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Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

ca.finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#581

Post by simondotau »

zamadatix wrote: post #512
supernova87a wrote: post #501

Genuine question for debate: iPhone app store is a private club to which businesses can choose to belong, if they want to sell their product to certain customers. Membership in the club comes with the condition that you not talk about alternative ways to buy the same product, while selling via the club. Membership in the club is not a monopoly; there are many other channels through which to sell a company's products.…

The EU's regulatory stance on antitrust does not require a monopoly, it requires a dominant position in a market meeting use of certain criteria marked as abuse. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... From there when they tell a company they are breaching criteria for abuse and the company doesn't change the EU issues according fines. As for "why" this is against the law, I assume that more t…

But Apple doesn't have a dominant position in the EU.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#582

Post by Bayart »

xvector wrote: post #484
npc_anon wrote: post #451

The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic. The exact opposite is true, 2-3 decades of zero regulation has led to Big Tech empires that can get away with anything. It harms the free market, harms the freedom to compute, creates an asymmetrical extractive relation between mega-corp and average internet user, and omnipresent surveillance. It's anti-American if "American" still means a love of freedom, personal priva…

> The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic ... It's anti-American ... I do understand the "new" American perspective. "American" means being able to make your own decisions without government overreach in every aspect of your life. "American" means being able to decide if you want to engage with a business or not, without getting the government involved. "American" means being able to reach the highest highs or…

You're not that special. While the American special snowflake syndrome has been useful in giving its citizens a sense of purpose, freeing them of apprehension and bringing it where it is, it's ultimately baseless. Things get dangerous when people start believing in their own bullshit. The same is true for Europeans as well. There's a lot of navel gazing going on and I'm very annoyed at European leaders sweeping increasing authoritarian behaviour under the rug or proclaiming with great confidence, as did von der Leyen, that we don't have oligarchs.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#583

Post by SSLy »

tpmoney wrote: post #500
sabellito wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform.

According to APPL's own marketing, that's what the yearly 100$ fee is for.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#584

Post by raxxorraxor »

madeofpalk wrote: post #11

> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases. To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx…

Usually the user should heavily penalize such behavior, but Apple has users and apostles. To a degree that some believe Daddy Apple should shield them from temptation by evil Netflix.

It ridiculous and also comes with costs for other customers of that ecosystem. I believe brands really make some people stupid.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#585

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

SllX wrote: post #515
randunel wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust doesn't mean monopoly, but monopoly is a part of antitrust. Monopoly also doesn't mean you're the only one, but you're the one capable of fixing prices, or doing something else anti competitive. It's a complex thing in practice, don't take the linguistic definition of the word itself as the sole interpretation of the law.

Please note not only what I wrote but what I was directly responding to when I wrote it. > It's a complex thing in practice, don't take the linguistic definition of the word itself as the sole interpretation of the law. I am aware; however I am still waiting for the solid argument that Facebook is a monopoly to be made in either an EU legal context (not “gatekeeper”, not “very large online platform”, monopoly ) or an…

Facebook being a monopoly is irrelevant to EU competition laws. These laws are strictly interested in fostering competitive markets and broadly cares about all sorts of anticompetitive behaviours. They are in no way interested in monopolies and I don’t think being a monopoly is a prerequisite for any of them. The closest notion will be dominant position but that’s a far weaker criteria itself irrelevant to the DMA.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#586

Post by SllX »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #585
SllX wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note not only what I wrote but what I was directly responding to when I wrote it. > It's a complex thing in practice, don't take the linguistic definition of the word itself as the sole interpretation of the law. I am aware; however I am still waiting for the solid argument that Facebook is a monopoly to be made in either an EU legal context (not “gatekeeper”, not “very large online platform”, monopoly ) or an…

Facebook being a monopoly is irrelevant to EU competition laws. These laws are strictly interested in fostering competitive markets and broadly cares about all sorts of anticompetitive behaviours. They are in no way interested in monopolies and I don’t think being a monopoly is a prerequisite for any of them. The closest notion will be dominant position but that’s a far weaker criteria itself irrelevant to the DMA.

