Posts by Doctor Syntax 40485 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
Every one of these devices will ship with clauses buried in their EULAs/ToS that make you give permission for the device to phone home for "troubleshooting" or "diagnostic" purposes, to "enhance user experience", or even - just putting it on the table - "to provide relevant advertising".
That isn't going to play well with GDPR. In fact I wonder when the case against Microsoft's telemetry gets under way.
Until that "Action" is a deterrent, you may as well just add a surcharge to companies for them to pay the crown yearly.
Up to now this behaviour has probably been seen as standard practice by a lot of salesdroids. This case should be a warning that it isn't. Although the fine in this case might be low* don't expect it to be as low under GDPR and don't expect it to be low for repeat offenders.
* You also have to factor in that a guilty plea brings a reduced fine.
"Although many people do listen in cars, according to the latest Rajar data, 60% of listening is in the home, 24% in car, and 16% in the office."
Those figures don't add up. Or rather they do but leave nothing for all the vocal diarrhoea DJs that seem inescapable in shops etc.
"On another not, look at how magical thinking around the over-hyped AI, or machine learning for that matter, is roped in to say this is possible with a wave of a politician's hands."
Not that it matters how it's done. Doing it just becomes a cost of doing business irrespective of the AI (that corporations have been hyping) or lots of low-wage workers. It's not just going to be the UK who takes this attitude and by ignoring the issue - and the politicians - the corporations are going to find the cost to be more than it might have been had they taken the matter more seriously, been less encouraging of abuses and more careful about managing politicians' expectations.
"Why does a company based outside an EU entity even have to bother?"
If they don't want to do business there then they don't need to bother. Why do you think you shouldn't obey the laws of a country where you want to do business.
What do you think would be the result of giving them the finger? Probably a bigger fine, one enough to make an example of you. You think the country would be powerless? What do you think would happen if the law enforcement of the country then gets in touch with the offender's bank looking for payment of the fine. The company may not have a foothold in the country; their bank almost certainly does and they're not going to fight the law on behalf of a tuppenny-ha'penny scoff-law. Most likely the account would get suspended until payment was arranged.
"If GDPR gives me some means of finally removing this information, then I will be very glad, although I do think that some of the GDPR regulation (particularly about correcting all archived and backup copies of data) are effectively unworkable within the statutory retention period of UK financial regulations, amongst others."
I'm probably in the same position as you and I'll start giving some of these sites grief if they don't smarten up.
However if you read up about the deletion it does refer to what's technically possible. You don't have to delete from the backup. However it would be smart to retain the deletion request so if you restore from the backup you can redo the deletion from the restored data. Once you've replaced the backup with a post-deletion one you'd then no longer need to retain the request.
"However, the previous address still appears, and there's no way of deleting that. Surely not GDPR compliant?"
Yet again we have to explain. Companies House information is a requirement in statute law. GDPR does not apply in such situations. As CH data includes past as well as current data on officers you aren't going to disappear that easily. You could close the company and open a new one giving your accountant's address for the director's address (assuming the accountant consents). You then have to wait until the old company disappears from the record. I'm not sure how long that takes but the perpetual beta site seems no to have my old company there but that was closed over a decade ago.
"But with ICAAN stupidity they will either sue or terminate the contract."
On what basis? That they want to enforce an illegal contract term. I said in an earlier thread that one remaining piece of information required was what the contract says about unenforceable terms: does it simply render the term unenforceable or does it negate the entire contract? Or, indeed, does it say nothing and how would a court interpret the resulting situation?
"that wont work for a .com though. A .co.uk yes"
That's up to the .com registrars. If they have registrants resident in the EU ther they're going to have to do something like that. It doesn't matter if the ICANN contract says they can't because statute law requirements override contract terms. It would not be lawful for the registrar to follow such a contract term.
"the only reasonable alternative for registrars in europe is to turn off WHOIS - cut the data feed or replace the data with dummy lines saying "Removed due to GDPR"."
