Accidental Tech Podcast593: Not a European Lawyer
https://atp.fm/593
The EU giveth, and Apple taketh away.
MarkV@atpfm Living in the EU and listening to the episode. I think the question @siracusa asked "why did they take so long to respond to the steering provision" and the question @marcoarment asked "why didn't they just write X into the DMA" both have the same answer: the EU Commission typically doesn't decide on things with a few bureaucrats sitting in a room alone, there is a LOT of back-and-forth with different stakeholders in the market through industry focus groups (inc. devs), which takes time.
@atpfm @siracusa @marcoarment Also re: the question "Would Apple self-regulating have done prevented the DMA" - I don't think so. Many people in the US see the DMA as directly targeted at Apple, but the EU's whole reason for existence is protecting the Single Market and making sure it is well regulated to enable competition. They regulated rail, energy, lightbulbs and bananas. They would have regulated digital apps and services at some point no matter what, Apple didn't trigger that at all.
John Siracusa@markv …but if Apple had self-regulated, a) the DMA might have been written differently in light of how Apple had chosen to open up its platform on its own, and b) Apple’s self-regulation might have meant that it was already in compliance with what the EC passed later.
Gregnee@Gregnee You’re “not so sure,” but the OP said there’s “no way.” And like I said, either way, Apple could have gotten a head start on all this, and done it uniformly and worldwide.
@siracusa I’m not European. Despite writing a college Econ paper on the EC, I don’t follow them closely enough to have that level of certainty. Given how poorly they’ve regulated web cookies, I’m not optimistic that this would have turned out any differently.
@Gregnee @siracusa I know cookies and the silly popup banners are the thing everyone keeps pointing to to say how bad EU legislation can be. But by and large, GDPR did what it was supposed to do: define what kind of data companies are allowed to store on people and what their responsibilities are in terms of keeping that data safe and up to date.
Yes it can be a hassle, but the hassle means companies default to storing only the data they really need for the job. It works pretty well imho.