[7373737373]

I don't think forcing each and every single website provider to implement their own consent forms is the right approach to regulating this. User agents should have the ability to convey and enforce privacy preferences on behalf of the user, and website providers should be legally required to comply with these if possible (or refuse service if not). But requiring ever more complex, explicit and custom opt-in consent forms for various provider, third party and user jurisdiction combinations is just inane.

[ratww]

Consent forms are not required, just host the font. They are also way more expensive and complicated to implement than self-hosting fonts. Asking for consent over usage of third-party fonts borders on pettiness from the website owner.

> User agents should have the ability to convey and enforce privacy preferences on behalf of the user, and website providers should be legally required to comply with these if possible (or refuse service if not).

The burden of respecting privacy choices in every single other case (data in the backend, data shared with partner, paper data) is already with the website. Every non-privacy-respecting implementation in the frontend is made by website owners.

Keep in mind that sometimes websites don't work with blocking other stuff, or are more difficult to use when blocking fonts (Google Material). So this is not even a practical suggestion.

[maratc]

There are two options to do what's required by the law: either A. not sending users' personal data to third parties; or B. receive informed consent from the users before sending their personal data to third parties.

If the option B seems unwanted for some reason (any reason), there is still option A. Implementing a different solution (that breaks the law) has consequences.

[xtracto]

This is a pretty sad state of affairs IMO. The fact is that CDNs and similar third party services play an important role. Websites wont stop us6them, it's not feasible (btw if I "host" my fonts in S3 do I have to get consent for sharing IP with Amazon? With DNS? with every router that goes through tracert?) .

In reality, websites will add more crap "opt in" CYA forms at first loading, making the interaction fugly and unusable. We can discuss here in HN how that is unnecessary and whatnot, but that's what's going to happen...

I just wish that websites wouldn't force us outside of the EU to the asinine UX required by the EU (I hate having to press ACCEPT ALL on each page I visit.... whatever I dont want is already blocked by an extension anyways).

[latk]

> The fact is that CDNs and similar third party services play an important role.

They no longer do, since browsers implemented cache isolation.

> if I "host" my fonts in S3 do I have to get consent for sharing IP with Amazon?

No, you're supposed to contractually bind your vendors/service providers as data processors with a contract (“data processing agreement”) per Art 28 GDPR. There's some debate around whether US-based companies are legally able of entering into such an agreement (say hello to the Cloud Act from me), but the general consensus still is that non-US cloud regions might be OK, and that CDNs that let you sign a DPA (like Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly, …) are also OK. In contrast, Google Fonts does not seem to be covered by the Google Cloud DPA.

> with every router that goes through tracert?

No, such mere transmission doesn't count as processing, and/or the intermediaries are responsible for their own compliance. In any case the connection should be protected by TLS so that only the client IP address + your domain name is visible to intermediate routers.

> websites will add more crap "opt in" CYA forms

Unfortunately, I agree, though the point of this judgement is that self-hosting some assets is a perfectly cromulent alternative. I think relying on “consent” would be difficult in a case like this, since it is not generally possible to make access to a service conditional on consent to unnecessary processing activities. Using a CDN for assets like files is unnecessary.

> I just wish that websites wouldn't force us outside of the EU to the asinine UX required by the EU

For EU-based websites there is no choice, as the law doesn't care about where the users are.

There's also a bit of irony in here that there has been a lot of work in replacing the cursed cookie consent requirements that gave us most of these annoying consent banners – but the past few months revealed that the US tech giants have been successfully lobbying against the proposed ePrivacy Regulation. So please redirect your ire against Google. Without them this might have been fixed in 2018.

[7373737373]

There's a difference between data sent to the website provider (and through it, indirectly to third parties), and interactions between the browser and third parties. The linked ruling forces the provider to ask the user for consent for third parties (even though the provider has nothing to do with the interaction!), instead of mandating a direct opt-in interaction between the user (agent) and third parties.

Imagine embedding many social media sites. Instead of forcing the social media sites or browser vendors to create embeddings that ask for consent themselves, the website provider has to ask for consent on behalf of all external sites before loading any content. As a web developer, this is a nightmare.

[maratc]

> even though the provider has nothing to do with the interaction

I beg your pardon, but in this case "the provider" (website) has directly sent the user's browser to a third party (google fonts) by including an instruction in the code (HTML) that the provider has sent to the user's browser. The browser did not decide to contact google fonts all by itself; it was directed to do so by the provider. Arguing the provider "has nothing to do with the interaction" looks a bit disingenuous to me.

[7373737373]

I don't think you get the agency argument. Of course the request to the third party provider is causally related to the website sending the instructions. But while that is necessary for it to happen, it is not sufficient. The user agent's execution, on behalf of the user, makes it happen.

[maratc]

> I don't think you get the agency argument.

I do get that argument; I just don't think it holds any water.

If one hires a hitman to kill someone, that one may still be held accountable to manslaughter, even if that specific person didn't kill anyone themselves. It may also not matter how many degrees of separation are there between that person and the hitman: as much as putting a (Bitcoin) bounty on someone's head (with a "smart contract" or whatever) may be considered manslaughter, even if nobody knows who the actual hitman is.

"Agency" is not a magic get-out-of-jail card.

Also, one may try convincing a judge "Your honor, it's true that I wrote the code that encrypted the plaintiff's network and wrecked a havoc, but I did NOT execute it; the plaintiff could have instructed his CPUs to not execute my code"; I don't know if this argument would hold.

Finally, there might be a "reasonable burden" argument in this case. It's reasonable to expect that website builders would know how browsers/internet work. It's not reasonable to expect that website visitors (general populace) would know that. Hence, the burden of GPDR compliance is better put on the builders' shoulders, which is exactly what happened in this particular case.

[latk]

I discussed that argument over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139489

Summary: A company did try the “it was the browser, not us” argument in the “Fashion ID” case. The court did not fall for it. Data controller and thus responsible for compliance is whoever determines the purposes and means of processing. Being able to control what the website does seems to be good evidence for being a data controller.

In this Google Fonts case, the website operator didn't even try this discredited argument.

[maratc]

As pointed out in another great comment:

   > Sure your honor, the victim died by carbon monoxide asphyxiation, but it was his choice to inhale the gas, even though it smells the same as normal air"