Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by indigo945 296 days ago
That is not a GDPR violation, no. Most German newspapers do this, and it has been tried in court - it's legal. The court only mandated that the subscription fee cannot be substantially higher than the value of the data that would have otherwise been sold.
5 comments
FeepingCreature 296 days ago
Yeah it is, if courts decided otherwise then courts decided wrong, the GDPR is very clear and explicit about this:

> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if [...] the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.

link
dathinab 296 days ago
exactly IMHO this whole thing being dragged out/tolerated for this many year needs to criminal investigation into corruption and bribes
link
Freak_NL 296 days ago
It's basically the status quo for German websites. This seems legally settled for now unless some appellate court strikes it down, and even that won't happen any time soon.

As a user it's just odd to see German websites do this so differently from Dutch or British websites.

What should be made illegal is how all those German popups do this really grating 3D animation effect upon closing. Do you know what I mean? Not the one at heise.de, but most of these forms seem to have this built in.

link
dathinab 296 days ago
> That is not a GDPR violation, no. Most German newspapers do this,

and pretty much all of them are in GDPR violation

just due to long dragged out court proceeding and a lot of lobby power or lets be honest corruption there have been no wide spread consequences

btw. a lot of them have a very hidden 3rd "no tracking, no payment" option which might display non-targeted ads based on the content viewed and is the actual legal required alternative (instead of the "pure abo") this is still not quite legal but much easier to worm yourself through the legal system with

link
Dylan16807 296 days ago
Even under that idea, I very strongly doubt the subscription fee is in that range.
link
account42 296 days ago
Most website also tried to click a hundred different buttons to opt out - that wasn't legal either. Just because enforcement hasn't caught up yet doesn't mean it's not a GDPR violation.
link