So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit.
It's ludicrous to me that the same body that approved something so user-centric as GDPR could come up with legislation so incredibly hostile to small players as to effectively abolish the open internet by financial attrition.
Once this comes in, we'll collectively need to finally start work on that peer-to-peer, onion-layered, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building.
At least this is a lot more compelling in terms of a call to action. It's been a death of a thousand cuts for the last twenty years, so at least it'll help motivate us all to get a move on.
Snort, the GDPR is fairly hostile to small players by pretending they don't exist when they wrote the law. It's like signing a contract with employee hostile clauses that the employer pinky swears they will never use.
There is probably a similar pattern of ignore the small players in other new EU laws, but since it's not my industry I don't hear about them.
> the same body that approved something so user-centric as GDPR could come up with legislation so incredibly hostile to small players as to effectively abolish the open internet by financial attrition
GDPR arguably hurts small players most. Mismanagement of a single users data could cost the farm. It greatly increased the cost for small businesses to do business in Europe.
It is insane. I see the same argument in every thread about GDPR and I just can't wrap my mind around it. I can't imagine how well represented or identified by nation-state politics these people must be that they are willing to concede such degrees of discretionality to a government.
No. EU regulation uses court as a matter of last resort. This is a good thing. It lowers barriers to entry because the regulators are not the enemy that you need to lawyer up tot talk to.
The more EU critic your website/you/your consumers are the more risk for this potential cost.
They will use this in any way they can. Just because a few say this is not the intent of the law, I have yet to hear a court ruling that minds the intent of the law and not what the law says. (On a EU level that is)
I believe the EU would be the lesser of two evils here. If we leave it up to the UK Government and Mrs May we will have it far worse. She has tried several times to ban WhatsApp and encryption in general. I wouldn't put anything like this past her.
The UK is currently (it's law!) going to impose mandatory online age verification for “adult content”, including IIRC the ability to block non-compliant foreign sites (will they block twitter, tumblr?)
I don't know the EU/EuroParl equivalents, but the UK still has a robust Judicial Review system.
I would strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of independent judiciary, both capable of standing up to misguided legislation, as well as willing and enabled to do so, with the sense of purpose, clarity and finality, which [at least apparently, or perceptively] absent features are longstanding argument behind EU cecessionism.
In 2006, the Data Retention Directive got passed. [0]
In July 2006 a legal challenge started. By 2014 the directive was ruled incompatible with the EU charter of fundamental rights. It took a while, but that's due to having to go through your own country's courts first for a referral to the ECJ.
> I would strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of independent judiciary
Yes. I could equally strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of the judiciary delivering very favourable decisions that fly in the face of basic logic and rely on the privilege of the judicial classes.
regarding your second statement, counter argument to my claimed argument:
Unfortunately I cannot disagree.
I certainly had a much longer history in mind, as well as being selective to begin with the start of the twentieth century, whereabouts the modern system of judicial thought appears to be becoming established, and largely healthy in the broad directions.
(For personal context, my father was born in 1907. Illegitimate, because his father, fearing debtor's prison caused by a profligate young business partner, shot himself, unknowing his wife, at 43, was with child, my father. Ensued flight from our locality, the social opprobrium literally excommunicating. Paperless, illegitimacy was illegitimacy, I will never know how my father, late but present, attended a good school on scholarship, the only document most people ever then could show, unavailable. He couldn't vote, until marriage and property ownership, conveyed superficial ascendancy to the class system. Outright property ownership was still necessary to vote, during his youth.
So, very generally, I think the animus of the judiciary, began to turn, during the years my father grew up. This was in wide canvas a positive effect caused by legislation. But legislation followed countless decisions that created a weight of case law leaving legislators little option but to relieve the courts of the eash of applications, and relieve parliament of increasing embarrassment the result also inadvertently of the suspension of the Houses during wartime. So then we arrive at the classical post war history of equality in the workplace and massive massively painful demographic adjustments that only died out, never were truly assuaged.
