[tomp]

It's good that this idea (fine as a percentage of revenue) is finally becoming mainstream, but it's sad that the percentage is so low... 4% is just cost of business, like taxes etc. It should be about 30% if we really wanted to incentivise the companies (or their CEOs/shareholders).

[wildmusings]

Four percent of revenue is a massive fine. That can easily wipe out a company's profit margin.

[withholding]

Massive until you look at how people are treated when someone leaks company data: 4% income fine? No. Prison.

[wildmusings]

No one goes to prison for accidentally leaking company data through negligence.

[sqeaky]

We could "fix" that.

[jcmoscon]

That's what you do when you hate capitalism and hate the power to destroy it.

[AndyMcConachie]

It's called regulators with teeth, and it's what makes the EU livable for its citizens. As an EU and US citizen this is exactly why I choose to live in the EU.

[vsl]

That's not how I'd put it, as a citizen of an EU country. The overregulation is suffocating for both business and individuals (who lived in socialism and value liberty, anyway).

Just this year, EU regulations destroyed my LTE data plans, hugely increased my cost of Swiss travel (the same) and ruined my hobby because terrorism.

[stass]

It is sad that EU is slowly moving back towards the over-regulated and bureaucratic regimes of the past. This will further push the EU economy down the drain and prevent people from innovating. I just hope it does not lead to jail sentences and labor camps for people accidentally leaking the data as some in this thread are arguing for. The history does not provide much hope here unfortunately.

I don't see how this law benefits anybody except filling up the EU budget by collecting fines. The companies are already careful with their data as any leak would affect their image extremely negatively.

If one needs a good example of why Brexit happened, here it is.

[prodmerc]

It will prevent people from innovating in profiling, ad serving and keeping peoples data private. What a shame! Really wish the EU would see how great it is in the UK where they want to be able to access anything ever posted online, which can only lead to innovation of the highest caliber. /s

[stass]

Do you think this law will prevent the government from accessing the data somehow? The way it's written it's primary goal seems to be extracting fees from successful business and not protecting user privacy. Ideally you would not want government intervention in these matters at all as you can bet it will end up with special provisions for government to have an access.

[prodmerc]

Maybe not, but they don't discourage/illegalize encryption and companies are supposed to delete your stuff on request.

[vsl]

Did you ever wonder why there are so few EU startups? Why the alternative to Gmail is Australian FastMail and nothing comparable even exists in EU?

Less sarcasm, more thinking. Shocking as it may be to you, even people you politicially disagree with may have a point or two.

[prodmerc]

There's so "few" of them because they're in a dozen different languages.

And they're not startups, just small businesses, the difference being mostly the funding. Investing a million for some people to burn through and say "yah, that didn't work" is very much unacceptable.

[BearGoesChirp]

It should be over 100%. The ideal goal is that a company that has a massive date breach due to their incompetence (such as refusal to hire experts at market value) should cease to exist. I still think we need prison time for those making the poor decisions. Even if they didn't intend to hurt anyone, should we tolerate recklessness of that nature?

[CyberThijs]

To come back on my example: LinkedIn reported a net income of 166 million USD. The potential fine is thus more than 70% of their profit!

The fine is also based on the revenue of the parent company. Say that Nest would be fined, then the revenue of Alphabet Inc. would be used as a reference point! A good enough incentive to make sure that all parts of your operations are covered :-)

[newzzy]

in LinkedIn's case it's Microsoft...

[CyberThijs]

My bad. I looked up the figures on Wikipedia, where the latest figures were from 2015. Should have read the article more carefully.

[amarant]

in both cases: ouch!

[wheaties]

No, many companies have net profit margin from revenue of less than 10%. So 4% of revenue is not the same as 4% of earnings.