SoylentNews

quietus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Another Wednesday, and another instance where our esteemed colleagues at the Financial Times managed to get their well-manicured hands on a leaked EU draft proposal.

This time it's all to do with online privacy, cleverly nick'ed the "ePrivacy" directive. And as you might expect, by golly, Jove and Vermouth, it's a stinker.

For instance, the new rules, as seen by the FT, will compel websites and browsers like Chrome to explicitly get the permission of users, before serving advertising based on browser history -- currently us plebs have to opt-out to avoid such ads.

Cue the upcoming confusion on granny's face next time she tries to post one more toddler pic to her Facebook bro's & ho's. Cue also the already present confusion with internet marketeers. "Advertising is the funding model of the internet and helps publishers create better content. That whole model could be undermined", one luminary was quoted.

All this as part of a wider attempt to regulate, pardon, undermine, the big Silicon Valley groups by the elitist elites in Brussels. There is the overhaul of the data protection and copyright rules currently under way. There is the antitrust probe into Google/Android [europa.eu]. And there is the gall to order Apple to pay backdated tax in the order of billions of euros to the Irish government [irishtimes.com], who are screaming at the top of their lungs they don't want to have all that money and wouldn't know what to do with it (a first for politicians worldwide).

Fines for breaking the new rules will run into 10-figure numbers, as 4 percent of global turnover of evildoers is in the cross-marks.

Facebook and Google declined to comment on the new rules, but the Financial Times reporters managed to drag an executive of a Big Technology company, under condition of anonimity, just long enough away from his soylent™ shake to let him quip:

"We think this will be very damaging to Europe's digital future."

Original Submission