• TWeaK@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    4 months ago

    Law isn’t defined just by legislation, it is also defined by case law. A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

    Now, I’m not saying this ruling is appropriate - I simply don’t know enough about how it came to be. But if Brazil made laws about social media companies and then a judge made a ruling based on that law requiring social media companies have a representative, then that absolutely is valid law.

    To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens. The EU made GDPR law (well, strictly speaking they made a directive, then member states make laws that must meet or exceed that directive), and then a judge interpreted that law and made it a requirement to have cookie splash screens. I would personally argue that the judge was trying to shove a square peg through a round hole there, when really he should have identified that data collection is in fact a secondary transaction hidden in the fine print (rather than an exchange of data for access to the service, this isn’t how the deal is presented to the user; the service is offered free of charge but the fine print says your data is surrendered free of charge), and he should have made it such that users get paid for the data that’s being collected. However, the judge’s ruling stands as law now.

    • tromars@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      The GDPR is a regulation (that’s what the R stands for), not a directive. Directives must be transposed into national law by the member states, while regulations apply directly

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        Thanks, yet another reason why my example was a bit off hah.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      4 months ago

      A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

      Not everywhere.

      Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

      Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.

      To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens.

      A very poor example; Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC.

      The EU at its top level creates “Directives”, which member states then are bound to transpose into their national Civil Law systems. Judges can interprete that law in different ways, none of which creates a precedent. Only a country’s Supreme Court decision creates a precedent for that country, but even then it can be recurred up to the EU Tribunal, which has the last saying.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 months ago

        It looks like you haven’t really digested anything of the conversation here before you came in to reply with corrections.

        Not everywhere.

        Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

        Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.

        Sure, but we’re talking about Brazil. You haven’t established whether Brazil is common or civil law. Also, we’re talking about a Supreme Court ruling.

        Not all of the EU is civil law. Ireland and Cyprus both use common law systems.

        While common law countries often have roots connected with the UK and are very similar, civil law countries are far more varied. Many civil law countries are distinctly different and arguably should be a separate class of legal structure - even ones with French roots (perhaps the most prominent civil law country).

        Ultimately, though, the differences between civil and common law structures are almost entirely technical in nature. The end result is largely the same - in a common law country, case law can continue to be challenged until a Supreme Court ruling, and as such it isn’t really proper case law until such a ruling, just like in civil law countries.

        https://guides.library.harvard.edu/law/brazil

        Brazil is, in fact, a civil law country. However, they do follow case law from Supreme Court, which would make this ruling about requiring a representative valid case law. Which is what I said to OP.

        The EU at its top level creates “Directives”

        This is exactly what I said.

        The EU made GDPR law (well, strictly speaking they made a directive, then member states make laws that must meet or exceed that directive)

        The EU made a directive, this directive led to GDPR laws made by member states. However I was apparently mistaken, it wasn’t an EU Tribunal court case that led to cookie splash screens through case law, it was Recital 66 (lol Order 66), essentially a 2009 modification to the 2002 ePrivacy Directive, followed by roundtable discussions that heavily favoured the advertising industry over civil interest groups leading to its formal implementation into the directive in 2012.

        https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-behind-cookie-banners-alexander-hanff-cipp-e-cipt-fip-

        To summarise:

        • What I said at the start was right - Brazil’s Supreme Court ruling requiring social media companies to have representatives is valid case law.
        • My example of cookie splash screens wasn’t ideal, but you did not give the right reasoning, or any reasoning - it was a poor analogy because it wasn’t a judge’s rulinig that modified the law but legal discussions that were prompted by public interest groups.

        Like I say, it really feels like you didn’t read very far before you made your reply. Your comment reads more as a statement of tangentially related things you know with a thin veil disguising it as a correction. If you’d just made those statements without the veil, or if you’d followed through with the corrections and actually explained what was wrong, I don’t think I would have found your reply so objectionable (although I may also have woken up on the wrong side of the bed to your comment, sorry about that).

        But then, I also wouldn’t have looked into the specifics of Brazilian law or the full origins of cookie splash screens, so thanks for the motivation lol.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          4 months ago

          You say I don’t read… then proceed to explain the same that I already said? Ok.

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            I said you came in to correct me but didn’t actually deliver any corrections. You just talked about the things you know.

            I didn’t say the same thing you said, I provided the correction that you left out.