zlacker

>>grabeh+(OP)
This article actually points out my philosophical problem with GDPR. In one point he says you have to be compliant if you want to do business in the EU. In another he observed that it is difficult (maybe impossible) to block EU folks from coming to a web presence. It’s the expansive reach that bugs me.

I’ll note that for real businesses this is just a thought excercise, but it’s one I keep coming back to. What if some less reasonable entity attempted to regulate in this way?

>>kasey_+Jd
Are you American, by any chance? The whole internet dances to the US tune, legally.

Welcome to our world :)

>>oblio+Rn
For 20+ years the US - as the dominate controlling agent regarding the Internet - ensured the modern (post early 1990s) Internet remained extremely non-regulated and non-interfered with by ~195 nations (when it came to the global Internet system). It worked globally out of the gate and required no special adherence to US laws. The Chinese did not have to adopt US freedom of speech approaches to use the Internet. The Iranians or Saudis did not have to adopt US freedom of religion approaches to use the Internet. The EU did not have to adopt US legal approaches or laws to use the Internet. Any other scenario than the one the US pursued would have resulted in a fractured, mostly useless global Internet. The US was about as good of a shepherd as any nation could have ever been: thus we got several billion users onto the Internet from wildly diverse background jurisdictions. The way the US built the Internet made it possible for the EU to say: hey, we're going to do GDPR, because that works for us (and yet the Internet still works); and for other jurisdictions to say: hey, we're going to do this that or something else because that works for us.

> The whole internet dances to the US tune, legally.

You've got that almost exactly backwards. The US approach has required almost no dancing at all to the US tune. That's precisely why ~4 billion people can use the Internet from 195 nations, all with dramatically varying laws. They're not adopting US law to use the Internet. That's why the Chinese have been able to implement their unique approach and still use the Internet (restricted to fit their tolerances at a government level).

You very specifically do not have to dance to US legal tunes to use the Internet. Even when it comes to IP laws, you do not have to dance to the US tune (Europe has varied widely from the US on such, eg as it relates to piracy, and yet the Internet keeps on regardless).

>>advent+Uq
While I agree the US was generally benevolent, it did it because it knew it had the tech superiority. It's the same thing with the Opium Wars and China or Perry's gunboat and Japan: we'll force you to trade with us because we know our goods are superior and you'll buy them.

Same thing with the internet: the US was the biggest developed country, it had a large, stable, rich internal market, it had big universities churning out graduates (many of them coming from other countries!), it was the inventor of many tech things that make up the internet. So of course a less regulated internet would benefit it since its companies were best positioned to take advantage.

My guestion for the next 30-40 years: unless China screws up badly, it will overtake the US. It's simple math: a moderately rich Chinese population will overtake the US one, as it outnumbers it 4 to 1 or so. Will the US be as benevolent and open when it's the underdog?

Based on some reactions I've seen here, regarding the EU and the GDPR and also on reading a ton of comments about China, I'm not so convinced.

TL;DR: The US is reasonable, for a super power, but it didn't do it out of the goodness of its heart.