Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Facebook On Collision Course With New EU Privacy Laws

Posted by Soulskill on from the ramming-speed dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook and other U.S. internet companies are faced with a new EU data protection regime, the Christian Science Monitor reports. U.S. concepts of free expression and commerce will battle European support for privacy and state legislation. 'Companies must understand that if they want access to 500 million consumers in the EU, then they have to comply. This is not an option,' said a spokesman for the EU Justice Commissioner."

2 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Government and Corporations are not The People by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "U.S. concepts of free expression and commerce" mentioned are of the current Corporatist Government, and are not representative of "U.S." views. I would thank anyone writing about this to make that distinction.

    As I have been saying for years now, if you really want to look at the demographics of the United States, you really have to consider the citizens and the Federal government separately, because the Federal government has been so completely out of touch with the wants and needs of the average citizen.

    "U.S. concepts of free expression and commerce", if by that you mean the vast majority of people who live here, very much do include personal privacy. Anyone who thinks otherwise has a distorted view of what's really going on. And anyone who represents the Federal government's "views" as those of the average American citizen is likewise out of touch.

  2. It is simply you which don't understand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The product facebook sale (facebook user/consumer data) will NOT be sellable in europe. See even if they go around the law, and simply say they are an US company and don't need to comply, it is still a dead end for them, ebcause the company mostly interrested in the data are not US one but EU one. Do you think will a german user data will interrest, say, target/new york ? And for local german firm, buying the data from the US will not help as they would have a high risk to be to accused of having data on their own customer and get the ire of data protection law, the law can't stop people giving it away to US where it is "lost" but as soon as it comes back to EU territory game over EU law again take hold. That data would be worst than radioactive waste to handle.

    Effectively, if facebook ignore those law / pretend they are an US company They will simply LOSE that EU market completely , as they will serve people but won't be able to do much with the data. This is why your "routing around the damage" won't work : that data in the very end is for local consumption. If the local (the firm buying the data) knows they can't use the data, then facebook is SOL and no matter how much routing or where they put their server.

    So yes, for facebook it would be a pretty bad deal.