What do we make of the fact that a significant number of major US based websites, including the NY Daily News, LA Times and Chicago Tribune have opted to completely prevent Europe from accessing their websites rather than conform to the new data privacy laws in Europe?
As msn reported today, along with others, these sites (and many more) are now completely blocking traffic from European nations.
If you visit latimes.com from Brtiain currently, you will see this:
Given that large companies have had around 2 years to prepare for this legislation and the changes needed in order to comply with it - I am wondeirng exactly why they haven't been ready long in advance. If it were the case that they were just slow or late in bringing in the required privacy features to their websites, then they would probably not need to worry too much about the potential fines they might incur, since they would just be among the estimated 60% of other businesses who also haven't done anything to implement any changes. The enforcing offices in Europe have stated that they will be taking a soft approach initially due to the complexity of the new legislation anyway - so I don't think these newspapers would be at a huge risk.
As I understand it, the penalty fines can be up to 4% of the company's annual turnover for the 'second offence' - meaning that they could just keep things running as they are until challenged once and THEN shut down access if needed. Plus, is it not likely that these companies generate more than 4% of their profit from an area the size of Europe? Meaning that they actually lose more money through shutting down to European access than they might do due to fines (if the block lasts a long time)?
As stated in the MSN piece, this raises questions about what exactly these companies are doing with the private data they collect and why exactly they might be choosing to try to side step the process of compliance.
The main point of the GDRP appears to be to try to increase our access to our data and to prevent companies monetizing it without our consent. While meeting the requirements for this ARE a pain for those running websites and also cost time/money to comply with (which might not be available for smaller sites) - in principle at least, the legislation appears to be noble. Given that this is the case (on the surface and at the moment), not only does blocking out an entire continent result in lost income, but it also results in a loss of PR value/respect - so the motivation for the action must be compelling indeed.
What do you think?
Are these newspapers deliberately refusing to increase access to the private data they hold because they don't want you to know how much they are holding? Are they just incompetent? Rebellious?
It seems Steemit.com didn't worry about the GDPR in this way, are we going to get blocked too? ;)
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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