Setting aside the DMA and DSA entirely as I already explained to someone else earlier why the DMA wasn’t an antimonopoly law and I don’t want these newer laws to get in the way of my questions: put another way, the EU does not have an antimonopoly law on the books? Article 102 of the TFEU seems to back that up, but I’m understanding you correctly here, the EU just doesn’t have an antimonopoly law?

So before I start telling EU citizens to sod off for dragging the word “monopoly” into these discussions regarding Facebook’s or any other company’s monopoly status within the EU which by your account doesn’t seem to have the means to even determine that nor a body of law built up around the concept, do any of the member nations have their own anti-monopoly laws? Or have all of their own competition laws up to and including any real or hypothetical antimonopoly laws been preempted by the TFEU?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#587

Post by Terretta »

kmeisthax wrote: post #539
tpmoney wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform. The business model Apple has used since the Macintosh is that the hardware subsidizes the software. I paid for the platform when I bought the device. The only reason why there's even a "free rider problem" is that Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever. Furthermore, we've known since the failure of OS/2 (at…

> Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever.

1. This isn't the number. Worst case, the after first year number is half that, and even less for most.

2. App store platforms on ostensibly "open" PC such as Steam cost game developers more. Why?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#588

Post by rsynnott »

barbazoo wrote: post #387
rsynnott wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU. I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved. But yeah, the "you'd better be nice to us, EC, or Trump might be angry" tactic is kinda shot at this point.

> I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved. What are the laws that Meta would be violating?

Fiduciary duty. It's a high bar, but "we abandoned 25% of our revenue in a fit of pique over our being required to follow the law on consent" probably gets you there.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#589

Post by detaro »

Terretta wrote: post #587
kmeisthax wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform. The business model Apple has used since the Macintosh is that the hardware subsidizes the software. I paid for the platform when I bought the device. The only reason why there's even a "free rider problem" is that Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever. Furthermore, we've known since the failure of OS/2 (at…

> Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever. 1. This isn't the number. Worst case, the after first year number is half that, and even less for most. 2. App store platforms on ostensibly "open" PC such as Steam cost game developers more. Why?

Nothing "ostensible" about PC being an open platform.

Any PC will run any number of game stores. Steam is large despite not being the one owned by the platform maker and installed by default (Microsoft Store and the XBox app).

Steam does not prevent publishers from selling in other stores too, nor does it enforce pricing outside its store. (E.g. there are games that are cheaper on other stores, citing Steams larger cut as the reason)

It also allows publishers to force users to install the publishers store to play games sold on Steam. (See e.g. Ubisofts launcher, being required to install games and selling you additional subscriptions without a cut to Steam)

To a limited degree Steam even lets publishers use Steam infrastructure for sales outside Steam, for free. (Publishers can sell Steam keys for free on other platforms, but the number is limited and here pricing has to roughly match Steam pricing)

Even on Steam Deck, the only PC hardware where Steam is actually the preinstalled default store, running games from other stores is supported and the main inconvenience to it is that most stores don't have a supported version for it and you need to use third-party workarounds.

Being an open platform doesn't ensure a market doesn't have other weirdness going on (in this case, there being a strong consumer preference towards Steam, certainly in part due to Steams existing large position, but not only), but its a different thing and most of the usual competition law approaches don't apply. Steam is popular because Steam is popular, not because Steam is using its strong position in another business to push its app store business.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#590

Post by WhyNotHugo »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #329
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #238

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.…

Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US. If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free tr…

> that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests.

This is pretty much as vague as it gets "they're doing _something_ wrong".

The exact behaviour that is prohibited needs to be codified into law. Then you can go after organisations what break such law.

In this case, they've just been found guilty of an unwritten crime.

> If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations

Corporations in general rather. I do agree that we should be stricter of foreign corporations, and on non-foreign ones equally so.

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