I believe that bu the nineteen sixties, the judiciary began to asset a collective sense of greater immediate responsibility. Not least a generation among them by this time ascended or even rocketing to on high, since no encumbents sat above them - although few officers, comparatively, died in the Great Ear, appetite for public service was greatly diminished by experience personal and emotional as well as utilitarian futility. If not life, then so much hope for life, was denuded from a generation whom we don't immediately suspect to be ear casualties. This, too, was (immediately post war, from 50 anyway) the time of great individualism in the Bar. Desire to speak forth, rather than sit in Review, appealed to heartbroken men. Counterintuitively, the common trenches of the first, spurred little individual cry - the nation was st home, almost all, the war a newspaper report of alien incomprehensibility. Counterintuitively, considering that total war, involving all able, promoted iconic, stereotypical, nonconformity and isolation self ideation of a supreme personal victory. My own pet take how individualism was acceptable in total war, arose from the beginning of the concept of universal sacrifice of workshops, farms and all for the effort, leading to a new search for identity. Thus"we're all in it together" did not resonate with the irony it probably should. Unfortunately, this set a dangerous precedent, of heroism and the diminution abstract, of collective costs of war, which mars our vision and sensibilities, today.
I can't fairly stud my comment with case examples, because without a thorough survey and definitions chosen after thorough triage, I will crudely sculpt citations and findings from insignificance into fractured lay icons, else omit the most emotionally charged decisions for completely over sensitive reasons; I should make a complete hash of tracing the notable cases in isograph landscaping for beneficial study of the landscape formed by the nation's elements in fullest force.
It is altogether too easy to speak of exceptional counsel the oratory and the skills of summary, and never know when you are reviewing the true seismic shifts of history.
But I will - I have been in undercurrent throughout my comment - guiding by the hidden valley of my argument, the reader of my thoughts towards my perception that the judiciary took a conscientious active role, forcibly I think, from the time of first post rationing government. So much was in flux, I don't think of party politics before about 1965. This is totally arbitrary on my part, no different from opening a dictionary close enough to the first letter of the sought word, to be convenient.
I offer a single reason behind judicial activism, as relatively speaking certain rulings arguably might be considered: cold war and specifically the outlawing of the Communist Party Of Great Britain. I think the acquittal of Jeremy Thorpe, for example, was intended to relieve others of the the danger of blackmail.
You have the ability to vote Teresa May out of office and change UK laws through your member of parliament. The European Commission, the European Council, and the Council of the European Union are entirely undemocratic, and the European Parliament is democratic only in name. There's no serious argument that the EU is in any way responsive to voters.
> the European Parliament is democratic only in name
It was representatives (MEPs) today that chose to vote in favour of this directive. They could have voted differently and rejected the proposal outright. Can you elaborate on how this is a "democratic only in name" institution?
EU parliament used to be a place to dump 2nd rate politicians who:
(1) Were appreciated by their party, but not so much by the voters. The real politics happened in the domestic parliament, so the parties would run their 1st rate politicians in the domestic elections.
(2) And were personally very interested in the EU, and thus wanted to run.
We have been sending 2nd rate but very pro-EU politicians to the EU parliament. So the opinions of the members of the parliament are quite far from the average opinions of the EU populace. We are slowly beginning to realize that the European Parliament actually matters, and we should give some serious thought about who we vote there.
It's democratic on paper, sure. But in reality, does anyone know who their MEP is? Five year terms? Total lack of responsiveness (according to comments on here today), lack of real democratic accountability. Sure, it looks democratic, but in reality it's not. Particularly when the EU Parliament doesn't even initiate legislation, the un-elected European Commission does.
The UK government is democratic on paper, sure. But in reality, does anyone know who their MP is? [0]
Five year terms? [1]
Total lack of responsiveness [2]
lack of real democratic accountability [3]
Sure, it looks democratic, but in reality it's not.[4] Particularly when the UK parliament doesn't even initiate (propose) legislation: ministers are appointed by the government, and are not elected to their position. And civil servants write the legislation before it goes to parliament.
