[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.