Upcoming EU Data Law Will Make Europe Tricky For Social Networks

Thorfinn.au writes "EU politicians are mulling new data protection laws that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks. The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner drew up proposals for the new data protection law which reads: 'EU law should require that consumers give their explicit consent before their data are used. And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the internet themselves. We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU.'"

Comments

Surveillance

[stooo]

the so called "Social networks" look more and more like voluntary surveillance databases !!

Re:Surveillance

[SuricouRaven]

I think that was Orwell's big mistake in 1984. I was thinking in cold war terms, of oppressive governments. He failed to anticipate the role that private industry would play in mass-surveillance, and the importance of financial interest as opposed to power-seeking.

Clashes with data retention directive?

[Sqr(twg)]

Dear Service Provider, Please delete all my data (texts, phonecalls, emails, etc) that you have stored due to the data retention directive. Thank you.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Heavens forbid we might actually regain control over our data again. Oh the humanity, how ever will the industry survive? They might need to actually check and track data internally after they've raped and pillaged it (although you can't rape the willing).

An interesting reading

[pmontra]

It seems the EU believes that some social network practices are hostile to its citizens and I can hardly disagree. Remember those complaints to fb from that group of Austrian students? It's an interesting reading for anybody who designs any service handling customer data (basically all of them).

Only for bad sites

[Hentes]

EU politicians are mulling new data protection laws that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks that claim ownership of your data, don't let you delete it, and sell it to everyone

FTFY

Re:Streisand Amplification System

[Nursie]

Or we could just let private individuals keep their dignity?

Nah, didn't think so, pointing and jeering is so much more fun.

Re:That would also make it awkward for search engi

[DarwinSurvivor]

You make it sound like google has some kind of legal obligation to keep your g+ data alive. Had you PAID for their services you might have a leg to stand on, but at this point they're just being nice by NOT purging it!

true social networks thrive under this law

[FriendlyLurker]

True. And contrary to this news items title, this law will make true social networks thrive - just not corporate controlled ones. I already meet the letter of the law with Disapora, and am perfectly happy thank you.

+1 / like

[Tom]

Always happy to see there are areas left where politicians are not busy selling us out to corporations.

I absolutely want to have to give explicit permission before people use my data. And yes, I want to be able to remove my data.

Does it cause some additional work? Yes, it does. I have several web-based games that will be affected by a law like this. But seriously, what it means is an additional tick box during the signup ("by signing up I agree... bla bla") and having to track who posted what and removing it when he wants to. Probably easiest solution is to add a button saying "delete all my posts" somewhere.
So, all in all, an hour or two of work.

So, FB with your billions of revenue, stop whining.

Re:data protection and guns (was: wayback machine

[pmontra]

That's a solution but it's a risky one. I elaborate.

I'm 40+ now and I think about what I write publicly (yes even right now). But I'm not perfect nor foretelling so I can't be sure that anything I write is correct and I won't know better in future, or that I won't change opinion for any reason. Furthermore everybody starts young and with little foresight. One way to build up experience is making mistakes and those mistakes should not haunt people for all their lives because the Internet remembers them forever. We can't demand that children are born with adult minds. Not writing anything anywhere because it could come back to us in the future is a little bit too radical, a condemn to self-isolation and a risky proposition both socially and business-wise.

So either we stop paying attention to the past (impossible and undesirable) or the Internet stores only what we want it to store about us and let's us delete all the rest.

Re:That would also make it awkward for search engi

[angel'o'sphere]

Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.