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Comment by Thiez | Hacker News Reader

I notice Brexit is mentioned only once in the paper, in a footnote mentioning that Great Britain is considered part of the EU for the purpose of their research. Another article currently on the HN frontpage discusses the effects of Brexit on companies [1], blaming Brexit for reduced investment and companies leaving the UK.

While I am absolutely open to the possibility that the GDPR has negative effects on technology venture investment (as their paper suggests), I am a bit disappointed that they did not attempt to correct for the effects of the UK leaving the EU. At the very least it would have been nice if, in addition to graphs for the entire EU, there were graphs for the UK alone, and also for the EU without the UK. That way it might have been possible to get a vague impression of how much these numbers are affected by Brexit instead of the GDPR.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431564

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> At the very least it would have been nice if, in addition to graphs for the entire EU, there were graphs for the UK alone, and also for the EU without the UK.

That would seem to require that the Crunchbase dataset referenced in the paper (but not discussed in terms of its content or format) was broken down in terms of specific businesses and their host country.

The actual effects of the UK's exit are not yet known (the post-Brexit UK might even grandfather in some EU law like GDPR), and the article [0] mentioned in the other HN story (your ref 1) is not definitive, e.g. for Pfizer it says: "Pfizer’s preparations are well advanced to make the changes necessary to meet EU legal requirements after the U.K. is no longer a member state, especially in the regulatory, manufacturing and supply chain areas". To me this isn't a basis for inferring what Pfizer will do with respect to GDPR

[0] https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10615540262848348...

From all the material I've seen, the UK is keeping GDPR post-Brexit

> The actual effects of the UK's exit are not yet known (the post-Brexit UK might even grandfather in some EU law like GDPR)

By default all existing EU law is grandfathered in, as a new legal category of "retained EU law". Changing or dropping individual laws would be considered on a case-by-case basis. The main legal significance of Brexit is that EU institutions will no longer be able to impose new legislation on the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Withdrawal)_Ac...

I'm not really worried about the effects of Brexit on the GDPR, as someone else has said, it's likely that the UK will keep it, or something similar. But it's not yet clear what the other consequences of Brexit are going to be (deal / no deal, borders with Ireland, etc.), and the deadline is getting closer and closer. I wouldn't be surprised if investment has decreased because investors are waiting until after Brexit to see the effects. It's even possible that the decrease in investment can be explained entirely by the ever-nearing Brexit deadline.

Again, this isn't to say that I don't think the GDPR could possible result in lower investment, it's just since Brexit is happening in slow-motion at the same time, and I don't think the authors have tried to measure how much that contributes to their results.

> The actual effects of the UK's exit are not yet known

However the effects ahead of Brexit are already occurring.

"Negative effects on technology" according to who, by what metric, and what technologies would be stunted exactly?

GDPR isn't going to slow down research projects into new approaches to OS design, or physical hardware development. No one is stopping their generalized AI thesis work over customer data laws.

The entire media coverage of GPDR and to an extent Brexit, seems like big business throwing a tantrum akin to a spoiled child. Flinging themselves on their bed crying that their entire life is over because they can't stay out past midnight.

All these reports are investment graphs and earnings reports. Slight to moderate downturns at a time of record highs in the market. Thinly veiled blackmail and ultimatums by those that have against those that have-not. "Let us do whatever we want or it would be a shame is something happened to your 401k.(or your research grant for that matter)"

Please don't twist my words. I said "negative effects on technology venture investment", quoting the article. I do not oppose the GDPR.

> by what metric

From the abstract: "in the overall dollar amounts raised across funding deals, the number of deals, and the dollar amount raised per individual deal" by "EU ventures, relative to their US counterparts."

I would love to see this analysis re-run with a separation maintained between adtech and non-adtech companies. The effect on the former is expected and, to a degree, desired. The effect on the latter deserves scrutiny.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912

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