In the early years of the Internet, it was the Wild West. As a company, you could do just about anything you wanted in this vast and open land of opportunity. But, now, times are changing.
With the GDPR, the EU has introduced much-needed privacy laws that tip the scale of data ownership on the Internet from 100% corporate ownership to 100% individual ownership, with corporations acting as stewards of the data.
This is a massive change happening not only in the EU but also around the world. Japan is working with the EU to streamline its own privacy laws, while Brazil has already passed a new data protection law called LGPD. In the U.S., California has passed the CCPA and the Senate is working on a draft of new nationwide privacy law.
A core part of all these laws is that they are extraterritorial, meaning that it doesn't matter where a company is located. If you have users from Brazil, for example, you need to comply with Brazilian laws.
As you can see, changes in data privacy laws are not just about the GDPR, but instead about a global movement towards a more mature, less Wild West kind of Internet.
This movement is fantastic for consumers, as stronger privacy laws are long overdue.
But they do present one large challenge for us: how do small- and medium-sized companies adopt and implement these new laws without grinding to a halt? It is close to impossible to do all the right things even in your core business, let alone risk losing the focus of your company to something outside of it.
"With GDPR EU is building a wall greater than any wall President Trump is building" - Source
Peter Thiel Co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund
At Openli, we provide the tools needed for companies to coexist with new Internet privacy laws. We enable companies to do the right thing, without hurting their business. We can even improve trust between you and your customers at a time when they are plagued by everyday privacy catastrophes not only on Facebook but almost all other major sites.
We continue to build Openli because we believe in the open Internet, and we believe in small companies being an important part of that Internet. We further believe that consumers should have data ownership and transparency, and we hope to make the Internet a better place for all global citizens.
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