Nothing apart from burning bridges with one of the largest consumer blocs in the world and losing most of their customer bases there.
Assuming that Twitter and Facebook switch off their EU servers and route all trafic to US servers. I doubt it would make such huge difference in user experience. From user's side, zero knowledge needed. After all, this was the default setting, before companies started offering CDNs.
Yes, I know about reasons why Netflix and Hulu are playing with geolocation. That's why I said that in the case of US companies showing finger to EU jurisdiction would be much easier on the user, because the companies will be cooperative to the user, not adversarial.
While it may be difficult to effectively ban every method of bypassing controls, something the EU can definitely do is crack down on companies selling the bypass methods to consumers.
If we are talking vpn, again, nothing to be done if company is US based. But I did not even imagine this, this is way too technical for most people. Only way to ban foreign sites is deep packet inspection. There simply isn't any technology to block sites in the internet standard. And I don't imagine EU (or germany) going "full china" on this. The outcry would be enormous.
True. In theory. But on most days I am able to saturate my VPN connection to USA (I have fiber to the home 20/20). Never had problems watching any HD contents.
It is true, had many people use this trick, the things would change, but on the other hand, twitter, facebook, this are not data intensive applications (unlike video streaming).
And, I doubt that having edge location in EU could be a problem for a company that seeks to avoid being under EU jurisditction (at least, there would have to be a concerted effort by lawmakers and law enforcement to make it illegal).
Therefore, my theory is that they basically don't care if lawmakers are putting crazy amount of policing on them, because they are ideologically on the same side. They are left-biased and they would do this even if Germany would not demand this, only perhaps in slightly smaller degree.
So, if some company wants to be new Twitter or Facebook without (EU-required) censorship, they could easily do it, technology-wise. The problem is, neither Google nor Facebook or Twitter have any interest in being censorship-free.
My phone company is the state-owned telecom with none of the special agreements with other telecoms (beyond roaming). But I only wanted to point out that there are - depending what are you trying to do - perhaps prohibitive technical difficulties in "blocking" someone to "do business in country X".
Mind you, I live in EU but I watch US netflix, Hulu, and listen to Pandora. I pay for them fair and square, even they nominally block all EU based credit cards. Admittedly there is some technical knowledge involved (I am an engineer), but the structure of internet allows me to do it - and with US companies in adversarial position no less. Imagine if they were cooperative!
I am sorry that I don't understand the structure of those companies, but that is not the point. Amazon AWS is doing great business in EU and they do not have "proper" EU presence for invoicing (that's why you cannot get real VAT invoice from them, believe me, many people tried). They take your credit card, issue an invoice that says "this is not VAT invoice" and it is my problem as a customer to solve it. (Yes I know AWS has datacenters in EU).
SO excuse me if I still don't understand why for example facebook and twitter would not simply say fk you to EU governments, and move their EU based server to the US edge towards EU (in internet terms). What can EU governments do in that case? Block them? Yea right. My government blocks online betting. How? By demanding that ISP redirect it at DNS level. But everyone I know uses Google DNS anyway. And I can open bank account in any of the EU members, if someone would try to block payments.
The only government marginally capable of actually blocking any site is UK, since they mandate ISPs to run some kind of rough deep packet inspection. Even chinese find the way to access US sites, despite the Great Firewall of China.
So here is my question again: what prevents Google, Facebook and Twitter to close down their EU branches, move completely to US and offer services from there and showing middle finger to EU regulations and perhaps even suggesting VPN or working with VPN providers towards the goal of making their US sites impossible to block? Governments (at least democratic ones) cannot block any of them unless breaking the core structure of internet and cannot block any payments to them unless breaking the whole payment system.
I checked and I was myself pretty amused that while roaming in UK, my geolocation resolved to my telecom operator in my home country with the IP located in my home country.
Perhaps we do not understand each other.
You are right, Google making point is of course far easier to do, similarly how they did in Spain and much easier that Netflix & Hulu's cat and mouse game with VPN providers.
On the other hand German government simply cannot force Google to "stop operating in germany because it does not obey german laws". It is technically impossible, not just difficult (not that some clueless politician would not try and in the process cause severe technical breakdown in internet infrastructure).
So I am pretty surprised why google, facebook and twitter all yield to whimsies of individual governments - they should simply say "this law is stupid, our servers are in USA, we don't care what you try to enforce on us".
Do you even understand how Internet works? There is no "doing business in that Country" if I set up server in USA and provide services there. It is not my responsibility that people from countries with fkd up regimes that do not understand tech fundamentals, access my website and use my services!
Any attempts to "stop doing business in the country X" are based on very flaw-prone IP geolocation technology which is 1) not even standardized, but provided by multiple differing databases 2) it is getting more and more difficult to implement since IPV4 address blocks are traded around the world and IPV4 address space is getting more and more fragmented 3) it is getting impossible to define what is "in Germany". Is it Spanish citizen, visiting Germany with his spanish phone (which routes IP traffic through his Spain telecom provider when roaming) in Germany or in Spain?
