Chicago Tribune and LA Times were forced to shut their websites in parts of Europe following the rollout of the new GDPR laws by the European Union today, May 25.
The new rules are forcing the companies to increase their attention to handling customer data. Violations of the laws, like breaching user privacy rights, will lead to severe penalties.
While privacy advocates are supporting the regulation as a standard for personal data protection in the internet age, some people oppose the notion that the rules take away a lot of freedom, tempting expensive business disruption.
Today in the morning, European readers trying to access the websites of the American media outlets owned by Tronc came across a message stating they were ‘unavailable in most European countries.’
The message did not disclose any reason but had ‘GDPR’ in the redirected web page address.
When readers tried accessing the LA Times website in Brussels and London, the message read:
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
For readers worldwide, we expect this issue to be resolved soon and the traditional popular newspapers reach them digitally again.
