6 ms·

This almost sounds too good to be true. What are the odds of this being watered down, or being delayed into eternity?

Gareth321 4y ago
IMHO, extremely low. The DMA has passed final debate and review, so it's not changing now. The last step is basically a formality. The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. The level of abstraction is just too large. Apple, Google, Amazon, et al., can wage a PR campaign, but it's highly unlikely to succeed.
- indigochill 4y ago
  > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. For how long, I wonder, given the megacorps have financial resources on par with entire nations, and the EU has been taking some pretty strong stances on topics of interest to them? Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in (probably not the worst outcome)?
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Considering how they bend to the local rules around the world, they will bend to this too. I remember only Google shutting down news in Spain and leaving China because of censorship. Apple looks at the money. There are too many money in Europe. They'll put on some sort of a fight but eventually we're going to have third party software on iOS that Apple doesn't approve.
    - lioeters 4y ago
      Off-topic: FYI, the phrase should be "too much money", because money is an uncountable noun (you cannot say "a money", but can say "some money").
      - pmontra 4y ago
        Thanks. I'm not a native English speaker but reading again my comment those words have a funny feeling. Your explanation points out why. So "There is too much money" (almost 10 M exact matches on Google.)
      - visarga 4y ago
        You're of course right but "too many money" sounds cute, too.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in Companies will put up with almost anything if there’s money to be made there.
- riffraff 4y ago
  > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. [citation needed] The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators. It's not the same with all regulations, the EU is a lobbying battleground as much as everywhere else, you can see that in most things, big corps just go through governments when not going through MEPs.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Huh? Where is the competitor to Google, Apple, Microsoft in the Eu. The law doesn't even cover devices. It only covers online marketplaces and gatekeepers who control everything.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    If it's a matter of lobbying aka legal bribery, why are foreign companies disadvantaged? These American companies have no qualms about lobbying in America, they could do the same in the EU. If the EU officials prefer to serve the interests of EU companies despite lobbying from both of them, maybe it's because they earnestly believe EU interests are better served by EU companies?
  - thefz 4y ago
    > The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators. Because 1) foreign operators do the fuck they want in unregulated markets such as the US and 2) there are no such operators in the EU because they have already been regulated
    - buran77 4y ago
      As someone intimately familiar with the underbelly of the system I can add 3) most of the local corrupting pressure historically came from smaller (than big tech) companies outside of tech so less of a spotlight on them in forums like this one. Think auto industry. EU institutions tend to want to do the right thing but will easily cave to "lobbying" when it comes to regulation that hits too close to home. They will not hesitate to regulate to the benefit of the people when the regulation hits far from home, lobbying be damned. In fewer words, they will accept to be corrupted by interests close to home and still put the well being of citizens at any other time.
- blibble 4y ago
  > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe instead of 27 there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20180108STO91215/transparency-register-who-is-lobbying-the-eu-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/...
  - pjerem 4y ago
    No. EU is governed by seven distinct institutions with distinct roles and interests. You can read more about them here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_U... The high number of institutions taking part in governance is in part responsive for the reputation of EU to be "slow" to act but it also means that it's incredibly hard to bribe because you have to bribe different institutions that don't even share the same mindsets. Not arguing there that EU is perfect (it's far from it), but it's really better that what most people think about it, which is because local governments always use the "it's the EU rules, we can't do anything". The thing is, they also omit to remind that ministers and head of states are part of two institutions and that they choose the council of the European Commission. So they are the ones making the rules and those rules have to be accepted by the democratically elected European Parliament. So when a politician in europe blame the EU for anything, they blame rules that they wrote themselves and that have been approved by a democratically elected parliament.
