551–560 of 635 posts
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No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.
Extortion is a stretch. Nobody is being forced to use these services.
Keeo in mind, it is only the largest 7 tech companies in the world that has to comply.
It is incredibly few companies.
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> show signs of rent seeking They've been hard rent-seeking since iTunes and iPod. They aggressively eliminated and made inconvenient other ways for getting music onto iPods. Hardware was great, but hard dependence on iTunes killed it for me.
Requiring dedicated software available for free is not rent seeking, there is no rent, and it was not exactly rare in the more lifestyle pmp space.
Apple pretends to value user privacy and artist rights as these values often conveniently align with taking away user and partner control. The mask has slipped multiple times but their control over users never will until they are legally required to treat their users like humans.
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I'm not sure what society you are referring to but contracts have to adhere to laws in the EU. This is also about software that is being updated. So the transaction is not completed yet. Apple could probably go the route of not providing the update to phones that were sold before the law was voted on/in place. I would guess that would lead to other legal battles.
And is it reasonable that the laws are created after the contract was already agreed to and still apply to it? At least here in the United States, laws are not allowed to make things illegal that happened before the laws were written.
Otoh, if I pay you today for a hamburger on Tuesday, and on Monday hamburgers are outlawed, you can't perform your part of the contract, and we'll need to figure things out.
The rules can change, and when the rules change, continuing service may need to change (depending on how the rules were written); I'm sure part of the contracts involved also describe a) how to make changes in the services, b) what happens when parts of the contract are discovered to be unenforcable or illegal.
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Setting aside that this is looking at the wrong side of the market like often happens in these discussions, what do you as a consumer do when Android or Huawei do something else that's a deal breaker for you?
But this is exactly the argument against forcing Apple to change. The reason I use iOS is because of the App Store. If meta create a meta store for Facebook and Instagram, and pull it from the App Store, then the platform that I use for that feature is no longer viable for me, and neither is the competing platform. Right now you have a choice, as do I - an open ecosystem on android or a closed ecosystem on iOS. By fo…
Apple's and Google's anti-competitive behavior is stifling innovation with their policies and fees. First and foremost this affects developers/businesses who need to reach Apple's and Google's users, and if the only way for them to reach us for technical reasons is through native apps, then they're subject to whatever insane policies and fees these companies demand.
This is what makes them gatekeepers and it should be fairly obvious how being in that position, while dictating silly rules about what is or isn't acceptable (based purely on preference, like "no porn", "no game emulators"), charging a 30% tax on everyone's revenue while prohibiting communication with your own customers about alternative payment methods results in bad long term outcomes.
Also your example with Meta's apps is a false dilemma. If you want to use their apps you can always install them from their own hypothetical app store, your choice isn't being taken away from you and it doesn't make the platform any less viable.
> By forcing iOS to open up, people who actively choose the closed ecosystem for guaranteed compatibility, tighter integrations and a less customisable ux are removed of their option.
Can you elaborate on how this applies to your usage of Facebook?
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Because EU law says they have let others into their club.
Apple has always allowed anyone into their club. You have to pay dues and follow some strict (but non-discriminatory) rules, but the result was a place which people liked going to. Analogies aside, the REAL question is whether Apple is entitled to charge money for access to their developer APIs. Or whether Apple is entitled to place software license terms upon use of their intellectual property, e.g. when you link ag…
Would you say that's pretty discriminatory?
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"Show signs of rent seeking behaviour" seems like an extremely generous position. Forbidding your customers from even mentioning The Outside is full-on rent seeking behaviour, since its inception.
To steel man the policy, one thing it helps avoid is the free rider problem. Apples store terms are than free apps don’t pay a commission to Apple. But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform. We no longer live in an age where Apple or Microsoft gets away with charging for multi thousand dollar per year per seat developer license for their platforms, but that doesn’t mean those platfo…
Like their customers who happily pay a premium of $hundreds on every device sold? Talking about a free-rider "problem" in connection with literally the richest corporation in the world is diabolical. They develop the SDKs and the platform because that's the foundation of their business, nobody would buy an iPhone that doesn't have any 3rd party apps.
What's the cost of developing the SDK and the platform amortized over the number of devices that Apple sells? Is it $0.50, $5, $50, or $500?
> oh poor multi-billion dollar Apple can’t get paid
Apple is 1000x richer than that, they're a multi-trillion dollar company.
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You are trying to tell me that credit card processing fees are negligible, software engineers work for free, advertising doesn’t require overhead, etc… I guess that kind of thinking that everything is basically free is why alot of startups just fail so easily.
None of them are close to 30 billion!!!
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>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside. I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which…
Apple has its act together. Those, who are not Apple, do not in comparison. They are Big Mad that Apple does. You don't understand the term "rent seeking". Because in this case, it's Apple's competitors that are rent seeking by utilizing the force of the government to make Apple give competitors access to its private but non-monopolistic ecosystem. I think that Apple should call that bluff and leave the EU. Which in…
People in Europe (and everywhere else that isn't the US) are already using these "remaining options" more than they use Apple products by a massive margin. Apple products are not nearly as popular in Europe as they are in the US because more people realize that the price tag is not proportional to the quality you get.
US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards. But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation.…
US corporations are too used to breaking laws as they see fit and getting away with a slap on the wrist, so being asked to follow the rules feels like an attack to them.
US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards. But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation.…
Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little