Why is the EU trying to regulate outside it's jurisdiction?
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.
If you want to look at it from that perspective: the same reason the US does it.
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.
Also, it makes sense in the broader EU strategy of becoming less reliant on the US.
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.
It’s the nature of governments and bureaucracies to try and control as much as they can. The kinds of people who draft these regulations aren’t interested in limited legislation. The United States is particularly guilty of this - we frequently demand that other countries follow our regulatory rules, especially around banking and “anti-terrorism”.
> It’s the nature of governments and bureaucracies to try and control as much as they can. The kinds of people who draft these regulations aren’t interested in limited legislation
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.
It doesn't, really; see paragraph (65) in the document [0]. It states something along the lines of "if you're providing services stationed in the EU, or services directed people that live in the EU, then you must comply with these regulations". Basically, an import regulation for operators that do not have a presence in the EU (but do target the EU market), and an operating regulation for those that have a presence in the EU.
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.
That is exactly how gdpr is set up. Which is good.
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.
>That is exactly how gdpr is set up. Which is good.
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.
FISA courts and the law they are based on? The US is explicitly or implicitly doing this all the time.
Or the Hague invasion act which is pretty much that case (US soldier are protected abroad against international treaties).
Yes, it most certainly would be good.
The text in question does define more closely what it means to offer services in the EU. To lawyers (and to anyone who has experience with GDPR compliance) this is not a particularly vague statement. Admittedly, there's no unambiguous bright line definition, but there's a lot of jurisprudence on the matter.
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.
I'm not sure where you got the word "target" from. In the context of GDPR what the EU does is they believe European people are their data subjects, they claim that personal data is things like IP addresses, and if you record information about these data subjects, like RIPE IPs in NGINX logs, then the EU feels that you are governed by them regardless of where you live or where your server is hosted. Which to me sounds like basically everyone who's plugged into the internet who hasn't configured their firewall to drop traffic from ips starting with 2, 5, 25, 31, 37, 46, 51, 53, 57, 62, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 109, 141, 145, 151, 176, 178, 185, 188, 193, 194, 195, 212, 213, or 217. In practice, the EU has explicitly exempted most of the operators who wouldn't be economical to fine, but it's pretty clear that the regulatory model is intended to operate like a whitelist, i.e. you're under their dominion unless they say you're not. What I found particularly amusing in the context of the DNS topic at hand. Is when people voiced concerns about normal people running DNS on a Linux router or something being impacted by the legislation, the EU's response in the document was like, no no trust us if you're doing something like running a DNS server on your "laptop" (yes they said laptop) then you're not going to be impacted. How reassuring!
I got the word "target" from the referenced section (65):
> 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.
Why not?
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.
This is ICANN’s responsibility and not root DNS servers.
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]
It is still a US company regulated by US laws isnt it?
I can make the analogy that public transport is a public service, but that doesn't mean people have to drive in old and unsafe busses and trains right?
> I don't see how someone doing a public service should arbitrarily come under such scrutiny.
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.
"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.
Not they cannot. A DNS request in China is not targeting a European root but a local one. And that can affect a European citizen.
Umm idk if I put 1.1.1.1 as my DNS which root is it targeting? The one in China? Or if I put 0.0.0.0 (IP of EU run DNS server backed by EU run root) then is it still China?
There is a simpler solution rather than enforcing EU oversight over root DNSes.
Cloudflare is one of the private operators of root servers mentioned in the article so you would be using the F root server.
Hence why I said 0.0.0.0 as a root DNS created and operated by EU
Seems like it's the job of the 'EU citizen' to not use foreign services if they don't want to use services which are not consistent with their own regulatory standards.
Which is exactly what we're doing, via our government (which is of, by and for the people).
> Why is the EU trying to regulate outside it's jurisdiction?
My first question is are they or is this the authors view?
It is primarily 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.
None of these systems advertise their goods or services anywhere really. So that's going to be a funny day in the ECJ.