Maybe I'm just naively applying my programmers sense of beauty to legal stuff, but the main problem I have is complexity. I'm OK with google having to spend some money on lawyers to work out what they can and cannot get away with, but smaller busynesses seem to be pretty lost right now. This is partly because it's a new thing and we need to wait and see how judges ultimately interpret things, which will give people some more security.
A simpler, more elegant solution would have been better in my opinion.
Maybe I'm just naively applying my programmers sense of beauty to legal stuff
I see that happening a lot. Actually, it's more trying to apply tech skills to societal issues, often without really thinking through the consequences or the bigger societal impact. Sidewalk Labs Toronto experiments provides a nice illustration of such issues.[1], [2] & [3]
One of the buzzwords that really gets my blood boiling is "Government V2.0".
Life and society is usally quite messy and attempting to optimize it very often yields rather undesirable consequences, or just outsources the externalities to other parts of society.
A simpler, more elegant solution would have been better in my opinion.
Sure, that would be nice. But I think that's extremely hard to do with crafting legal frameworks.
If tech has tought me anything in the last 20 years is that you will have people, entities and corporations just abusing the sweet bejeezus out of any loophole, which they can identify and get away with.
A simpler and more elegant solution wouldn't screw over small businesses and individuals as much. An individual running a forum from their basement has to follow the same rules that Google spends tens of thousands on lawyers fees to figure out. Maybe exemptions or less strict rules for smaller companies should've been added. The EU isn't exactly a bastion of internet technology enterprises, so we probably shouldn't throw the few that try under the bus.
An individual running a forum from their basement has to follow the same rules that Google spends tens of thousands on lawyers fees to figure out.
It's very, very unlikely, though, that the individual running the forum in his basement has to navigate the same legal minefields as Google or Facebook.
Implying that he has the same legal expenses as companies, whoms whole business model relies on getting around the GDPR seems to me a bit of a strawman.
A simpler, more elegant solution would have been better in my opinion.