Wake up and smell the coffee. The EU is coming towards you with something that has far deeper and more serious implications than cookies in itself will ever have; a monumental update to the date protection rules.
3 things stand out in the proposed new rules:
- The EU introduces a fundamental human ‘right to be forgotten’ meaning that every individual will have the right to demand that any data you may hold on them and which isn’t strictly necessary (and yes, strictly should probably be interpreted very literal) has to be deleted. Goodbye all strategies to pool data, mine them and make money of it.
- Personal identifiable information will also include IP-adresses, which will (1) provide a paradox of each site and service to register and keep even more information on the individual in order to make sure that the right identifiable parts are kept together for later possible deletion and (2) effectively kill off public networks with dynamic IP adresses, because just how are you going to make sure that an IP-address from a public coffee bar is personally identifiable?
- The new rules will be for the entire EU, which probably will mean that they will tilt to the restrictive part given that especially Germany have a very hard stance on collecting information on people due to quite obvious (for most people) historical reasons.
All in all I think it’s fair to say that if the proposal stands and end up being made into law as it stands now, it will turn the digital world upside down – at the very least the economic side of it. Business models will be destroyed, and we’re back to making each individual product count on it’s own merits with no real automation whatsoever.
Pretty scary stuff. And I haven’t even mentioned how these rules will skew competition between the EU and the rest of the world with less strict privacy rules. This will not only cost money and innovation potential but also real jobs. In a big way.