Re:“We found PayPal vulnerabilities and PayPal punished us f...
by Mirioron on Monday February 24, 2020 @10:59AM
(#22405163)
>I would say such a fine to a mom and pop would be dissuasive of doing business at all
Welcome to the EU. They've pulled these stunts before. When they introduced changes to digital VAT collection the lawmakers "forgot" that VAT has exemption thresholds. This effectively barred some small and micro businesses from selling their digital services/goods to other EU countries, because the business would not have been exempt from VAT afterwards. It took the lawmakers years to implement a minimum VAT threshold.
>It’s not like they run every mom and pop site out of the country.
Of course they won't, because people want to do business. There will always be more businesses that get started. The question is whether there will be fewer businesses started because of the regulation. So far analysis after GDPR points to yes.
Fining a small mom and pop site 20 mill (20mil/4% is the highest fine depending on the case) is not proportionate, not effective because I would like to see them actually collect on that and I would say such a fine to a mom and pop would be dissuasive of doing business at all which is not that the ICO in the U.K. would want. Speaking of the ICO, their big fine (fucking auto correct) to BA for shockingly bad security earned them a 1.5% fine instead of the max 4% because they worked with the ICO (but the ICO still found they failing in a duty of care to protect data) and have been pushing the fine down the road ever since it was issued, atm the earliest ICO will actually fine BA is next month and it’s been almost a year since they filed their "intent to fine".
So while they can throw around heavy fines. It’s not like they run every mom and pop site out of the country.