Monday, May 21, 2018

Closing Hyrule Blog

In a three days time the moon will crash on the world this blog will shut its doors. It will be set to "private", where only I will be able to read any of it.

This is to "comply" with the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which will be enforced starting May 25th. Chances are that you've heard about in the last weeks, because most online platforms are updating their privacy policies because of it. It affects almost everything that potentially has some sort of data from Europeans, which goes as far that certain sites and firms will effectively shut off Europe from their servers just to avoid it. Which won't work, because proxies are a thing. But the reaction is fully understandable, because the fines are astronomical and existence-threatening.

At its core the GDPR means well and is probably long overdue, but the execution is so flawed that conspiracy theorists may view it as an open attack on the free web and on free speech in the Internet, disguised under the name of data protection. The main issue of the GDPR is that its regulations seemingly aim at the big firms like Google or Facebook, but they are so vague that they apply to everyone and everything on the web, making any site a target for warning fees.

The big firms with their armies of lawyers and IT experts can prepare for this accordingly. But small companies and private persons will struggle with the current legal maze. Blogs, wikis, boards, homepages, online school projects... everyone needs to comply and mistakes are costly.

And as an individual it's quite the effort to deal with all this and chances are that you are still making some mistakes, even if you go as far and hire a lawyer. So, starting May 25th it becomes quite a personal risk to run a website of any kind.

...

And this is where I stand. For me this always has been a harmless hobby. This site never generated a single cent and I just did it for the fun of it. Blogspot was the platform of my choice, because it was completely free and I didn't have to take care of anything here. I could just start a blog, modify the layout and start posting. It was simple, carefree and fun.

But as a blog owner you're now becoming a "data controller" and are forced to do all kinds of things, including setting up a lengthy Privacy Policy, which only lawyers are ever going to read, and even making "data processing contracts" with Google, where Google has yet to offer them directly to their bloggers in some form of automated process.

Probably the biggest issue, however, is that the GDPR forces you to make your address and phone number public for everyone to see at any time... There's some gigantic irony here that I would need to disclose my full personal data in the name of data protection. Who's protecting my data here? Certainly not the law. And I don't want any part of this.

So, the only sane thing to do is to not take any risks and close this blog for now. With some luck it won't be forever. The problems of the GDPR currently show and protest is there, where things might get loosened for small websites like this one... Maybe over time it will get a lot clearer and easier to make a Blogspot blog compliant. But for now I will need to stay quiet and observe the situation. When the smoke clears and I can just keep doing what I love without any personal risk, Hyrule Blog will return. Otherwise this will really be the end of it.

...

The last days I've been publishing quite a few posts - stuff that I still wanted to write, as long as someone can read it. And this shows how much this hobby actually means to me - I love writing this blog and there won't be a real replacement for it, because what I'm doing here would be an overshoot for community boards and even other Zelda news blogs, since it's simply too personal. So, this isn't an easy decision and it currently feels like a big part of me is dying...

I might keep writing this blog in private, so in case that it can return, there won't be a massive gap without any posts. But despite the fact that I've been writing this blog mostly for myself to process my thoughts about my favorite video game franchise(s), with no one there to read any of it, it probably won't be the same anymore and I might lose the motivation to go on.

All of this is especially sad considering that next month would have been the 10th Anniversary of Hyrule Blog and the next E3 with interesting new topics. And the Future of Zelda currently looks brighter than ever, where I'm really excited for what comes next in the franchise...

In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter, where I probably will become more active as a result, but naturally I won't be writing any lengthy posts there. (This is of course part of the GDPR irony, where I'm driven to a large social network, instead of writing my own blog...) But if a Smartphone Zelda is happening next, as I'm currently hoping, Twitter might be a good platform to share my thoughts about the game and my current progress on the go.

Thanks to everyone, who has been reading and supporting this blog over the years! Hopefully you will be reading it again soon.

6 comments:

Marandahir said...

Thank YOU for all the interesting and enjoyable reads over the years!

I'm sorry you're having to close your doors, even if temporarily. Good luck weathering the storm, and I'll be following you on twitter.


P.S. This is wintercoast, frequent reader/commentor – Blogger isn't letting me publish my comments via my blog page anymore for some reason. Oh well.

August Janse said...

This is sad to hear. I have really enjoyed reading your blog since I found it. I get the feeling that you're doing this mostly out of principle, which I can respect, but you should know that there are plenty of "GDPR guides" for bloggers. Following one of them should probably suffice, at least in practice.

TourianTourist said...

@Marandahir / wintercoast: Thanks! And oh, I deactivated OpenId for comments in "preparation" for GDPR, because that would have been one less thing to deal with, but this doesn't matter anymore anyhow...

@August Janse: In the last two months I've spent a significant amount of my free time dealing with such "guides" and the GDPR in general. The way I see it is that you can't fully prepare a Blogspot blog for this right now, it will be illegal on Friday. And lawyers making a living from warnings are sadly a thing... Only time might fix this, but in the meantime many bloggers will bleed money. It's just not worth the risk, nor the trouble, really.

Unknown said...

Very sad to hear this, i liked to (re)read your articles very much.

Maybe you can consider creating a facebook page (so no profile but a page, though you still need a personal FB profile to make a page), you can still write long articles there.

If you dont want that, ill hope there will be a solution in the near future.

Take care and i will follow you on twitter.

TourianTourist said...

@Wilberd Gijzel: Thanks. Afaik, a Facebook page is pretty much the same thing legal-wise, so as an owner of one you fall under the GDPR and face the same legal issues. Plus, I don't really want to go to Facebook. :D

Lankelink said...

Thank you for all these years of Zelda posts. I enjoyed a lot reading your thoughts about the games. I hope you can reopen the blog any time soon. If not, I hope you find somewhere else where you feel comfortable with sharing your Zelda experiences.