zlacker

>>grabeh+(OP)
For those of you understandably intimidated by the GDPR regulations themselves, here's a good summary in plain English: https://blog.varonis.com/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain-eng...

The UK's ICO also has a good structured summary: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

In general I agree with the sentiments in this article. I've probably spent a total of three to four days reading around the GDPR and I don't really see what's special about this law other than it's imposing decent standards on what was in effect a wildly unregulated industry in people's personal data. If you have a broad distrust of any government activity then I suppose any new laws with "fines up to €X" might feel like "I run a small site on a Digital Ocean droplet and I'm at risk of a €2m fine out of the blue." But that doesn't make it true.

>>frereu+N2
There is nothing - and I do mean nothing - written into the GDPR that requires any warnings of any kind, or places any limits on fines, except for $10/$20 million or 4% of revenue, whichever is greater. Period. A multimillion-dollar fine without warning for a first, minor violation is perfectly lawful under GDPR. The idea that "yes it says that but we can trust EU regulators to not assess large fines against foreign companies, even though they would benefit handsomely from them" rings hollow to me.

>>downan+Fc
There is actually an over-arching requirement for proportionality in all EU regulation: https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2015/06/27/supreme-court-on-eu...

>>pjc50+be
But that is in the eye of the beholder. With a maximum fine of $20 million, a country like Germany might say, for example, "Ok, small American company, yours was a minor violation. We'll only assess a $2 million fine - that's only 10% of the maximum! See how lenient and proportional we are? Danke und tschüss!"

>>downan+oe
You can litigate disproportionate fines, and there's a general requirement for proportionality in both EU law and under the ECHR.

Again, people are assuming that this is the first and only directive that has fines associated with it. It isn't. You don't hear a lot of people talking about the three month prison sentences possible for CE marking, for example - because very few of them have been handed out and only for egregious violations such as unsafe machinery that has caused injury.

>>pjc50+Te
You can litigate disproportionate fines

Who's to say that 10% of the maximum for a minor violation isn't proportionate? Also, most small businesses do not have the resources to hire competent counsel on the other side of the planet to litigate these things.

>>downan+8f
> Who's to say that 10% of the maximum for a minor violation isn't proportionate?

A large body of case law, well-defined guidelines for evaluating harms and mapping them to fines, and the EU's general fear of stymieing economically productive activity (the motivation behind GDPR is to enable more data trading, not less, but within better-defined legal boundaries).

We have had laws with "open ended" sentencing guidelines since the very beginning of organised society. This is a solved problem.