    - blibble 4y ago
      this is not a pertinent distinction: member states aren't a single monolithic single institution either the "7 institutions" is also not relevant: Putin wouldn't bother bribing Germany's federal constitutional court or government auditors to push his fossil fuels he'd go after the executive and legislature: exactly the same as if he wanted to influence EU policy
  - dx034 4y ago
    Not all lobbying is bad. That this regulation clearly protects the local tech industry is in the interest of many companies, but also in the interest of many (if not most) of the population.
- iasay 4y ago
  I think you are completely mad if thy think that corporate financial influence is far less. Where do you think the EU staff come from? What happens is you are promoted out of the corporate world and into EU council advisory positions (special advisors). So you end up a fill time EU advisory position with part time and contract work for your parent company. Or there's the full time corporate advisors (institutional special advisors)! Some are academically sourced and the universities are usually bankrolled by corporations who are just buying advisory positions.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Corporate financial influence is far less. Because there is a quite large segment of actual left, and even 5% to 10% actual communists in the Eu parliament. All thanks to proportional representation in the Eu allowing everyone's views to be represented. And initiatives like this, same with the Microsoft ballot box initiative, are generally brought to Euparl and led by left-wing MPs, especially communists. There is considerable awareness and following of Open Source in Eu political circles, including Euparl. Incidentally, a Green-Left coalition dominates Euparl right at this moment as far as I know.
Nextgrid 4y ago
My worry is that it will just not be enforced, just like the GDPR. The GDPR wasn’t watered down but in the end it just wasn’t enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders it was meant to regulate.
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  The DMA and DSA will be enforced by the Commission, rather than by member states' local authorities which - hopefully - will avoid the problems we've seen with the GDPR.
- fsflover 4y ago
  https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    I see your username pretty regularly, have you not seen my (many) rebuttals to this link? TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.
    - fsflover 4y ago
      I will not dispute that we need more enforcement, but it definitely exists and helps. For example, Google recently changed their "cookies" dialogue from "More options" to "Reject all".
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        Agreed about Google, but not only did it tame 4 years for such an obvious breach to be corrected, but I also don’t believe they were even fined for this particular violation - they decided to start complying after the IAB consent flow ruling. They’ve basically been allowed to willingly and maliciously breach the regulation for 4 years. Facebook appears to still be getting away with breaching the regulation on so many levels.
amelius 4y ago
Or how about Apple crippling their own device whenever someone wants to do any of these things?
- bloppe 4y ago
  Sounds like a big fine for Apple.
  - amelius 4y ago
    How do you prove it if the performance difference is noticeable but small? And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Surely the tests that reviewers do every time a new phone comes to market would be sufficient to demonstrate noticeable-but-small?
      - wins32767 4y ago
        That could just be written off as "third party developers just aren't as good as Apple's".
    - stale2002 4y ago
      You send a court order to Apple to give up all their internal communications, and you use their own internal statements against them. Is it possible to sneakily get around the law? Maybe. But it isn't possible to do that, with thousands of people working on it? No, one of them will talk.
    - bzxcvbn 4y ago
      > And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine. Which is why after being found noncompliant a third time, the new law gives the power to the EU Commission to impose structural changes to the company. Or they can stop operating in the EU.

