Several US news sites including The LA Times, The New York Daily News and Chicago Times have been taken offline in the UK and Europe in response to a new data law coming into effect.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seeks to protect the digital rights of EU citizens through stricter data laws and greater oversight of how companies manage people's personal information.

"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries," states a message greeting visitors to The LA Times.

We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 USD 0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.

"We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

Many high-profile news organisations were affected by the issue, including all 46 daily newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises.

Several other major news sites, including The Washington Post and Time required visitors from the EU to agree to new terms and conditions.

GDPR experts have warned that the disruption may only be the beginning for web users, as companies struggle to adapt to the new law.

“This is just the first wave. Any company that has anything to do with EU consumers must get its data and processes in order now," David Smith, head of GDPR technology at data management firm SAS, said in an emailed statement to The Independent.

"The fact that some of the US’s largest news outlets have been forced to pull their services from the EU market shows the first costs of inaction. For too long companies have tried to ignore GDPR; now the rubber is hitting the road, and it’s already seriously costing those who aren’t ready."

The new GDPR law came into force on Friday, 25 May, after two years of preparation.

Failing to adhere to the new regulation could result is fines of up to €20 million or 4 per cent of a company's global revenue.

"Personal data is the gold of the 21st century. And we leave our data basically at every step we take, especially in the digital world," Vĕra Jourová, the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, said in a statement on Thursday, 25 May.

"Data protection is a fundamental right in the EU. The new rules will put the Europeans back in control of their data."</s>The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect today, and the web will never be the same, in Europe at least. Internal wrangling at companies between the legal, sales, marketing, editorial, and other departments has determined what approach to take to stay on the right side of the strict new rules, and the conclusions vary widely.

Hailed by many as a victory for human rights in the digital age, GDPR is designed to give EU consumers control over how companies can collect and use their personal data. Since information online is borderless, the new law affects every company that has any contact with users in the EU, anywhere up or down a company’s data supply chain.

The penalty for breaking the law can run up to 4% of global revenue, which would be a significant sum for advertising-funded firms like Google and Facebook. In fact, the first GDPR-based lawsuits have already been filed against both tech giants, arguing that the consent they require from customers to continue using their services is not “freely given.”

This is the crux of the emails you may have received recently from companies seeking approval to send newsletters, announcing changes to privacy policies, and demonstrating many other variations of GDPR-linked legal housekeeping. This has also made browsing the web in Europe an adventure today, with pop-ups, legal notices, and other barriers springing up. Here’s a tour of the post-GDPR world online:

Business as usual (more or less)

For many publishers, relatively unobtrusive pop-ups seem to suffice—some sites ask for agreement to store and track your data (like Quartz), while others simply point to privacy policies. The content on these sites remains accessible to visitors from the EU.

Newspaper sites owned by Gannett, like USA Today, are now serving up a “European Union experience” to visitors from the EU, noting that they do not collect any personally identifiable information from users.

Other sites require explicit action for users before they can proceed. A feature of GDPR is the requirement for “clear affirmative action” from users (that is, opt-in) before a company can collect and use their data.

Some sites are now completely inaccessible to users in Europe. Although GDPR has been in the works for years, these companies say that they need more time to work things out before they can serve European users. Most notably, this is the case for sites owned by publishing group Tronc, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and others. Pinterest-owned bookmarking service Instapaper also temporarily shut down for European users earlier this week.</s>A number of high-profile US news websites are temporarily unavailable in Europe after new European Union rules on data protection came into effect.

The Chicago Tribune and LA Times were among those posting messages saying they were currently unavailable in most European countries.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives EU citizens more rights over how their information is used.

The measure is an effort by EU lawmakers to limit tech firms’ powers.
• GDPR quiz: How will privacy law affect you?
• Are you swamped with privacy updates?

Under the rules, companies working in the EU – or any association or club in the bloc – must get express consent to collect personal information, or face hefty fines.

News sites within the Tronc and Lee Enterprises media publishing groups were affected.

Tronc’s high-profile sites include the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun.

Its message read: “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market.”

Its statement read: “We’re sorry. This site is temporarily unavailable. We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.”

CNN and the New York Times were among those not affected. The Washington Post and Time were among those requiring EU users to agree to new terms.

Lawmakers in Brussels passed the new legislation in April 2016, and the full text of the regulation has been published online.

Misusing or carelessly handling personal information will bring fines of up to 20 millions euros ($23.4m;£17.5m), or 4% of a company’s global turnover.

In the UK, which is due to leave the EU in 2019, a new Data Protection Act will incorporate the provisions of the GDPR, with some minor changes.

All EU citizens now have the right to see what information companies have about them, and to have that information deleted.

Companies must be more active in gaining consent to collect and use data too, in theory spelling an end to simple “I agree with terms and conditions” tick boxes.

Companies must also tell all affected users about any data breach, and tell the overseeing authority within 72 hours.

Each EU member state must set up a supervisory authority, and these authorities will work together across borders to ensure companies comply.

The new chair of the European Data Protection Board, Andrea Jelinek, told the FT they expected cases to be filed “imminently”.

“If the complainants come, we will be ready,” she said.

