<story><title>GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44248448</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghaff</author><text>&amp;gt;closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant&lt;p&gt;Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue&amp;#x2F;profit comes from the US and it&amp;#x27;s problematic to &amp;quot;do business&amp;quot; in the EU or China, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles? The fact that it&amp;#x27;s potentially a large market is irrelevant to me. In this case, any moderately tech-savvy consumers can get to my site anyway using a VPN. But I&amp;#x27;ve sent a clear message that I&amp;#x27;m not marketing to European consumers.</text></item><item><author>imdutch</author><text>You can still run a free website and be compliant with the GDPR. The EU&amp;#x2F;EEA is the largest market in the world, closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant.</text></item><item><author>firic</author><text>Things like this will test how much EU citizens value their privacy. Of course there will be some sites they will not be able to visit but time will show if they are okay with that.&lt;p&gt;These rules are very similar to rules limiting loans. No matter how desperate a person is and how low credit they have, in the US you can&amp;#x27;t give them a loan for above a certain amount of interest. That could be terrible for a poor person who is about to be evicted if they don&amp;#x27;t get some money right away. But we as a society are willing to accept that if the result is that more loans will be &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If GDPR is enforced as HN people say it will be (in a good way) then the result will probably be that a lot of free websites ban EU users and smaller companies take their place with products that either cost money or will be a bit worse.&lt;p&gt;If it enforced in a bad way then big companies who can navigate the law will get bigger because their small competitors will be to afraid of the law and shut EU users out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kinsomo</author><text>&amp;gt; Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue&amp;#x2F;profit comes from the US and it&amp;#x27;s problematic to &amp;quot;do business&amp;quot; in the EU or China, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles?&lt;p&gt;Because you would rather grow your market?</text></comment>
<story><title>GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44248448</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ghaff</author><text>&amp;gt;closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant&lt;p&gt;Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue&amp;#x2F;profit comes from the US and it&amp;#x27;s problematic to &amp;quot;do business&amp;quot; in the EU or China, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles? The fact that it&amp;#x27;s potentially a large market is irrelevant to me. In this case, any moderately tech-savvy consumers can get to my site anyway using a VPN. But I&amp;#x27;ve sent a clear message that I&amp;#x27;m not marketing to European consumers.</text></item><item><author>imdutch</author><text>You can still run a free website and be compliant with the GDPR. The EU&amp;#x2F;EEA is the largest market in the world, closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant.</text></item><item><author>firic</author><text>Things like this will test how much EU citizens value their privacy. Of course there will be some sites they will not be able to visit but time will show if they are okay with that.&lt;p&gt;These rules are very similar to rules limiting loans. No matter how desperate a person is and how low credit they have, in the US you can&amp;#x27;t give them a loan for above a certain amount of interest. That could be terrible for a poor person who is about to be evicted if they don&amp;#x27;t get some money right away. But we as a society are willing to accept that if the result is that more loans will be &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If GDPR is enforced as HN people say it will be (in a good way) then the result will probably be that a lot of free websites ban EU users and smaller companies take their place with products that either cost money or will be a bit worse.&lt;p&gt;If it enforced in a bad way then big companies who can navigate the law will get bigger because their small competitors will be to afraid of the law and shut EU users out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akie</author><text>Well, you could! We’d be happy for you to make some space for a competitor who doesn’t make his money selling personal data.</text></comment>