GDPR meltdown: A bunch of U.S. news sites are down in Europe
If you've been working in the UK (or indeed any EU country) for the last month or so you've probably noticed a slew of emails reminding your company to get ready for then new General Data Protection Regulation, a.k.a. GDPR. Sadly, it seems some U.S. sites didn't get the memo.
On May 25th GDPR came into effect, implementing new laws about data protection within the European Union.
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Multiple U.S. news sites like the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune are inaccessible for people in Europe.
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At time of writing Mashable tried to visit the websites from within the UK, and came across similar messages.
"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries," read the LA Times website. "We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."
The BBC reported that the sites affected were owned by the Tronc and Lee Enterprises media publishing groups.
Also affected was USA Today, whose European site -- although not entirely blocked -- was very sparse compared to the usual U.S. version.
Looks like GDPR has caught its first few big fish in its data-regulating net.
Although the mass-blocking is something of a nuisance, some online chose to see the funny side.
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Mashable would have liked to have reached out to the affected news sites, but unfortunately we were blocked from doing so due to their sites being down. And you thought the chicken and the egg debacle was a tough paradox.
