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Comment by bsjks | Hacker News Reader

If it costs more than zero and you don’t care about euros not visiting your site, it makes sense.

For example if you have ads or external analytics (practically 100% of websites) you need a cookie banner. Best to restrict access than to annoy your innocent users.

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You realistically don’t need to do anything at all. It’s just spite at this point.

Well, you have to know something about the law to know when it does/doesn’t apply, and this student newspaper apparently decided it didn’t care to invest that kind of time. I think this is understandable for those of us who don’t prefer to study other countries’ laws. Perhaps EU subjects should seek to improve their laws.

Nah. Speaking as an American ex-pat, it's about Americans being offended that foreign laws have heft and import. It pierces the sovereignty bubble. The Internet is home-grown. How dare other nations dictate to us Americans how we run our sites, amirite? We're gonna take our toys and home.

This is a silly, shamefully obvious straw man. No one is saying “Americans uniquely shouldn’t have to parse other countries’ laws”, the argument is “it’s ruggedly impractical for ordinary citizens of any country to parse the laws of other countries”.

> the argument is “it’s ruggedly impractical for ordinary citizens of any country to parse the laws of other countries”

Julian Assange and Kim Dotcom and myriad less famous individuals will be relieved to hear it.

Those aren’t cases of “ordinary individuals” and thus don’t apply, but yes the general principle also implies the special case that ordinary non-Americans shouldn’t have to parse American law just to go about their lives.

Foreign nationals contending with extraditions to the US for alleged actions performed while in foreign, sovereign lands is a far more serious problem by any measure than having to protect user data or risk not being able to do business in Europe. But go on with your "No True Scotsman" arguments

> But go on with your "No True Scotsman" arguments

Says the guy frantically moving goalposts. :)

No its literally about avoiding the morass of legal compliance as best you can, whenever and wherever.

The "compliance" is quite simple. Don't do this thing. Don't collect personal information without permission. Very, very simple.

If you do collect personal data, with permission, it's only slightly more complicated. Let the individuals control their data, including deletion. Don't do anything with it without permission. Again, not hard to understand.

The "morass" is for people who are gonna try anyway. "Well, what about if we bury the permission under exhausting legalese?" No, that's unlawful. "What if we collect it but obfuscate it?" Not without permission. Etc.

So, "compliance morass" is not an argument. It's an extremely simple law.

Thank you

>For example if you have ads or external analytics

It is not about ads or analytics and about collecting private data without consent. Just to remind americans GDPR does not specifically target the Internet, it apples for real world places with physical paper (like you got to a lab and want to do some tests they are forced to tell you what they will do with your private data and you have to agree or not).

You can have no tracking ads or analytics that do not record private data just fine, you can also have non tracking cookies without a popup. But honestly it makes sense that there is a big rich group that spread a lot of FUD about this stuff so many places will just decide not to server EU. If you never seen such GDPR popup maybe you should try to have a look at some of them, see how many "partners" this people share your tracking data with and how scummy the UX patherns they use are.

Btw I am 100% fine with some US resources blocking me, I can go read soemthing else and for sure not try workaround for accessing this people page.

I didn't say zero.

Imagine they locked out afrika there'd be a huge amount of screaming about injustice and isms...

You can identify users by geoip and ASN surprisingly well, don't pretend supporting that has to annoy ameri-land, it's the same as arguing lock off California, it's a bad argument.

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