David Pakman Show has to fend off a vendor that seems to want him to violate state privacy laws as well as GDPR

David Pakman (of the David Pakman Show in Boston) described his being approached by one of his service providers that David’s show needed to switch other aspects of his operation to a particular company or be cut off completely from this provider.

From David’s description, it sounds as though the new company would have tracked personal information of visitors much more aggressively (probably with persistent identifiers) to sell more ads. 

The arrangement would have violated the EU GDPR but not US privacy law.  But from David’s description, it does sound as though it could have caused his operation to violate California’s CCPA based on viewers or visitors from the state earning him revenue, and laws like CCPA are likely to be enacted in more states in 2020.

   

David said no, and will apparently take some hit on revenue starting in 2020 to protect his visitor base.   

This whole tactic reminds me of controversy over the DOJ proposed gutting of the Paramount Consent Decree in the movie and theatrical distribution business (see Movies blog today). 
       
 Adam Schwartz has an article for Electronic Frontier Foundation that speaks favorably for California CCPA, but it seems there will be more details to iron out in 2020 as to how websites and YouTube channels could be affected. 
        
 Also, I've noticed one or more Wordpress sites even without ads throwing cookie warnings at visitors the first time, and here is one plugin that can do this.  I'll look into whether I need the plugin or a similar one on my Wordpress sites.