EU Resists US Lobbying As Privacy War Looms 131
judgecorp writes "The European Commission is resisting pressure from US firms and public bodies designed to derail its privacy proposals, which include the 'right to be forgotten' that would allow users to demand their data be removed from Internet sites. Facebook and others oppose the right to be forgotten as it would interfere with their ability to market stuff at friends and connections of their users."
And... (Score:3, Interesting)
The European Commission is resisting pressure from US firms and public bodies designed to derail its privacy proposals
What kind of leverage/offer do they have (particularly the US firms)
I thought you cannot bribe (erm... lobby) European politicians as directly as in US?
Ability to market (Score:0, Interesting)
If US corporations are worried about losing their ability to market thanks to comprehensive information on users why don't they pool together and create a non for-profit organisation called something like "transparent society" and pool all the information they would be stripped of there. They would no longer be able to sell such data but if the key argument is that losing the data outright would be detremental to marketing then every company involved stands to gain. Also, any EU regulations on the "right to be forgotten" can be no more than regulations on businesses and is unlikely to apply to such a foundation.
Re:Don't you love (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, all Governments lobby on behalf of their domestic corporations - think of all the times that politicians from the ruling party in a country go to another country and negotiate trade agreements or highlight the products and services of their domestic companies to decision-making politicians of the host country.
Heck, if politicians DID NOT do this, they would probably be accused of not doing their jobs when going abroad. Indeed, this is one of the more common roles of most diplomatic ambassadors.
(As a case in point, and granted it is not about politicians but it is close enough, the British Royal yacht Britannia was funded by the British taxpayer. When a previous Government said they wanted to stop paying for Britannia, quite a few people in British industry objected because the Royal family often used the yacht as a lobbying tool for British businesses abroad).
Certainly, when the lobbying goes beyond the "our companies offer wonderful services/products, and we can arrange tax breaks that are passed on as discounts" or "build your new manufacturing facility in my back yard, and get some very favorable terms" to "if you do not do it our way, then we will make life hard for you" then that, for me, is something the politicians and companies need to be called out on, but that is not lobbying, that is making threats.
Re:Oh yes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well said, the point that betrays this fact is that any time you hear the likes of UKIP or the Tory party's furthest right elements talking about getting out of the EU, or pulling powers back the absolute first example they cite is the 48hr working limit opt-out.
This benefits absolutely no one except exploitative corporations - because it's an opt-out workers are freely able to work more than 48hrs a week if they choose to, it just stops employers forcing people to work more than 48hrs a week on average if the worker does not want to.
I was listening to Nigel Farage on Sunday Politics the other week and his economic plan is simply scary as hell. Effectively he accepts that pulling out of the EU will cost us trade and cause billions in lost income to are economy, but the way he believes we'll make this up is by the reduction in red tape allowing companies to increase output. In other words, he imagines the UK becoming a country where workers are forced to become sweatshop workers that are made to work long hours for extremely low wages and that this will somehow create a massive increase in industrial output to match the massive loss in sales to Europe.
It truly is disturbing what British neocons imagine for our country and the scary thing is that support amongst the ignorant in our society for this sort of thing is growing. If these people were to ever gain power then the absolute first thing I would do is leave and go to a more sane country like Canada, New Zealand, or somewhere else in Europe. If people like Farage think that people like me, who earn and hence contribute far more than the average citizen are going to stick around and work 100 hour weeks for literally no other reason than him being able to revel in his little xenophobic fantasy of leaving Europe, then they have another thing coming. They will turn the UK into a 3rd world sweatshop, but maybe that's their plan- so they can benefit from cheap labour and run abusive warehouses to make themselves rich. If that were to ever happen, and people like me were to live, then all the uneducated gullable fucks who voted for it can sit in their sweatshops with no life, and no hope whilst the rest of us have fucked off elsewhere. Of course, they wont be able to follow us out the door, because they're not smart enough to offer anything other countries would want so they'll get exactly what they deserve.
Again, I can't believe there are people who actually support that sort of shit. Farage himself admits that removal of workers rights is a priority for him, and there's literally no other reason to want that other than if you intend to exploit workers.