The EU adopted a new anti-monopoly law to crack down on the monopolistic behavior of technology giants. Since 2023, the EU has strengthened the supervision of large-scale technology companies, and all large-scale technology companies have been investigated to some extent. The EU adopted a new anti-monopoly law to crack down on the monopolistic behavior of technology giants.
After months of negotiations and procedural obstacles, the European Union passed two landmark bills aimed at controlling large-scale technological forces. The Digital Market Law and the Digital Service Law aim to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, and prohibit the use of some worse targeted advertisements and misleading practices.
For example, the Digital Services Law focuses on online platforms such as Facebook, Amazon and Google. Their task is to be more proactive in content review and prevent illegal or unsafe goods from being sold on their platforms. Users will also be able to understand how and why the algorithm recommends something to them and question any audit decisions made by the algorithm.
Finally, companies will no longer be able to use sensitive personal data to target advertisements, sell advertisements to children, or use dark mode-deceptive page design, which can manipulate you to say "yes" to some things, even if you prefer to say "no", such as joining a service or preventing you from leaving a service you no longer want to use.
These obligations are floating, so the largest platform will bear the biggest obligation. Platforms with 45 million or more users per month will be independently audited to ensure that they can prevent fake news and illegal content. These platforms must also open their algorithms and data to (approved) researchers so that they can study the possible impacts and potential hazards of the system.
At the same time, the digital market law focuses more on preventing platform leaders like Google, Microsoft and Apple from abusing their scale. This includes providing better interoperability with smaller competitors' services and ensuring that files can be sent between systems.
There is also a big exception to the app store. Developers now have the right to contact their customers for transactions without going through the relevant platform holders. Platform holders will no longer be able to give preferential treatment to their own systems. For example, Google has done better than its competitors in promoting its own shopping services.
The EU fully supports these two bills. If the regulators find violations, they can be fined up to 65,438+00% of the total global turnover in the previous year. However, if officials find "repeated violations", this figure will rise to 20% of global turnover. This is a huge number, and even Apple can't afford regular losses. Although it is the same as GDPR, the EU still has a question to answer, that is, how much energy, time and money it is prepared to invest behind the institutions that supervise large technology companies.
Now it has been passed, and the digital service law will take effect on June 65438+ 10/day, 2024 (unless there are some procedural problems), and the digital market law will also take effect soon. The main platforms (called "gatekeepers") will have six months to do their own thing before the new rules apply to them.
The European Union adopted a new anti-monopoly law to crack down on the monopolistic behavior of technology giants.2 In February 2020, the European Parliament formally passed the Digital Market Act (hereinafter referred to as "DMA") and the Digital Service Act (hereinafter referred to as "DSA") proposed by the European Commission, and integrated them into a "digital service package" in an attempt to solve the so-called "gatekeeper" problem.
Given Apple's annual turnover in the European Union and the fact that the company owns and operates a platform that attracts a large number of active users, Apple will almost certainly be listed as a "gatekeeper" and will therefore be bound by the rules of the DMA Act. According to the Act, "gatekeepers" of large technology companies must:
-Allow users to install applications from third-party app stores and download them directly from the Internet;
-allow developers to provide third-party payment systems in applications and promote offers outside the "gatekeeper" platform;
-allowing developers to directly integrate their applications and digital services with those belonging to "gatekeepers", including allowing messaging, voice calling and video calling services to interoperate with third-party services;
-allowing developers to obtain any hardware functions, such as "near field communication technology, security components and processors, authentication mechanism and software for controlling these technologies";
-Ensure that all applications can be uninstalled, and allow users to unsubscribe from core platform services under similar subscription conditions;
-Allow users to choose to change the default voice assistant service to a third-party choice;
-Share data and indicators with developers and competitors, including marketing and advertising performance data;
-Establish an independent "compliance function" team, which is supervised by an independent senior manager to abide by EU laws, and given sufficient power, resources and management authority;
-Informing Council of Europe of merger and acquisition transactions.
