- Los Angeles Times website today
For some of America’s biggest newspapers and online services, it’s easier to block half a billion people from accessing your product than comply with Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation.
The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The New York Daily News are just some telling visitors that, "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries."
With about 500 million people living in the European Union, that’s a hard ban on one-and-a-half times the population of the U.S.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-25/blocking-500-million-users-is-easier-than-complying-with-gdpr
“Denying service to EU citizens does not absolve them of their responsibilities," says Julian Saunders, chief executive officer of Port, a U.K. startup selling software that helps clients control who gets access to data and creates audit trails to monitor privacy. "They still hold data on EU citizens and therefore they are required to comply and respond to subject access requests like everyone else."
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Andrea Jelinek, the woman in charge of policing GDPR, said, “If there are reasons to warn we will warn, if there are reasons to reprimand, we will do that and if we have reasons to fine, we are going to fine.”
GDPR “didn’t just fall from heaven,” Jelinek said in an email in response on Friday. “Everyone had plenty of time to prepare.”
While the immediate impact of GDPR is most readily visible on the homepages of international newspapers and other media outlets, it’s unlikely to stop there, said Sofie Willmott, an analyst for GlobalData.
‘‘Retailers must also be prepared to lose a sizable proportion of their customer database as subscribers ignore communications to opt in to receiving marketing messages or choose to take the opportunity to opt out in order to declutter their inbox," she said.
