The European Union is pressing ahead with legislation to heavily regulate companies like Apple, setting plans to force “gatekeepers” to open up access to hardware and software, and even set up an internal department to meet new rules, according to an endorsed agreement from the European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee.
[…]The DMA could force Apple to make major changes to the App Store, Messages, FaceTime, third-party browsers, and Siri in Europe. For example, it could be forced to allow users to install third-party app stores and sideload apps, give developers the ability to closely interoperate with Apple’s own services and promote their offers outside the App Store and use third-party payment systems, and access data gathered by Apple.
The DMA is turning out much better than I could’ve ever hoped for, and contains more strict regulations than I ever imagined the European Union would go for. The DMA would significantly upset the market, and give smaller, competing companies many more legs to stand on – and its effects will find its way to other parts of the world, too.
This is long overdue, and I’m here for it. This is a tiny speck of good news in the hellstorm that has been the recent few years.
It’s good to be optimistic, but perhaps temper your expectations. EU legislation tends to have its heart in the right place, but is intensely vulnerable to 11th hour lobbyist meddling. That’s how sensible restrictions on tracking cookies got converted in the nightmare world of the awful cookie permissions clickthrough on every single site.
Do you have a citation for that? From what I’ve read (eg. WP 194: Opinion 04/2012 on Cookie Consent Exemption), that’s only necessary if you’re setting cookies for things like Google Analytics and it’s not the fault of the law, but that sites find it more profitable to annoy readers than to cut back on tracking.
(Remember, the GDPR resulted in some American sites deciding it was more profitable to block traffic from European IPs than to implement measures to comply with the GDPR.)
ssokolow,
Do you have a citation for that?
I heard similar threats, but are you aware of any major websites that followed through?
I appreciate the GDPR’s intentions of protecting people’s privacy, but despite the GDPR claiming to have jurisdiction beyond it’s borders, it’s doubtful the law has any legal standing outside of EU jurisdiction. It almost feels irresponsible because it may give europeans the false impression that their privacy is protected world wide when it clearly isn’t. Honest question: have there been any GDPR convictions against entities outside of the EU? It would be fascinating to see how that would work.
According to Engaget, it’s papers and magazines owned by owned by Tronc, Inc, Lee Enterprises, or GateHouse Media and this article only mentions the first two but says they own about 77 different papers and magazines that were engaging in the blocking at the time.
The BBC also mentioned it and gives the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Orlando Sentinel, and the Baltimore Sun as examples of high-profile names.
According to The Guardian, Tronc, inc. used to be named Tribune Publishing and that “Other services have announced that they are permanently deleting the accounts of European-based users in order to comply with the internationally applicable regulation”.
There’s also a “European Citizen Blocking as a Service” named GDPR Shield that markets itself as being cheaper than ensuring you’re only exploiting people outside Europe.
I’ve stumbled upon a few websites that block access even from Asia, although I don’t know if it’s due to excessive geoblocking due to GDPR or what.
sj87,
I doubt Asian websites would care about GDPR any more than trademarks or copyrights. I get the impression not much is enforced there (as long as they don’t criticize the communist party).
One of my clients ended up blocking large swaths of asia/russia/india because they had no customers there and it stopped a lot of the spam & abuse. You may have run into a similar scenario.
It’s good news and I hope it works out. It should have happened sooner, but better late than never.
As someone who is not in europe, this caveat sticks out. I do hope these freedoms find their way to the rest of the world and aren’t dependent on one’s jurisdiction.
EU region is in my opinion too big for the rest of the world to not be affected by such legislation. But first things first. It still needs to happen in EU. Said that if this is really about to happen then the very next day Apple will likely release a PR on how they are fighting for people to be able to side load apps and similar …
Geck,
I liken it to the antitrust suit against microsoft with the browser selection requirement that created a new windows SKU for Europeans and changed nothing for the rest of the world.
Assuming apple did something similar, then non-European app developers wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it and European app developers may find their apps aren’t available to non-Europeans unless they abide by the non-European rules. I’m hoping this doesn’t happen and that everyone can benefit from the new law’s new freedoms world-wide, however given the amount of money at stake for apple it’s not a sure thing.
I don’t agree with such interpretation. Look at what happened to browser market share in that 5 year period. The landscape changed drastically. It was not just about the end consumer choice by some pop-up. A lot of companies like Google could after provide their browser on Windows hardware preinstalled. A lot of work was done previously to allow all competitors to have access to the same APIs as IE … There are downsides too. Firefox was pushed out of the market by Google. This is something we need to change in the future. Problem i guess being people not actually caring about it all that much. Likely due to not even Firefox giving any signals they want more market share. They are i guess happy for now with Google money and the control Google has over them.
Geck,
I know the landscape changed, however there were also numerous antitrust cases against microsoft to curtail their abuses everywhere. My point was that the EU case specifically resulted in a new windows SKU to comply with the law only in Europe. For better or worse that is a real possibility for apple to do that here too, it’s not an “interpretation”.
Yes exactly, but that was thanks to the US antitrust case in addition to EU which specifically forbade MS from the exclusionary business practices they used before. Suppose that the EU had acted alone and the US did nothing, then the MS browser monopoly might still be alive and well here today. So when you say “EU region is in my opinion too big for the rest of the world to not be affected by such legislation.”, it’s really not clear whether apple would choose to abide by the EU law world-wide or limit compliance to EU specific SKUs. Like I said at the top, I hope we all see the benefits, but there’s nothing stopping them from selling EU specific SKUs. Their chosen path forward likely depend on whether or not apple believes they will face antitrust consequences back home.
If EU will really legislate what the context of above news is. Then rest assured this will have global effects.
Geck,
Even if apple is forced to change their products for the EU, it doesn’t automatically mean that apple will change their products globally where the EU has no jurisdiction. That’s all I’m saying.
We can talk about the butterfly effects, but surely you agree with me that the EU doesn’t have jurisdiction over the rest of the world, right?
EU is in my opinion a bit bigger then butterfly. As for jurisdiction question. I do feel that jurisdiction in USA and jurisdiction in EU. That both do have real effect on how we all live around the globe. Hence you wouldn’t be able to go to USA court and to use EU legislation. Beyond that your life will be affected as Apple would change. Not just in EU. That is if EU really is about to do what the article says. Lets first wait for them to do that.
I was referring to the butterfly effect figuratively whereby changes in one place have propagating effects remotely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Anyways…
Well, you don’t seem to be rebutting my point though. I don’t deny that it’s possible for apple to change it’s products world-wide, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will. Realistically most US consumers have no knowledge of European DMA laws and if it weren’t for Thom publishing articles like this I wouldn’t either. It’s conceivable that apple could create a SKU to comply in the EU and conduct business as usual in the US market with the majority of their consumers being 100% oblivious to the european case. I do hope the changes make their way here, but unless you can provide sources that know apple’s plans then there’s no denying that a separate SKU is a distinct possibility that we cannot rule out at this time.
If you have definitive proof to rule it out then by all means please share it. I would be genuinely interested in that. Otherwise though we have to wait and see what apple does.
Hopefully sooner rather than later. Long overdue.
Apple must have seen this was coming when they blocked countries like the UK from producing covid tracking apps that required use of the Bluetooth hardware Apple themselves used in their competing implementation. Governments don’t want to have their hands forced again should a similar need ever arise.
This is stupid