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Comment by gnode | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how regulators would look at this practise. It would depend on whether taking away formatting and any image / video content counts as degrading. For some people this is desirable, but for others it may not be.

My interpretation is that they would be free to give the text-only version to EU residents unilaterally, but not to make formatting tied to tracking consent, as tracking is not functionally necessary for formatting.

As an extreme example, I don't think Youtube could have "yes, track me and let me watch the video" and "no, read text transcript of video" as options and claim equivalency.

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I think the discussion about this will be had in the coming months - though at least the lawmakers' intent seems to be strongly discouraging "bundling" unessential things together.

> For some people this is desirable, but for others it may not be.

In principle yes, but I have a hard time believing the NPR text-only site was designed for usefulness.

E.g., articles like [1] still contain all the inter-article links of the original - however, instead of linking to the text-only versions of those articles (which would be the reasonable thing to do if you're already on a text-only article) they try to get you back to the full version.

Worse still, if you decline, you get directed back to the front page. There is actually no way to follow the links of the articles without either URL hacking or agreeing to be tracked.

Additionally, the text-only front page only gives access to the latest headlines - no access to archives or even just a search function. So again, without getting a link from anywhere else or URL hacking, it's not possible to do anything else than view the latest headlines.

[1] https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=613996677

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I'm sure the lawyer-nerds are really having a great time with it. I've heard it said elsewhere and here on HN that EU courts are mostly concerned about the practical intent of the laws and not the explicit wording of the law like it can be here in the States. I have no idea if that's true, but it does sound reasonable to me, the part about EU courts. That being said, I think personally it's strange to say that the United States isn't also concerned about the practical intent of laws, because anytime I read a ruling or an opinion, it's always trying to drill into the intent behind the law and not picking nits over verbiage. But I'm not a lawyer, so maybe I'm completely wrong. The American system seems to be more about loopholes, though, so perhaps there is a looser interpretation of this comparison that rings true.

the american system is definitely more geared towards the letter of the law, while the rest of the world is more inclined towards the spirit of the law.

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