make sure that a certain videoclip/cd-rip is payed off to the proper license owner.
I'm not sure if it's even possible for YouTube to make such a filter, without having either a lot of false negatives or positives.
Yep, it's going to be just another "oh lol there's a protest" and a week later nobody remembers it.
I'd be happy if wikimedia just completely blocked all of Europe for a 2-3 weeks.
The constant conflating of the two by private data protection oponents is really wearing thin.
The copyright directive is a whole different beast. Those two don't belong together.
I am saying that after implementing GDPR for a large organization with millions of customers and multiple departments.
Honestly, if your business can't survive without adhering to basic data protection principles then the world is better of without your company.
As a user, article 13 is bad for me.
Why?
The last thing I want is to give even more power to these obsolete middlemen to act as gatekeepers of information and culture.
I'm not totally against copyright as an idea, but I'm certainly against the form of it we have now.
What?? I have maned to full GDPR compliant product in several startups. What am I doing wrong?
I mean, GDPR is bad enough for start ups, but Article 13?