[3] There is an ability to recall MPs, but they need to have breached the parliamentary code bad enough to be suspended from sitting for a number of days or engaged in criminal behaviour and been duly sentenced. The current UK government is actively trying to strip people of voting rights who do not have the money for suitable photo ID (minimum £34)
[4] The UK's first-past-the-post electoral system means that the majority of votes do not matter.
I’ve never understood the argument that the Councils are undemocratic. They are made up of leaders elected by each state. Do you also think that the UK Cabinet is entirely undemocratic and that individual ministers should be elected to each role?
First, people would have to vote an EU-sceptic majority for their domestic parliaments. This would need to happen in a majority of EU countries. Then this majority of EU-sceptic governments could achieve a majority either in the Council or in the Commission, and propose laws to change the EU governance. Then the Parliament would have to accept these laws.
I think it would have to be the Council, it's difficult to see the Commission proposing a law that decreases the power of the Commission.
Didn't the people of several EU countries vote against the EU treaty, only to have the rules of the game changed so that it would go into effect anyways?
On a side note I do wonder if Amber Rudd passed along the necessary hashtags to Theresa May before taking the fall and hanging up her clipboard.
It's dire all over if the best we can say is we've got the least of all evils. Sadly, that appears to be the case, even with this disastrous legislation.
"So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit."
I am not British and I don't (nor have I ever) live in the UK.
I also have a very limited knowledge of that culture and economy, garnering most of what I know from reading the LRB every few weeks.
But all else being equal I am happier in a world post-brexit because I want very much for there to be diversity in governance and nation states.
I realize it creates inefficiencies and I also realize that to what degree you can say states are "competing" with each other for citizens is quite low (since it's a fairly sticky relationship) but I want some diversity to exist.
Coming up, we're also working on IP masking (onion layering), and we already have an option to do end-to-end encryption (which prevents middlemen from being able to read your data).
If you are passionate about this stuff, there are a lot of projects moving in this direction and all Open Source, and they/us/them could really use help/contribution! Political reasons only shorten the timeline on needing this.
How does decentralization, p2p and encryption change anything? They won't protect you or prevent enforcement. If there are issues they will just tighten the law and increase enforcement mechaniams.
I share your perplexion. At best, these technical solutions will just break off a smaller, "splinter" Internet, unused by the vast majority of users. The average user does not know or care about these things and this isn't likely to change without an effort to properly educate future generations.
Moving from a world wide web to a decentralized, fractured web? Instead of WWW you have FBW (FacebookWeb, GW (GoogleWeb), AW (AppleWeb). What a sad future that would be.
If there is no service then GDPR acts as a higher precedent. EU would have to change their law that users are not allowed to store XYZ content on their own harddrives.
So yes, P2P/decentralization is a perfectly legal alternative for the time being.
GDPR is extremely hostile to discovery in lawsuits. In this sense it does not help the little guy. It's almost tailor made for coverups and protecting the guilty in civil litigation.
The article itself cites GDPR, Arts. 6(1)(c) which, aside from 6(1)(f), are exactly the provisions that can and should be used to comply with the GDPR while allowing for U.S. discovery. The rest of the text reads like scaremongering to me.
> So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit.
I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Did you read the legislation? Which points of this legislation made you think that this is "enough to change view on Brexit" ?
EDIT: Well, downvoting this comment will not make the discussion any better. I've read most of the legislation, that's why I am asking why OP is reacting like that, wanted to clarify his objections (if any).
Both GDPR and this were intended to hurt American tech giants. However the people pushing this have very little understanding of how internet works so it would certainly have the opposite effect. The grim reality is that deregulation is the only sure way to help homegrown startups compete against the incumbents but you cannot push for deregulation without losing your entire political base in Europe.
It's ludicrous to me that the same body that approved something so user-centric as GDPR could come up with legislation so incredibly hostile to small players as to effectively abolish the open internet by financial attrition.
Once this comes in, we'll collectively need to finally start work on that peer-to-peer, onion-layered, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building.
At least this is a lot more compelling in terms of a call to action. It's been a death of a thousand cuts for the last twenty years, so at least it'll help motivate us all to get a move on.