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EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

politico.eu

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Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#341

Post by dureuill »

kmlx wrote: post #116
dureuill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good news. we also need interoperability requirements for social networks. like twitter and facebook must be mandated by law to provide access to their networks to smaller networks. only then would people be free to leave these networks without suffering from "network effect"

> like twitter and facebook must be mandated by law to provide access to their networks to smaller networks. makes no sense. you can already pull all your data out of those services and import it into whatever other service you want.

This is not what I mean. I mean make it mandatory for these networks to allow interconnection with eg the fediverse, so that I can connect with people on Facebook or Twitter without having an account on these services myself. Currently users are captive to a network, not due to an impossibility to recover their data, but due to the fact that their friends are using that network and that network is not interoperable. Basically I think networks like Facebook and Twitter are so big at this point that they should be infrastructure.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#342

Post by toyg »

can16358p wrote: post #333
toyg wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were "perfectly functional", people wouldn't be campaigning for this sort of laws. The reality is that these conglomerates are anything but perfect.

They are perfectly functional, and no one has to use them. You either pay for their hardware (Apple) or be okay with some data harvesting (others) and get a free chat service in return. It's a fair game. And no one forces you to use anything: all my friends, literally every single person here uses WhatsApp for primary communication, and I've deleted my WhatsApp account 2 years ago and still communicate with anyone wi…

> They are perfectly functional

For the people building them, yes. For the people using them, they are basically a massive con. "We will help you communicate!" Yeah, because this will allow you to harvest my data and sell me more shit. "We have these great features!" Yeah, that other networks had 20 years ago and you killed to enable the beforementioned con and monopolistic practices.

> I've deleted my WhatsApp account 2 years ago and still communicate with anyone without issues.

Well, good for you. I have WA groups that provide information about my kids' whereabout, schoolbus info, all sorts. Can I leave them? Yeah, in the same way I could walk out of civilization to go live on Jakku.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#343

Post by dchftcs »

grishka wrote: post #96
dchftcs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one side supports a feature, the other side doesn't, they're not interoperable.

If one side supports a feature and the other doesn't, they're still interoperable, just without that feature.

Sometimes, one feature can break the entire experience. If one side decides to do encryption in a particular way, the other side doesn't, they can't talk to each other. Of course, you can choose to not do that encryption, but then that proves the point that the unified standard can hinder progress.

Other than that, it can be death by a thousand cuts. If the rendering of a particular phrase relies on a specific custom feature, the other side might not see it properly. That can be multiplied by many times and make people frustrated, and worse, misunderstand each other.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#344

Post by stale2002 »

can16358p wrote: post #334
paxys wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they do it themselves? Food is necessary for the public, but there aren't a lot of governments running their own farms. Or construction companies, power generators, or really anything else. The best possible system is where people create goods and provide services to each other, and the government ensures a system where this exchange can be fair and thrive. This is exactly what they are doing with this law…

If food farms or construction companies do something wrong, people can die. Power companies are being created while there are rules so they know what they're dealing with. What's happening here is someone created a platform, spent years building things, and now EU is coming and saying oh you HAVE TO open it up. Not even mentioning the mess about having different rules at different places (e.g. I can't send many thing…

They don't have to do business in the EU then.

Their government decided what is allowed in their country.

If the companies don't like it, then they should have won the election, or they should leave and go do business elsewhere

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#345

Post by ByteJockey »

can16358p wrote: post #28

While I think big tech needs to be controlled, I think this is the wrong approach. This will slow down development by being forced to implement interop where they shouldn't be forced to IMO, and will confuse less savvy users (e.g. "Why can't I send this $platform_native_content to Bob but can send perfectly to Alice in the same app?"). Controlling entities' presence within the public (the Internet) is one thing, forc…

> forced to implement interop

I didn't read this as the EU forcing the apps to actually implement interop. I read it as forcing them to publish the details of their protocols and not ban people for using 3rd party clients.

Now, will market forces force them to implement interop? Maybe, but based on my reading an app that doesn't talk to other apps is still legal.*

*Do not base your entire business strategy off of a single HN post from someone who is not a lawyer.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#346

Post by Dracophoenix »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #328
Dracophoenix wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no contradiction. Intellectual property protection is opt-in. It requires the individual to enforce his rights before a court in the relevant jurisdiction. The government only facilitates registration and adjudication. Courts don't force individuals into global protection schemes against claimant's own will. Whatever the expected merits were, GDPR's existence as a policy has been of little more use than a pro…

So if governments didnt sue you for violations of GDPR, but your users did so personally then the situations would be exactly idebtical and you would be happy?

Yes and No.

Yes in that people already have that agency to sue. I'm sure you've heard of a class action lawsuits.

No in that I don't approve of the GDPR prescribing what constitutes a privacy violation rather than leaving such deliberations to contracts and courts.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#347

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #346
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if governments didnt sue you for violations of GDPR, but your users did so personally then the situations would be exactly idebtical and you would be happy?

Yes and No. Yes in that people already have that agency to sue. I'm sure you've heard of a class action lawsuits. No in that I don't approve of the GDPR prescribing what constitutes a privacy violation rather than leaving such deliberations to contracts and courts.

The law prescribes what constitutes an IP violation. Contracts and courts didnt invent the concept of copyright. You benefit from the privilidge granted to you by law.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#349

Post by Dracophoenix »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #347
Dracophoenix wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and No. Yes in that people already have that agency to sue. I'm sure you've heard of a class action lawsuits. No in that I don't approve of the GDPR prescribing what constitutes a privacy violation rather than leaving such deliberations to contracts and courts.

The law prescribes what constitutes an IP violation. Contracts and courts didnt invent the concept of copyright. You benefit from the privilidge granted to you by law.

While I'll grant you that copyright is a privilege granted by government, copyright is not the only form of IP protection and not all of them are treated in the same way. I will also add that what constitutes an IP violation is determined by the particular claims of the rights-holder with respect to the wording of license/contract in question. Those violations are not predetermined "defaults" set up by legislation.

The GDPR, on the other hand, presupposes a global positive right to privacy irrespective of national sovereignty or contractual agreement to the contrary and that any alleged violation from any point on the planet carries with it a presumption of guilt. A regular complaint on this forum is that the US regularly oversteps it's bounds via legislation like the CLOUD ACT. I don't see why it's any less of a concern when the EU does it.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#350

Post by andrewjl »

can16358p wrote: post #295
toyg wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a state-operated private service If they implement a public service, freemarketers not unlike yourself will accuse them of unfair competition and spend their lives sabotaging them, like Murdoch does with the BBC in the UK. The reality is that your position is effectively that nothing should change, and everything in this space is as good as it can be. The public at large clearly disagrees, and this is a step in the…

Confiscating someone's land should also be illegal, but unfortunately government has too much power. Mandating size of plugs is a good thing for anyone to build things that can operate with electricity, mandating some private entity with a perfectly functional ecosystem without any interest to open its system to provide a certain type of socket, is not.

> Confiscating someone's land should also be illegal

Genuine question, why?

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