Well Done To The EU – Europe Cut Off From American Media Over GDPR

This is of course a massive victory for the European Union’s manner of regulation. In order to make sure that our information stays, well, stays something, we’re now cut off from the information available freely to those who live outside the EU. At least China actively insists that its citizenry should be free from those pesky foreign influences. Here it’s done purely through incompetence.

A number of high-profile US news websites are temporarily unavailable in Europe after new European Union rules on data protection came into effect.

The Chicago Tribune and LA Times were among those posting messages saying they were currently unavailable in most European countries.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives EU citizens more rights over how their information is used.

And fewer rights to gain information as it turns out. But then if you were an unelected bureaucracy running a continent wouldn’t you prefer that the peeps had little information but lots of irrelevant rights?

The general data protection regulation, which has come into effect, has prompted a number of prestigious US-based websites including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to shut off access to internet users in the EU.

Visitors to newspapers owned by Tronc Inc – formerly Tribune Publishing – which also includes the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and the San Diego Union-Tribune, are being redirected to a page with the message: “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.

Now, you could side with the tech site that had the ill manners to fire me once:

The finger is pointed at the General Data Protection Regulation, which, although it is only just being enforced today, was adopted on 14 April 2016 – meaning organisations have had more than two years to prepare.

However, that doesn’t seem to have been enough time for Tronc, with all of its sites directing to URLs: http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ etc (with requisite paper name appended).

A similar message is going out to users trying to visit sites owned by media and entertainment brand A+E, including A&E (Arts & Entertainment), Lifetime and History.

Well, yes, why haven’t they got it sorted after 2 years warning? Well, think of it this way, if the finest business minds of our generation can’t work it out over 24 months then perhaps it’s the fault of the damn fool regulations?

Of course, this could actually be the point. There’re enough over there in Brussels who insist that the point and purpose of the EU is to save us all from that gauche Americanism. Cutting us off from the news feeds would work nicely, wouldn’t it?