TheFlyingP1g

Perhaps this is a potential Techquickie topic

No problem! It looks like it's working now, I wasn't able to click submit or select a topic last time. That was indeed the form that I tried to use. Thanks for getting back to me! Andrew

?? Have you never heard of the Great Firewall of China? That is one way, diplomatic pressure is another, and yes, fines are another. I'm afraid you'd have to be living in a complete backwater if you think that anything done on the internet doesn't have to pay tax, adhere to local laws, etc. Have you ever tried Netflix in the EU? It has no where near as much content as it does in the US. Have you ever heard of TV Shack? It was a streaming service setup by a UK student who was extradited to the US for not complying with US copyright law. I'm afraid you're wrong, the internet is no longer the wild west that it used to be. Governments all over the world are legislating over it, some oppressively, i.e. North Korea, some pro-consumer, i.e. GDPR, some pro-business, i.e. Link Tax (that is their intent, but they are idiots, it will just mean that Google won't work in the EU, and that will bring EU business to a halt if they let it through). Some of these changes are good, some of them bad, and as with all politics, it's everyone's opinion as to which is which. My recommendation to you, please don't break GDPR rules, the fines are enough to make the biggest company's eye's water, if you live in a country with strong diplomatic relations with the EU, then it's very possible that deliberately breaking the law of the EU will end badly for you. Whatever lack of power you perceive the EU as having, I promise you it's an illusion, the EU collectively has a GDP that is comparable to the USA, it's a major world economy. Finally, it's diplomatically not a terrible idea for Canada to be part of the EU, it's not been done yet, but it's something that the USA might push Canada towards should they continue to stress their relationship. If they decide that they want to join the EU then a major part of the EU allowing that would be whether we can trust Canada diplomatically. Extradition and law is a major part of that.

That's fine, just don't do business with the EU

Hey, I wouldn't get worked up about it @KuJoe, but essentially @LAwLz is correct, it's fine if the block EU users from joining, that's the other option, however if they are going to do business in the EU then they need to pay taxes and comply with EU law. You can't think about the internet as having nations in the same way as the planet does, each site can choose to be a part of any number of nations by doing business there, or to not be a part a nation, and not to do business there. Law is hard, it's been behind with internet commerce for a very long time, and companies have taken advantage of it. When companies go to far, or things go wrong, governments have a responsibility to intervene. The moral of the story is, if you are a part of a disruptive trending market, i.e. the internet, and you don't want to be legislated by governments around the world then you need to never allow any personal data to be stolen from yourself, any of your competitors, or any unrelated person on the internet, from Google to your local sports club, you need to act responsibly. What you don't see when you hear about GDPR is the cost of the problems not having it would bring, imagine this: Joe Blogg's, your neighbour from down the road, he used a site to buy a PlayStation at a really great price the other day, he got it at a really good price because the company sold his data to a 3rd party, that 3rd party now has all of his contact details, perhaps his banking details, the IP address of his machine, who knows, perhaps his crappy password that he uses for everything, etc. This 3rd party is totally invested in not letting anyone know what they're up to with this data, since governments would probably get in the way and make things more difficult and expensive if they found out, so they actually don't use the data to do anything malicious, they only use it to profile you and sell that information on. A few years pass and Joe Bloggs is still using the same crappy passwords and the 3rd part is hacked/ransomwared, etc. Ignorant Joe Blogs is now robbed of a lot of money, all his accounts are stolen and sold on, imagine a steam account going on sale, a google account, a lastpass account, Dropbox, your banking details, etc. This isn't a difficult scenario to imagine, and it happens all the time. It's very well saying, well it's impossible to stay ahead of the curve, however, it's governments responsibility to drive innovation where they see fit, they give tax breaks for certain industries, they setup cities that work well, they ensure the countries infrastructure is of a good standard, and most importantly, they make sure that their population is safe, financially, physically, mentally and socially. Governments that are not trying to do those things are short changing you, honestly, with the amount of tax you have to pay, it's daylight robbery. I'm a British Development Operations Engineer living in Germany, I don't agree with all of what the EU government does, especially regarding the internet, however they are a fairly democratic institution, they do have the right intentions, they can just be totally ignorant when it comes to modern technology. The TLDR version though, if a site doesn't want the hassle of providing that level of protection to their users then they don't have to do business in the EU. If that means that too much of the internet is out of reach of the EU and it has a negative effect then it might be changed back or softened, but in general it's my opinion that GDPR is a good thing, it's this load of rubbish that is going to be more of a problem. Andrew

Hey, Guys, I trust you with my data, I love your content, I just don't want you to be taken the wrong way by the GDPR people. I mean I've heard they're big you know. I believe you need a way to delete all the data relating to an account. Keep up the great work! Cheers guys, Andrew p.s. I'd love to support you through your own platform, but I'm a cheapskate. While that is the case, you're going to have to put up with me being on YouTube. p.p.s. I tried to use the floatplane contact form to send this from Chrome and it didn't work.