That's being debated in the privacy community as "consent-or-pay." The short answer is that we don't actually know. There are arguments on each side, and I tend to think (a) the plain reading of the law suggests no and (b) for a number of reasons, regulators will probably decide to rule that it's okay, but the reasoning that gets me there is pretty complicated.
"Consent or pay" sounds so hilariously wrongheaded on its face. I'm imagining someone using that approach in literally any other aspect of their lives and seeing how well it flies.
Well, in most other aspects of our lives, incentivized consent is allowed (and in fact it one of the foundations of contract theory). The GDPR has effectively disallowed it, which is one of the provisions here that actually reduces consumer autonomy rather than increasing it. The GDPR is going to make the internet a more expensive place, whether you think it's a good thing overall or not.
All the stuff I've seen has been on listservs, sorry.
Bundling consent inside a contract is prohibited, but the theory is that by providing a paid option (which wouldn't operate under the consent basis) OR essentially a free version if you allow them to process your data, they come out from under the bundling problem. It's questionable, certainly, but the supervisory authorities could go either way with it. They'll be under pressure to allow it, as without that, WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them.
Thanks, that seems to be quite on collision course with the intent of the law (in my opinion).
>... WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them.
I think that would be preferable. We need more incentive to be able to create decent alternatives, as it is now it seems no one can be bothered.
Given that news outlets are struggling to stay alive, I think we are likely to see few alternatives spring up. If a paper needs a marginal $8/subscriber to stay afloat, and they make $2.50/user from tracking/etc, we likely see a model where subscriptions cost $6 with tracking and $9 without. Obviously we don't know the exact numbers, but this is hardly inconceivable -- we know for a fact these companies are mostly losing money as it is.
With decent alternatives I meant alternatives to ads+tracking, which obviously isn't working out despite ruining the internet.
Few people would accept ads if they could pay the pennies that could ever be hoped to be extracted from ad exposure.
The cost to the user are substantially worse than the gains at the other end.