Ireland’s data regulator Helen Dixon also spoke to the newspaper, saying the country was ready to use “the full toolkit” against non-compliant companies.

Both Facebook and Twitter have their EU headquarters in Ireland.

The new rules come amid growing scrutiny about how major tech companies like Google and Facebook collect and use people’s personal information.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg faced questions from MEPs earlier this week about his company’s collection of data.</s>If you've been working in the UK (or indeed any EU country) for the last month or so you've probably noticed a slew of emails reminding your company to get ready for then new General Data Protection Regulation, a.k.a. GDPR. Sadly, it seems some U.S. sites didn't get the memo.

On May 25th GDPR came into effect, implementing new laws about data protection within the European Union.

Multiple U.S. news sites like the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune are inaccessible for people in Europe.

At time of writing Mashable tried to visit the websites from within the UK, and came across similar messages.

"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries," read the LA Times website. "We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

The BBC reported that the sites affected were owned by the Tronc and Lee Enterprises media publishing groups.

Also affected was USA Today, whose European site — although not entirely blocked — was very sparse compared to the usual U.S. version.

Looks like GDPR has caught its first few big fish in its data-regulating net.

Although the mass-blocking is something of a nuisance, some online chose to see the funny side.

Mashable would have liked to have reached out to the affected news sites, but unfortunately we were blocked from doing so due to their sites being down. And you thought the chicken and the egg debacle was a tough paradox.</s>A cluster of U.S. news websites has gone dark for readers in Europe as the EU’s new privacy laws went into effect on Friday. The ruleset, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), outlines a robust set of requirements that internet companies collecting any personal data on consumers must follow. The consequences are considerable enough that the American media company Tronc decided to block all European readers from its sites rather than risk the ramifications of its apparent noncompliance.

Tronc -owned sites affected by the EU blackout include the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, The Orlando Sentinel and The Baltimore Sun. Some newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises also blocked European readers, including The St. Louis Post Dispatch and The Arizona Daily Star.

While Tronc deemed its European readership disposable, at least in the short-term, most major national U.S. outlets took a different approach, serving a cleaned-up version of their website or asking users for opt-in consent to use their data. NPR even pointed delighted users toward a plaintext version of their site.

While many of the regional papers that blinked offline for EU users predominantly serve U.S. markets, some are prominent enough to attract an international readership, prompting European users left out in the cold to openly criticize the approach.

Those criticisms are well-deserved. The privacy regulations that GDPR sets in place were first adopted in April 2016, meaning that companies had two years to form a compliance plan before the regulations actually went live today.</s>Today marks the start of Europe’s tough new privacy regime, and despite two years of warning and preparation time, at least two newspaper chains in the U.S. couldn’t figure them out.

Readers in Europe woke up this morning to find that newspapers owned by Tronc, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, were no longer accessible. Some Tronc apps had also disappeared from EU App Stores.

Lee Enterprises, which owns a string of 46 smaller regional newspapers, also announced their sites were not available.

While these two groups took the most extreme measures, USA Today re-directed readers in Europe to a new site (https://eu.usatoday.com/) that is a limited of news stories and no advertising.

GateHouse Media also appeared to be blocking European IP addresses at some newspapers.

Today The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR goes into effect, a new set of rules intended to give European Union residents more control over their personal data. The rules were adopted in April 2016, giving companies two years to prepare. In recent days and weeks, most people have likely had their email inboxes flooded with emails requesting they re-opt in to various services.

The rules require more express consent to allow for collection of personal data and include the possibility of fines up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue.</s>Today marks the start of Europe’s tough new privacy regime, and despite two years of warning and preparation time, at least two newspaper chains in the U.S. couldn’t figure it out.

Readers in Europe woke up this morning to find that newspapers owned by Tronc, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, were no longer accessible. Some Tronc apps had also disappeared from EU App Stores.

Lee Enterprises, which owns a string of 46 smaller regional newspapers, also announced its sites were not available.

Today The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR goes into effect, a new set of rules intended to give European Union residents more control over their personal data. The rules were adopted in April 2016, giving companies two years to prepare. In recent days and weeks, most people in the EU have likely had their email inboxes flooded with emails requesting they re-opt into various services.

The rules require more express consent to allow collection of personal data and include the possibility of fines up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue.</s>The European Union’s digital privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), officially went into effect today. But some websites in the U.S. have decided to block their services entirely rather than adhere to the new regulations. Dozens of American newspapers are currently blocked in Europe and web services like Instapaper have suspended operations in the European Union for the foreseeable future.

First reported by the BBC, news sites owned by media companies like Tronc and Lee Enterprises are now totally dark in European Union countries. Some of those sites include the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the St. Louis Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel. Gizmodo was able to confirm that the websites were being blocked in Europe by using a VPN service that routed internet traffic through various European countries.

Internet users who visit sites like the L.A. Times receive a notification like the one below, explaining:

Attempting to reach a site like the Arizona Daily Sun from Europe gives you this notice:

The reaction to the blocks in Europe has been mixed, with some people blaming the European Union for enacting a law that they see as too burdensome on companies, while others wondered what these newspapers were doing with everyone’s data that would put them in violation of the GDPR in the first place.

