“25% of their business income from EU credit cards..”

Where did that 25% come from? Did you just make that up? My point is that some arbitrary EU regulator is going to tell a US based company (or Chinese, Russian, Canadian, etc.,) who that non-EU company is catering to? Under what jurisdiction does this happen? Where does a company representative show up to defend their case? They get to fly to Brussels? How does due process work? How does the EU learn about the percentage of credit card transactions? We’re going to expand their powers to track credit card transactions of individuals? No privacy concerns there right? We are going to support increased privacy violation to protect people from privacy violations? You trust your government that much? Given the history of many European countries, it would seem quite dangerous to give countries more surveillance power.

I am all for increased data hygiene for sure, but the EU has lost its fucking mind if they think they’re just going to be able to start telling non-EU companies what they can and can’t do when those companies aren’t even in the EU. The EU could start blocking websites, which would put it in the same level as China or Turkey. Did Pirate Bay ever get blocked in the EU despite enabling whitespread copyright abuses? Is the EU finally going to draw the line here?

If someone from France calls my US phone number — they are coming into my house. It isn’t like I am showing up at their house forcing them to buy my product. If I am a US company and I refuse to do business with an EU citizen — now we have national origin discrimination, which is illegal in the EU.

My SaaS product is subject to US HIPAA and the HITECH act which directly conflict with this European law. I am required to maintain detailed access logs for 7 years, but to do that, now I have to violate an EU law. We have EU patients who see US medical professionals. So now we are in a hell of a pickle. We have to violate HIPPA to follow the EU. Interestingly, HIPAA is actually stricter around privacy than the EU law — except there are still conflicts, especially around audit logs and data retention.

Additionally, to avoid servicing EU customers, a Canadian company would have to violate the EU national origin discrimination law? Or they’d otherwise be forced to conform their systems to a framework to which they had zero representation in creating? Who represented the Canadian companies when this law was being written by the EU? Because if the EU is going to imply that Canada is subject to said law, then Canada ought to have had a voice in its creation right?

The people who supported and created this law — let’s not pretend this is about privacy. This is about creating trade barriers. The recent obsession with the EU and US tech companies is further proof that there is a clear bias, or perhaps an inferiority complex from the EU. France especially.. they’re actually going after Apple because of the iOS and Mac App Store but they don’t do a damned thing when (Dutch-based) Booking.com takes high percentages of hotel/lodging bookings, including keeping customer data. Basically Booking.com is just like an App Store for hotels — hotels agree to a percentage of revenues for the marketing benefit of being in the Booking “store.” But France doesn’t sue Booking.com for that. But they sue Apple on behalf of French developers? Booking.com also prohibits lower pricing being offered to other distribution channels. But the EU or France isn’t trying to sue Booking.com for high commissions they are suing Apple over.

Give me a fucking break. This law is nothing but a trade barrier wrapped in some feel-good packaging. Is the EU really going to fine BNB bank 5% of global revenues when BNP shares my banking data to telemarketers in their insurance division without my explicit permission or knowledge? Of course not. BNB is French.