The right to not be tracked if you don't want to is (now) a fundamental legal right that overrides any rules you can implement.
It's not that they don't consent to your monetization scheme, is that a monetization scheme that involves tracking people who don't really want to be tracked is illegal as such, you can't have one. You can deny access to whoever you want, but the key point is that if you "threatened" them to deny service if they don't accept, then that does not really indicate that they wanted you to use their data, does it?
You can't say "oh but I gave them some goodies to influence them to click 'Accept'" - nope, if they don't really want to be tracked, then you aren't allowed to do so, the consent is not something that people can trade away in a contract for some content, server time, money, lentil soup or whatever.
Ok, then EU shall not have a free option on any of my services. Pay or GTFO. Harms the poor, IMO, but at least the poor's privacy will be protected from ad companies.
Everyone's privacy will be protected - the same consent restrictions will also apply to your paid customers. Free webservices are not the majority of the world's businesses, a big part of why GDPR was needed is because all the paid online and offline services also traded all their subscriber private data; and with GDPR you can't just have a line in your paid service terms&conditions that allows you to screw their privacy.
Yes, I understand that. However, do you acknowledge that current monetization methods for "free tiers" of services generally involve cookies/tracking? If so, you also acknowledge said free tiers must go away if the service is to operate in EU, correct? If so, wouldn't you agree the EU poor will have access to fewer online services than their USA peers?
> do you acknowledge that current monetization methods for "free tiers" of services generally involve cookies/tracking?
I guess it depends wether you consider free plans to be a loss leader for the paid plans.
If you don't want to operate a free service that is without tracking, then don't. No-one is forcing you to, but you should be aware that you still need to follow the law for paying users too.
It's not that they don't consent to your monetization scheme, is that a monetization scheme that involves tracking people who don't really want to be tracked is illegal as such, you can't have one. You can deny access to whoever you want, but the key point is that if you "threatened" them to deny service if they don't accept, then that does not really indicate that they wanted you to use their data, does it?
You can't say "oh but I gave them some goodies to influence them to click 'Accept'" - nope, if they don't really want to be tracked, then you aren't allowed to do so, the consent is not something that people can trade away in a contract for some content, server time, money, lentil soup or whatever.