At the same time, the DMA Act also tries to ensure that gatekeeper technology companies can no longer do the following things:
-Some software applications cannot be pre-installed, and users must use any important default software services, such as web browsers;
-Application developers cannot be required to use certain services or frameworks (including browser engines, payment systems, identity providers, etc.). ) put their products in the store;
-You can't give preferential treatment to your products, applications or services, and you can't rank higher than those developed by other developers;
-Private data collected through one service cannot be reused in another service;
-Don't create unfair conditions for enterprise users.
In addition, the DSA Act, which was also approved by the European Parliament, requires the "gatekeeper" platform to take more measures to supervise illegal content on the Internet.
According to the provisions of the DMA Act, companies that violate the rules will face a maximum fine equivalent to 10% of the global total turnover; If it infringes repeatedly, it will face a fine as high as 10% of the global total turnover, plus a regular fine as high as 5% of the global total turnover.
In addition, if the gatekeeper company has "systematic infringement", the European Commission will impose additional sanctions on it, such as forcing it to sell a company or part of its business (including units, assets, intellectual property rights or brands), or prohibiting the gatekeeper company from acquiring any company that provides services in the digital field.
So far, Apple has strongly resisted the government's attempt to change its operating system and services. For example, Apple would rather pay a fine of $5.5 million a week in the Netherlands for several months than obey the order of the Consumer and Market Authority (ACM) to allow the use of third-party payment systems in Dutch dating applications.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU antitrust Commissioner, has set up a DMA task force. It is expected that about 80 officials will join it, but some lawmakers have called for a larger task force to counter the strength of large technology companies.
Now, the "Digital Services Package Act" will take effect in the autumn as long as it is approved by the European Council.
Outside the European Union, Apple's ecosystem has also been increasingly scrutinized by governments around the world, including the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea and more.
Obviously, global regulators are very interested in exploring the requirements of application side loading and interoperability, and it is expected that governments around the world will further cooperate on this issue. Some experts predict that there will be a "cruel battle" between Apple and global regulators.
The EU adopted a new anti-monopoly law to crack down on the monopolistic behavior of technology giants. With the EU strengthening the supervision of large-scale technology companies from 2023, various large-scale technology companies have been investigated to some extent.
A new report shows that due to the video licensing policy of the Open Media Alliance (AOM), EU antitrust regulators hope to investigate many large technology companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tencent, Netflix and Hulu.
AOM (Open Media Alliance) was established on September 1 day, 2065. Its goal is to develop a free and patent-free image coding format to replace H.264 and HEVC which need patent authorization.
According to public information, the Open Media Alliance is a non-profit organization that develops open image coding. Its goal is to develop a patent-free image coding format. As the successor of VP9 image coding, it will replace the patented HEVC image coding. Its founding members include Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix. The goal of the alliance is to develop a new image coding format under the license of BSD 2, which will draw elements from Daala, Thor and VP 10.
According to Reuters, EU regulators are not satisfied with the alliance, because the EU wants to know whether these companies have violated the video licensing policy, and whether and how this will affect those companies that have not joined the alliance.
Earlier this year, the EU antitrust regulator sent a questionnaire to some companies, saying that they were investigating "the anti-competitive behaviors of AOM and its European members related to AV 1 license terms".
"According to the report of the Committee, AOM and its members may implement licensing terms (compulsory royalty-free cross-licensing) for innovators who were not in AOM when AV 1 technology was created, but their patents are regarded as the key to (its) technical specifications," the document pointed out.
"The European Commission has confirmed that it is conducting a preliminary investigation into AOM's licensing policy," a spokesman for the European Commission told Reuters. The spokesman said: "The fact that the European Commission conducted a preliminary investigation cannot predict whether there is any infringement in the investigation results." He didn't disclose more details.
So far, Apple, Google, Netflix, Broadcom, Cisco and Tencent did not respond to Reuters when the report was released. Meta and Amazon declined to comment.