People also tend to forget that providing a service (in whatever fashion) doesn't exist in a vacuum, there are the services and then there are the consumers of those services and they might have certain freedoms and rights that the locality of the service in question might not honour. Take the right to control your data for example, the US isn't very good at providing that with the services they offer, and they'd rather not have that freedom and rather make those few percent more money.
The EU has a good amount of soft power, this is just testing testing it's waters in directing policy more directly. (other examples are the Iran deal after the US left, and Intervention in Africa)
Geopolitically, this makes a lot of sense, and i think the idea has good intentions, but the implementation of the law is where it falls short.
there is not really any other way to play the geopolitical game sadly.
Every goverment on earth is doing this to keep themselves stable, some are just far more succesfull then others.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=72172
These are independent operators, NGOs etc, services being 'used by EU citizens' not really 'targeting Europeans'.
From a liability perspective, to the author's point these services I suppose would have to just filter out European sources?
Why would they publish a regulation so obviously vague, full well knowing the reality on the ground?
Why wouldn't they use language that unambiguously places NASA etc. firmly 'in our out' of the regulations or, some criteria which they would be one way or another?
Seems odd.
Regards NGOs: just because you do not make money does not make you a saint.
Regards vagueness: if you want to survive in an agile environment without rewriting every second day, vagueness is the way to go.
So if the US comes out with "GDPR- The Next Generation" with similar mandates towards the EU would that also be "good"?
Asking for a friend.
Or the Hague invasion act which is pretty much that case (US soldier are protected abroad against international treaties).
In reality, the question is not whether EU citizens will use these services, but whether the operator of the service is targeting people in the EU, i.e. whether the operator intends or reasonably expects for EU people to use their service. A US service will most likely be fine if their reasoning goes something like this: (1) We primarily intend to serve connections from the US. (2) This expectation is reasonable based on our network topology. (3) But we don't care if someone else connects.
It would not be appropriate to exempt specific organizations since those organizations may change their targeting in the future. It already exempts most non-EU organizations, due to the criterion that they don't target the EU.
We had the same panicking in 2018 when the GDPR came into force and – quelle surprise – there are no fines for random international websites. The EU doesn't insert itself into your affairs if you don't insert yourself into the EU market.
> In order to determine whether such an entity is offering services within the Union, it should be ascertained whether it is apparent that the entity is planning to offer services to persons in one or more Member States. The mere accessibility in the Union of the entity’s or an intermediary's website or of an emailaddress and of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the entity is established, is as such insufficient to ascertain such an intention. However, factors such as the use of a language or a currency generally used in one or more Member States with the possibility of ordering services in that other language, or the mentioning of customers or users who are in the Union, may make it apparent that the entity is planning to offer services within the Union.
Let's see... the past year the was a big scandal because apparently multiple non-profits were selling the .ORG top level domain name for $1B. They got these top level domain for free from the US government (or some institution thereof).
I would certainly like the EU to regulate more of the Internet instead of it being an US territory.
They are completely separate entities.
If you dislike this go shout at ICANN. It’s was US organisation - now it’s a “private” one[1]
[1] https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/stewardship-o...
It doesn't seem arbitrary to me. The service provided exists in many EU countries, and therefore must eventually be harmonised. This is the prime directive of the project.
That's not a very good prime directive.
Don't regulate things that don't need to be regulated, i.e. unless there is a very material benefit from it.
If the EU is concerned about WW3 level resiliency for these services, they can accomplish that themselves with a few cord, 'hardened' services that meet their criteria. For 'regular operations' it seems we're going quite well right now.
Unless there is a threat posed by these heretofore independent operators ... then I'm don't see any obvious material benefit here.
I'm wondering if somehow these entities could be compromised in a way that makes them a problem, more so than just 'going offline', in which case, maybe there are some benefits.
There is a simpler solution rather than enforcing EU oversight over root DNSes.
My first question is are they or is this the authors view?
The proposed regulation – like many EU regulations – can also apply to non-EU entities. In this sense, the EU does try to exert extraterritorial jurisdiction.
However, this is constrained to the case where the non-EU entity targets people in the EU, so somehow participates in the EU market. The origins of this “targeting criterion” actually come from consumer protection cases, where it's easy to understand: if you advertise your goods or services to people in a particular country, you'll have to play by that country's rules.
Why doesn't the EU simply provide a 'core' set of servers, which they operate to a high degree of fidelity and robustness so that 'should something go wrong' ... then the EU still has these resilient services to reply upon?
I don't see how someone doing a public service should arbitrarily come under such scrutiny.