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Comment by paulie_a | Hacker News Reader

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paulie_a

Or for some websites, simply ignore the EU regulations.

You can ignore other countries laws. You don't have to bow down to the EU.

Edit I don't get why people hate this, but it is a reality.

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> Or for some websites, simply ignore the EU regulations.

They'll be fined millions of not billions. The interest will add up on the fine if they don't pay, then assets will be ceased. This isn't a reasonable way to do business in Europe. Either follow the law or effectively shut down.

lol come and take it. I don’t live in europe and you’ll never be able to enforce any of your fines.

This is the dumbest position a company could possibly take.

Paying ransoms (especially for organisations outside of the respective jurisdiction) isn't?

I guess there sureley will be employees who want to continue traveling to Europe at some point in their lives.

Employees are on the hook for their companies decisions when they are taking a vacation? That doesn't sound right.

But willingly ignoring European laws does?

So an individual employee is on the hook if the company they work at violates European laws?

I don't know the details and decisions of my company, but I guess I shouldn't travel to Europe in that case.

We're not just talking about "violating laws". That happens all the time, mostly accidentally. We're talking about a company that willingly ignored the laws, was sued in Europe, fined millions, doesn't pay, all European assets have been ceased and now operates by "lol come and take it".

Most companies don't have European assets, so yes "lol come and take it" is valid. There are many companies in the world that could explicitly and willfully violate every aspect of European laws and there is nothing that can be done about it. The other post was essentially saying there is no recourse to companies that do not have have European assets.

> there is nothing that can be done about it.

There are multiple things that could be done. The EU could deny entry to employees of the company. They could ask the country of the company to press charges there. Of course the country could also ignore the EU, but than it would risk its good relationship with the EU.

That is insane. Denying entry to someone going on vacation because the higher ups did something the EU arbitrarly disagrees with?

The point is simple, Europe is not the target market for a large portion of the internet.

I didn't downvote you, but I guess the problem they see is that it's not practical for any company that sells products or ads to EU countries.

For most websites outside of the EU that is of no concern. For some reason every website that will never do business there seems to be concerned about the EU regulations. A large portion of the internet will never have to comply.

> A large portion of the internet will never have to comply.

Most sites are out of the scope of the regulation

Even if those that are in scope of the regulation they are not in the jurisdiction, so the regulations can be ignored.

Not if they want to target Europeans.

Again that is my point, most companies don't. The small amount that do will have to. There is a huge amount of companies that will never target Europe. They will never do business or have a presence there. The regulations are irrelevant for them.

I've noticed this persistent attitude that somehow eu regulations are globally applicable, in reality they are not.

A lot of the GDPR hysteria is from sites that are not located in Europe and do not target people from there (HENCE not subject to the regulation; which hasn't helped with all the BS "Unavailable for legal reasons" or similar knee-jerk reactions)

No, your local news site won't get fined by the EU

I'm forgetting the legal terms here, but this is not a direct legislation by the EU, rather, every country "should" individually draft legislation corresponding to it.

It's called a Directive. [1]

-- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_(European_Union)

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