> and which data should businesses allow users to export in machine readable formats, every click, view, views on other sites with that sites cookie/callback?

"‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;"

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/ - (1)

> what is a common machine readable format?

JSON, XML and a few others are candidates that are generally considered common. If you haven't heard about the term before you can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-readable_data

> what if the "common" format is purposefully complex and hard to implement right

Then I guess the company is shooting itself in the foot if they make it harder to build the export functionality than it has to? The directive is not about being able to import data from any service, the directive is about being able to export your data in a machine-readable format. Not sure how much more clearer I can make this.

> company A, being the dominate evil-corp can pay lobbyists to define the protocol for export in a format they define

Company A is allowed to export the data in whatever data model they want, no lobbyists required. What it has to be though, is machine-readable.

> company B (the small good willed company) already exports in a format, but now they are forced to change their existing systems resulting in a lot of work lost

No, the directives nor laws around GDPR won't force a small company to change their export format. The directives are aimed at larger businesses that don't allow export at all, to get those companies to actually become user-friendly instead of user-hostile.

You should really give reading the full GDPR a go, it's not that long nor complicated and explains everything you're worried about (seemingly at least).

Here is the full version: https://gdpr-info.eu/

And here is a simpler quickstart explaining broadly what GDPR is: https://termly.io/resources/articles/gdpr-for-dummies/

Edit:

> edit: further, are there SLAs for export uptime? what happens when bad PR hits a company and data export laws effectively mean a company is expected to export terrabytes of data within a day or so? Is that small company now legally liable because they can't handle that kind of load - which is further compounded by the fact they are getting data export requests because of bad PR to begin with? Does that company now have to choose between serving exports or keeping their service running?

Again, I invite you to actually read GDPR before commenting further as both you and me spend more time answering each other than the time you could have taken to just read the resource you're commenting about now.

Article 12 (3):

> 1 The controller shall provide information on action taken on a request under Articles 15 to 22 to the data subject without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt of the request. 2 That period may be extended by two further months where necessary, taking into account the complexity and number of the requests. 3 The controller shall inform the data subject of any such extension within one month of receipt of the request, together with the reasons for the delay. 4 Where the data subject makes the request by electronic form means, the information shall be provided by electronic means where possible, unless otherwise requested by the data subject.

If you can not handle running your service + the export in a way so people clicking the export gets their data within 30 days, I don't feel so bad about you actually just closing down your service instead, as the uptime in general must be very bad.