No need. My domain's whois entry does give my name but gives Registrant type as "UK Individual" and presumably will also replace my name with something like that in a few days time. For address it says "The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service."
The TLD owner, Nominet, is quite OK with this. The Data validation field says "Nominet was able to match the registrant's name and address against a 3rd party data source". It's been like that for years.
Other European TLDs can presumably adopt similar policies if they already haven't. I'd expect the US registrars to do so for European clients; their big problem would be with clients who have moved to Europe from elsewhere but not let the registrar know.
"However another consultation will only actually help anything if HMRC do what they didn't last time, which is actually listen to what people are saying."
Public consultations aren't held so HMG can listen to what's said. They're just held because they're held. It's a step that has to take place before HMG just goes ahead and does what it always intended to do.
"Most contractors wont agree but I think a bigger upheaval is needed to make it fair for both parties."
OK, here's a proposal to make it fair. Do away with the limited companies. One set of tax rules for everyone including, of course, tax for benefits in kind. Security of employment, e.g. as a permanent employee of HMRC, is seen as a highly valued taxable benefit. The extra tax gained by taxing such benefits in kind can then be used to reduce the income tax rates in general including those for freelancers.
"Ours here are also liberally decorated in signs eschewing the virtues of using the hand-dryer over the paper towels due to the environmental impact of paper towels."
Hand-dryers are now being accused of being very efficient microbiological dispersing devices. Paper towels seem to be back in favour. Your place of work needs to catch up.
"I wonder if the people who leave huge great steamers unflushed in the company bogs and rolls of used toilet paper in the sink either do the same thing at home"
Expectations of a public bog may differ from the same person's expectations of their own.
"Also interesting was the difference in cleanliness of various facilities towards the end of the day."
Amongst the instructions "Please leave these facilities as you would expect to find them" is a common one. The differences you note are the consequence of differing expectations.
"Yes, people who don't want their private email 'slurped' by the likes of Google and/or Microsoft still do"
You keep a Google or MS email address as a spam bin.
You then get your own domain and allocate addresses in that as required. You don't actually have to run your own server. There are registrars and third party providers who will do that for you. For this you pay a fee but email addresses are independent of ISP and mail service provider. You can shop around and ditch any who are taken over by the likes of TT or who turn out to have long term problems of their own without being taken over. With a little checking you can also ensure your email provider isn't hosted in the US.
"which was once an ISP with excellent reputation and, oh the irony, _superb_ customer service."
Hmm. I started off with Nildram. Nildram were taken over by Pipex who were so pleased (and rightly) with the Nildram CS that they decided to roll it out over all their brands.
Then Pipex were taken over by Tiscali. The Nildram support was replaced by something which included an email system apparently operated by something along the lines of Eliza; if there were real people there they failed the Turing test. Still not too bad because there weren't any real problems. When TT took them over and the script monkey system just couldn't cope.
"Does that go as far as a full transcript of the proceedings?"
You might have to pay for a full transcription to be made. The judge and barristers will make their own notes ?in longhand but if the official reporter is using shorthand it will all have to be typed out from that. The official reporter would use the shorthand if asked to read back a reply but from one story I heard there didn't even seem to be any systematic preservation of the shorthand notes after the case had finished.
I'm not sure of the situation regarding audio recordings. They were being trialled back in one court in my day but it's a long time since then.
"If I'm beta-testing something, I expect a big discount and a free upgrade to the finished product as compensation for my time and help"
I think your expectations are out of date. Whatever you buy you're probably a beta-tester with added data-slurpage.
I'm sure 100 years ago every person with a horse was laughing at those idiots with their automobiles going 10 mph and running out of fuel after 25 miles while the horse simply "refulled" by eating some grass on the side of the lane.
From time to time there are TV programmes about weird inventions. It seems that for everything that worked - such as the motor car - there were a whole stock of things that you've never heard of, largely because they were solutions to problems most people didn't need to have solved.
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