IMHO, extremely low. The DMA has passed final debate and review, so it's not changing now. The last step is basically a formality. The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. The level of abstraction is just too large. Apple, Google, Amazon, et al., can wage a PR campaign, but it's highly unlikely to succeed.

indigochill 4y ago
> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. For how long, I wonder, given the megacorps have financial resources on par with entire nations, and the EU has been taking some pretty strong stances on topics of interest to them? Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in (probably not the worst outcome)?
- pmontra 4y ago
  Considering how they bend to the local rules around the world, they will bend to this too. I remember only Google shutting down news in Spain and leaving China because of censorship. Apple looks at the money. There are too many money in Europe. They'll put on some sort of a fight but eventually we're going to have third party software on iOS that Apple doesn't approve.
  - lioeters 4y ago
    Off-topic: FYI, the phrase should be "too much money", because money is an uncountable noun (you cannot say "a money", but can say "some money").
    - pmontra 4y ago
      Thanks. I'm not a native English speaker but reading again my comment those words have a funny feeling. Your explanation points out why. So "There is too much money" (almost 10 M exact matches on Google.)
    - visarga 4y ago
      You're of course right but "too many money" sounds cute, too.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in Companies will put up with almost anything if there’s money to be made there.
riffraff 4y ago
> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. [citation needed] The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators. It's not the same with all regulations, the EU is a lobbying battleground as much as everywhere else, you can see that in most things, big corps just go through governments when not going through MEPs.
- unity1001 4y ago
  Huh? Where is the competitor to Google, Apple, Microsoft in the Eu. The law doesn't even cover devices. It only covers online marketplaces and gatekeepers who control everything.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  If it's a matter of lobbying aka legal bribery, why are foreign companies disadvantaged? These American companies have no qualms about lobbying in America, they could do the same in the EU. If the EU officials prefer to serve the interests of EU companies despite lobbying from both of them, maybe it's because they earnestly believe EU interests are better served by EU companies?
- thefz 4y ago
  > The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators. Because 1) foreign operators do the fuck they want in unregulated markets such as the US and 2) there are no such operators in the EU because they have already been regulated
  - buran77 4y ago
    As someone intimately familiar with the underbelly of the system I can add 3) most of the local corrupting pressure historically came from smaller (than big tech) companies outside of tech so less of a spotlight on them in forums like this one. Think auto industry. EU institutions tend to want to do the right thing but will easily cave to "lobbying" when it comes to regulation that hits too close to home. They will not hesitate to regulate to the benefit of the people when the regulation hits far from home, lobbying be damned. In fewer words, they will accept to be corrupted by interests close to home and still put the well being of citizens at any other time.
blibble 4y ago
> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe instead of 27 there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20180108STO91215/transparency-register-who-is-lobbying-the-eu-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/...
- pjerem 4y ago
  No. EU is governed by seven distinct institutions with distinct roles and interests. You can read more about them here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_U... The high number of institutions taking part in governance is in part responsive for the reputation of EU to be "slow" to act but it also means that it's incredibly hard to bribe because you have to bribe different institutions that don't even share the same mindsets. Not arguing there that EU is perfect (it's far from it), but it's really better that what most people think about it, which is because local governments always use the "it's the EU rules, we can't do anything". The thing is, they also omit to remind that ministers and head of states are part of two institutions and that they choose the council of the European Commission. So they are the ones making the rules and those rules have to be accepted by the democratically elected European Parliament. So when a politician in europe blame the EU for anything, they blame rules that they wrote themselves and that have been approved by a democratically elected parliament.
  - blibble 4y ago
    this is not a pertinent distinction: member states aren't a single monolithic single institution either the "7 institutions" is also not relevant: Putin wouldn't bother bribing Germany's federal constitutional court or government auditors to push his fossil fuels he'd go after the executive and legislature: exactly the same as if he wanted to influence EU policy
- dx034 4y ago
  Not all lobbying is bad. That this regulation clearly protects the local tech industry is in the interest of many companies, but also in the interest of many (if not most) of the population.
iasay 4y ago
I think you are completely mad if thy think that corporate financial influence is far less. Where do you think the EU staff come from? What happens is you are promoted out of the corporate world and into EU council advisory positions (special advisors). So you end up a fill time EU advisory position with part time and contract work for your parent company. Or there's the full time corporate advisors (institutional special advisors)! Some are academically sourced and the universities are usually bankrolled by corporations who are just buying advisory positions.
- unity1001 4y ago
  Corporate financial influence is far less. Because there is a quite large segment of actual left, and even 5% to 10% actual communists in the Eu parliament. All thanks to proportional representation in the Eu allowing everyone's views to be represented. And initiatives like this, same with the Microsoft ballot box initiative, are generally brought to Euparl and led by left-wing MPs, especially communists. There is considerable awareness and following of Open Source in Eu political circles, including Euparl. Incidentally, a Green-Left coalition dominates Euparl right at this moment as far as I know.

Nextgrid 4y ago

My worry is that it will just not be enforced, just like the GDPR. The GDPR wasn’t watered down but in the end it just wasn’t enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders it was meant to regulate.

M2Ys4U 4y ago
The DMA and DSA will be enforced by the Commission, rather than by member states' local authorities which - hopefully - will avoid the problems we've seen with the GDPR.
fsflover 4y ago
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I see your username pretty regularly, have you not seen my (many) rebuttals to this link? TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    I will not dispute that we need more enforcement, but it definitely exists and helps. For example, Google recently changed their "cookies" dialogue from "More options" to "Reject all".
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Agreed about Google, but not only did it tame 4 years for such an obvious breach to be corrected, but I also don’t believe they were even fined for this particular violation - they decided to start complying after the IAB consent flow ruling. They’ve basically been allowed to willingly and maliciously breach the regulation for 4 years. Facebook appears to still be getting away with breaching the regulation on so many levels.

amelius 4y ago

Or how about Apple crippling their own device whenever someone wants to do any of these things?

bloppe 4y ago
Sounds like a big fine for Apple.
- amelius 4y ago
  How do you prove it if the performance difference is noticeable but small? And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Surely the tests that reviewers do every time a new phone comes to market would be sufficient to demonstrate noticeable-but-small?
    - wins32767 4y ago
      That could just be written off as "third party developers just aren't as good as Apple's".
  - stale2002 4y ago
    You send a court order to Apple to give up all their internal communications, and you use their own internal statements against them. Is it possible to sneakily get around the law? Maybe. But it isn't possible to do that, with thousands of people working on it? No, one of them will talk.
  - bzxcvbn 4y ago
    > And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine. Which is why after being found noncompliant a third time, the new law gives the power to the EU Commission to impose structural changes to the company. Or they can stop operating in the EU.