Instapaper, a service that allows you to store newspaper articles in its app, announced earlier this week that it would be ceasing operations in Europe but said that it would “restore access as soon as possible.”

The GDPR was legislation passed in April of 2016 to ensure that internet users had more control over how their information was being used. Companies face enormous fines if they’re not in compliance with the data protection rules that have been laid out, which include providing more information to consumers on how data is being collected on them, and forcing companies to delete old data that’s no longer being used. At its most drastic, the EU’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has the power to fine large companies up to 4 percent of the company’s global annual turnover after the second offense. For large companies like Google and Amazon that’s in the billions of dollars. Under the new rules, lengthy user license agreements also must be in plain language and easy to understand.

And it’s not just tech companies that must comply with the law. Every organization that handles data on EU citizens, including banks, airlines, and insurance companies, must be in compliance. Today was the deadline for all companies to be in compliance with GDPR, but surveys show that anywhere from 60 to 85 percent of companies say that they’re not ready to be compliant today. It’s unclear how EU regulators will react, but so far they’ve showed no signs of being lenient. The companies did have over two years since the law’s passage to get their acts together.

Mark Zuckerberg, currently embroiled in scandal over Facebook’s mishandling of private user information, told members of European Parliament on Tuesday that his company would be ready to comply with the GDPR by today. But we really won’t know until these companies face some kind of audit. Best of luck with that, EU. Judging from Zuck’s performance earlier this week, Facebook doesn’t care too much about transparency.

Update, 7:55am: NPR appears to be giving Europeans a choice of either still being tracked with cookies and other tracking technologies, or just viewing NPR online in plain text.

Here’s what it looks like when you visit NPR.org from the UK:

And here’s what the website looks like if you opt out:</s>A number of U.S. news sites have blocked European readers over concerns related to the EU’s new data privacy laws, TechCrunch reports. The guidelines, known as General Data Protection Regulation, went into effect on Friday. The law requires internet companies that collect personal data, including news organizations, to follow strict guidelines regarding how they handle the data.

The penalties for failing to comply are strict enough that Tronc decided to block all European readers from its websites rather than risk being found non-compliant. Tronic owns a number of major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Lee Enterprises also blocked European readers from some of its websites, such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

While Tronc has decided that its European readerbase isn’t worth the hassle, at least not in the short-term, most other U.S. news sites took a different approach. Several sites, such as USA Today, offered a GDPR-complaint version of their site. Others requested that users opt-in to data collection. NPR even went so far as to offer a plaintext version of the site for users who did not want to agree to its terms regarding user data.

The majority of Tronc’s sites and newspapers serve a U.S. audience, so this move likely doesn’t affect a majority of their readers. Some of the company’s holdings are large enough to attract an international following, however. This has left some European readers frustrated with Tronc’s decision and some EU officials have openly criticized the company’s failure to create compliant versions of their websites. For the past few weeks, numerous businesses have been bombarding email accounts with privacy updates regarding this matter. The rules were adopted in April of 2016, giving companies two years to prepare for the changes.

“It didn’t just fall from heaven,” Andrea Jelinek, chairwoman of the European Data Protection Board, said in a recently released statement reported by the New York Times. “Everyone has had plenty of time to prepare.”

While Tronc’s decision has angered many of its European readers, the move probably makes sense from a business standpoint. The penalties for violating the GDPR can reach as high as 4 percent of a company’s globe revenue, so it makes sense that some may prefer to err on the side of caution if they aren’t certain that all of their sites are compliant with EU regulations.</s>Several high-profile US news websites have been taken offline in Europe as the GDPR deadline arrives.

The long-awaited GDPR deadline has finally come, but it seems to be causing some issues already for major media sites based in the US.

The Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune are among the outlets posting messages to notify European users of their current unavailability.

Under the sweeping EU regulation, companies working in or associating with the EU in any way must obtain explicit consent from users in order to collect personal data, or otherwise face heavy financial penalties.

News sites from within the Lee Enterprises and the Tronc group have been affected. Lee Enterprises publishes 46 newspapers on a daily basis across 21 US states and it said in a statement: “We’re sorry. This site is temporarily unavailable. We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU, which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.”

A message from the Los Angeles Times read: “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.”

Other US outlets such as The New York Times have been asking users to agree to new terms in order for them to continue accessing the sites.

This disruption could be the beginning of major headaches for companies as they struggle to adapt to the extensive EU rules. The threat of fines of up to €20m (or 4pc of a company’s global turnover, whichever is higher) means many firms will need to rethink large elements of their business model in order to continue to do business with the bloc.

Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon told Siliconrepublic.com that GDPR awareness among businesses in Ireland has increased. “I am hugely encouraged by the results of our awareness survey and by the strong engagement we have had with so many organisations in the last year,” Dixon said.

“Together, we can put Ireland on the map as a country that implements and upholds the highest standards of protection of personal information.”
GDPR rules come into effect in the European Union. Several U.S. news sites are subsequently taken offline in the United Kingdom and Europe, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Lee Enterprises newspapers.