German Data Privacy Commissioner Says Article 13 Inevitably Leads to Filters
I&#x27;m waiting for the inevitable EU firewall that will ultimately be required to aggressively control all Internet usage for anyone in the EU.<p>It can end no other way than that. Particularly as these draconian regulations continue to get worse. How else will they enforce these policies against foreign entities that can trivially ignore them while still serving EU users? They have to put a stop to that, as it&#x27;s an easy circumvention.<p>I can build a service in the US. Allow EU citizens to sign up. Entirely disregard most, if not all, EU laws. Monetize the huge US market first as a cash springboard. Acquire scale. Then turn on EU monetization when it&#x27;s convenient to deal with the regulatory challenges there. There might be considerable retroactive fines involved for ignoring EU law over time while still taking on EU users (when you attempt to monetize the EU users, requiring business on the ground in the EU, that&#x27;s when they&#x27;d land punches financially; the retroactive approach would be the solution the politicians would come up with as a desperate stop-gap against this approach); so what, I&#x27;m now a monopoly platform, I already won, hit me with your speeding ticket. If you make the speeding ticket too large, I&#x27;ll demonetize the EU users, remove all business from the EU, ignore any fines, retain the EU users anyway to prevent competition, and keep going (come back later and see if I can lobby&#x2F;bribe the EU politicians in some kind of fine settlement).<p>The sole means to stop that scenario - which is almost obnoxiously beneficial to furthering US dominance in platforms - is to lock down all Internet usage in the EU and dictate by permission what sites may be used. The tighter they get with Article 13 style regulations, the more likely they have to implement an EU firewall.