And I did not even discuss the myriad of VPN and virtual credit card options which can make anyone appear as basically anywhere in the world.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by xmp125a.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Downward spiral -- No, it's an UPWARD spiral: you're looking at it wrong.
Of course I did. You get nicely framed invoice with a big remark "THIS IS NOT A VAT INVOICE" slapped on top. https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=664023
Assuming that Twitter and Facebook switch off their EU servers and route all trafic to US servers. I doubt it would make such huge difference in user experience. From user's side, zero knowledge needed. After all, this was the default setting, before companies started offering CDNs.
Yes, I know about reasons why Netflix and Hulu are playing with geolocation. That's why I said that in the case of US companies showing finger to EU jurisdiction would be much easier on the user, because the companies will be cooperative to the user, not adversarial.
If we are talking vpn, again, nothing to be done if company is US based. But I did not even imagine this, this is way too technical for most people. Only way to ban foreign sites is deep packet inspection. There simply isn't any technology to block sites in the internet standard. And I don't imagine EU (or germany) going "full china" on this. The outcry would be enormous.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Downward spiral -- No, it's an UPWARD spiral: you're looking at it wrong.
It is true, had many people use this trick, the things would change, but on the other hand, twitter, facebook, this are not data intensive applications (unlike video streaming).
And, I doubt that having edge location in EU could be a problem for a company that seeks to avoid being under EU jurisditction (at least, there would have to be a concerted effort by lawmakers and law enforcement to make it illegal).
Therefore, my theory is that they basically don't care if lawmakers are putting crazy amount of policing on them, because they are ideologically on the same side. They are left-biased and they would do this even if Germany would not demand this, only perhaps in slightly smaller degree.
So, if some company wants to be new Twitter or Facebook without (EU-required) censorship, they could easily do it, technology-wise. The problem is, neither Google nor Facebook or Twitter have any interest in being censorship-free.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Downward spiral -- No, it's an UPWARD spiral: you're looking at it wrong.
Mind you, I live in EU but I watch US netflix, Hulu, and listen to Pandora. I pay for them fair and square, even they nominally block all EU based credit cards. Admittedly there is some technical knowledge involved (I am an engineer), but the structure of internet allows me to do it - and with US companies in adversarial position no less. Imagine if they were cooperative!
I am sorry that I don't understand the structure of those companies, but that is not the point. Amazon AWS is doing great business in EU and they do not have "proper" EU presence for invoicing (that's why you cannot get real VAT invoice from them, believe me, many people tried). They take your credit card, issue an invoice that says "this is not VAT invoice" and it is my problem as a customer to solve it.
(Yes I know AWS has datacenters in EU).
SO excuse me if I still don't understand why for example facebook and twitter would not simply say fk you to EU governments, and move their EU based server to the US edge towards EU (in internet terms). What can EU governments do in that case? Block them? Yea right. My government blocks online betting. How? By demanding that ISP redirect it at DNS level. But everyone I know uses Google DNS anyway. And I can open bank account in any of the EU members, if someone would try to block payments.
The only government marginally capable of actually blocking any site is UK, since they mandate ISPs to run some kind of rough deep packet inspection. Even chinese find the way to access US sites, despite the Great Firewall of China.
So here is my question again: what prevents Google, Facebook and Twitter to close down their EU branches, move completely to US and offer services from there and showing middle finger to EU regulations and perhaps even suggesting VPN or working with VPN providers towards the goal of making their US sites impossible to block? Governments (at least democratic ones) cannot block any of them unless breaking the core structure of internet and cannot block any payments to them unless breaking the whole payment system.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Downward spiral -- No, it's an UPWARD spiral: you're looking at it wrong.
Perhaps we do not understand each other.
You are right, Google making point is of course far easier to do, similarly how they did in Spain and much easier that Netflix & Hulu's cat and mouse game with VPN providers.
On the other hand German government simply cannot force Google to "stop operating in germany because it does not obey german laws". It is technically impossible, not just difficult (not that some clueless politician would not try and in the process cause severe technical breakdown in internet infrastructure).
So I am pretty surprised why google, facebook and twitter all yield to whimsies of individual governments - they should simply say "this law is stupid, our servers are in USA, we don't care what you try to enforce on us".
Re: Re: Downward spiral -- No, it's an UPWARD spiral: you're looking at it wrong.
Any attempts to "stop doing business in the country X" are based on very flaw-prone IP geolocation technology which is 1) not even standardized, but provided by multiple differing databases 2) it is getting more and more difficult to implement since IPV4 address blocks are traded around the world and IPV4 address space is getting more and more fragmented 3) it is getting impossible to define what is "in Germany". Is it Spanish citizen, visiting Germany with his spanish phone (which routes IP traffic through his Spain telecom provider when roaming) in Germany or in Spain?
And I did not even discuss the myriad of VPN and virtual credit card options which can make anyone appear as basically anywhere in the world.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by xmp125a.
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