It’s been a long time. I am writing this first new post on a new(ish) platform and sharing what this blogging hiatus had got to do with European Parliament and Council Regulation 2018/302.
The headline is actually more like a clickbait than a showcase of what to expect from this post, because the truth is I have no idea what my having to move all my content and change service provider had to do with a five year old EU law, but I am about to tell this story anyway.
Let’s start where we left off, I started studying an LL.M. program starting last fall. I really did enjoy it, it was by far the best decision I’ve made career-wise in the past few years, but it was exhausting doing it alongside my way too demanding job. By the end of the first semester I already had too much on my plate, because the first few exams were scheduled for the weeks before Christmas, which also happens to be the busiest season at my work. And that was when I got the e-mail from my American web service provider informing me that due to the EU’s geo-blocking regulation they are terminating my contract by the end of the year. I will need to move all my content from their servers by the end of January 2023, otherwise everything stored there will be lost.
When I got the e-mail I didn’t even have time to think about it, I just flagged it to deal with it later, my plan was during the Christmas break, when I was planning to take a few days off. Unfortunately by Christmas, exhaustion wore me out so much, that the first minute I would have been able to relax, I got so sick I could barely talk and move for a few days. It lasted throughout the holidays (while I still had to work after Christmas, but luckily I was working from home), but one of the last days of the year, I did manage to get a new contract with the UK branch of the same company (I am still not sure if it was a good idea, but at the time it seemed simple to be able to use a same-looking platform after transfering all my stuff from a US server to a UK server). I also tried to make moves to begin the transfer, but it turned out to be a bigger task, than I could handle at the time, when I did all this lying flat in bed, because I couldn’t sit up for long. I had one more month to do the transfer anyway.
After crashing my new UK site numerous times by trying to transfer all this data, and then finding out that all I could move was the texts, all the photos behind posts (except for the ones linked from outside sources) and the styling would be lost, I made the transfer of this skeleton of my used to be blog just in time before my site was shut down on February 1. The funny thing about all this is that I only subscribed to this service about a year before, and I did so because I was often told how much safer it was to have a service you pay for, instead of a free platform run by an independent source that could decide to take the whole thing off anytime. Well, I still have about 10 years worth of stuff intact that I created on a free platform all those years…
The thing about this blog is that I keep it as a hobby. In normal times, I only have about 30-60 minutes per week to work on it. I usually write a lot in my head, so that time should only cover typing it and creating a visual blog post out of it. But in the past few months, even if I had that kind of time, which I didn’t, it would have been spent with rebuilding the theme and styling, and only then starting posting again. I only started working on it after my final exams in June. I decided not to replace anything lost from previous posts (pictures or videos) just yet, maybe if I will have the time later, I’d go back to do that.
Once I was done with (almost) recreating my old theme and looks, there came another hurdle. Before I wasn’t ready to (re)publish my half-recovered website, I’ve seen no point transfering the domain name. My domain contract lasted until July this year, and for some reason they weren’t so eager to terminate that one. Once the looks of the new site was close enough, I wrote them to get back my domain, because I was paying for it, but couldn’t use it since I had no control panel at the old service provider anymore. It took several e-mails back and forth, even some real bitching on my part, before I was finally able to get back something I rightfully own. (I wasn’t unkind, but really pointed out all the legal and professional fails on their part.) It was during that correspondence it became clear that the two are basically the same company. For an e-mail written to the US company, they answered from the UK company’s address without taking a beat. I am still ahead of setting up my domain for this site, I will as soon as I hit publish on this post, so fingers crossed.
As for the EU geo-blocking regulation, I still have no idea how it affected my previous contract, and how it does not affect my current one, since nor the USA, neither the United Kindom are objects of this particular EU legislation (the UK used to be until it withdrawn from most EU laws in 2021). The regulation provides protection for those in the EU (plus Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein) against discrimination based on their location when buying goods or services online. Of course it may very well be that you are discriminated against by your nationality or location in a country that is not under the scope of this law – like the US or the UK -, but the EU has no power to sanction that and the US is really not famous for giving a damn about such laws anyway.
So, my blog is almost back. I want to keep writing, trying out different topics and ideas. At the time being my job prevents me from writing opinions, so I will try to write about neutral stuff, and occasionally some legal writing I may be publishing elsewhere. Welcome back, if anyone’s still interested. Let me know if you’re here. Also let me know if you have a recommendation for a good web service provider. Otherwise, see you in the next post!
