<story><title>GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU</title><url>https://monal.im/blog/gdpr-removing-monal-from-the-eu/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>Thank you for making a coherent argument. You are missing one point I think: if not for those regulations those companies would love to do business. They are &lt;i&gt;forbidden&lt;/i&gt; from doing business, this guy sees the law and runs off without even trying to become compliant. That&amp;#x27;s a different thing. There is &lt;i&gt;no way&lt;/i&gt; that Kinder could be compliant with US law in such a way that they would not be exposed to what - to EU sensibilities - amount to exorbitant damage claims.&lt;p&gt;Similar arguments apply to the other examples you use, I see your point and there are valid reasons to not enter a certain market because of the legal climate there but the point I am trying to make is that the OP has not raise any valid point at all other than &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t want to comply&amp;#x27;. And that&amp;#x27;s fine by me but then don&amp;#x27;t bother dressing it up in a bunch of made up requirements.</text></item><item><author>fcbrooklyn</author><text>It is impossible to sell raw-milk cheese in the United States.  Are French cheese makers overreacting by simply choosing not to do business here rather than change their centuries-old production techniques?  It is illegal to sell kinder eggs in the US, because of some law that involves children accidentally swallowing toys.  Is Kinder overreacting by refusing to sell those candies here?  You cannot buy Bovril in the US, because of a panic about mad cow disease from 20 years ago.  Are the manufacturers of bovril overreacting by refusing to create a separate production facility that uses only beef sourced from outside the UK?  Compliance with laws outside your primary market has a cost, and potentially a benefit.  Every business, large or small, is going to do that cost-benefit analysis, and make their own decisions.  As an american I can hardly blame the Kinder people for failing to provide me with convenient access to chocolate eggs containing plastic toys.  It&amp;#x27;s my government, and the laws they&amp;#x27;ve put in place that have had that effect.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>This is a ridiculous over-reaction based on an extremely shallow interpretation of the GDPR.&lt;p&gt;If you are running a small business and you feel that you won&amp;#x27;t be able to operate your business because of the GDPR consider all those other laws that you have to be in compliance with as well. If that&amp;#x27;s your attitude towards legal compliance then you should probably shut your business down completely rather than to hope that just ignoring European customers is going to make the bogeyman go away.&lt;p&gt;Legal compliance is a requirement for &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; business, and privacy law is just one more thing to take into account and for a small business that does not process super sensitive data (such as medical information or financial information) the costs of compliance are negligible. They&amp;#x27;re not &amp;#x27;0&amp;#x27;, but then again it is a business and costs of doing business are the norm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kingofhdds</author><text>&amp;gt;this guy sees the law and runs off without even trying to become compliant&lt;p&gt;This guy quite clearly states that he doesn&amp;#x27;t have resources to become compliant, while it is too risky to make a mistake here.&lt;p&gt;There are fans of GDPR on this website, who prefer to ignore the fact that the compliance has its cost, and added to that still unknown risks of practical interpretation of legislation which also have their cost. But these are real life things.</text></comment>
<story><title>GDPR: Removing Monal from the EU</title><url>https://monal.im/blog/gdpr-removing-monal-from-the-eu/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>Thank you for making a coherent argument. You are missing one point I think: if not for those regulations those companies would love to do business. They are &lt;i&gt;forbidden&lt;/i&gt; from doing business, this guy sees the law and runs off without even trying to become compliant. That&amp;#x27;s a different thing. There is &lt;i&gt;no way&lt;/i&gt; that Kinder could be compliant with US law in such a way that they would not be exposed to what - to EU sensibilities - amount to exorbitant damage claims.&lt;p&gt;Similar arguments apply to the other examples you use, I see your point and there are valid reasons to not enter a certain market because of the legal climate there but the point I am trying to make is that the OP has not raise any valid point at all other than &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t want to comply&amp;#x27;. And that&amp;#x27;s fine by me but then don&amp;#x27;t bother dressing it up in a bunch of made up requirements.</text></item><item><author>fcbrooklyn</author><text>It is impossible to sell raw-milk cheese in the United States.  Are French cheese makers overreacting by simply choosing not to do business here rather than change their centuries-old production techniques?  It is illegal to sell kinder eggs in the US, because of some law that involves children accidentally swallowing toys.  Is Kinder overreacting by refusing to sell those candies here?  You cannot buy Bovril in the US, because of a panic about mad cow disease from 20 years ago.  Are the manufacturers of bovril overreacting by refusing to create a separate production facility that uses only beef sourced from outside the UK?  Compliance with laws outside your primary market has a cost, and potentially a benefit.  Every business, large or small, is going to do that cost-benefit analysis, and make their own decisions.  As an american I can hardly blame the Kinder people for failing to provide me with convenient access to chocolate eggs containing plastic toys.  It&amp;#x27;s my government, and the laws they&amp;#x27;ve put in place that have had that effect.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>This is a ridiculous over-reaction based on an extremely shallow interpretation of the GDPR.&lt;p&gt;If you are running a small business and you feel that you won&amp;#x27;t be able to operate your business because of the GDPR consider all those other laws that you have to be in compliance with as well. If that&amp;#x27;s your attitude towards legal compliance then you should probably shut your business down completely rather than to hope that just ignoring European customers is going to make the bogeyman go away.&lt;p&gt;Legal compliance is a requirement for &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; business, and privacy law is just one more thing to take into account and for a small business that does not process super sensitive data (such as medical information or financial information) the costs of compliance are negligible. They&amp;#x27;re not &amp;#x27;0&amp;#x27;, but then again it is a business and costs of doing business are the norm.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fcbrooklyn</author><text>Bovril could easily comply.  They would simply have to open a manufacturing facility that did not use UK beef.  The French cheese makers could sort of comply, by pasteurizing their milk.  Kinder, I admit, has a more difficult problem, and has, in fact attempted to comply, by creating a completely different product with the same name.</text></comment>