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Comment by Mandatum | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It's "the stores are extracting too much money for the services they provide and the way they run" without any concrete asks. Likely because we're in unexplored territory, I expect ACCC is using this release as a form to push other agencies to move first to see what happens.

Australia NEVER moves first on these things. They want EU or US to make a move first to see what works.

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> Australia NEVER moves first on these things.

I think it is uncommon for Australia to move first, but we do move first sometimes. I thought the recent news revenue-sharing laws[0] are an example of that.

> They want EU or US to make a move first to see what works

It's always nice to know how a policy will work beforehand, but I don't think it's remarkable how rarely Australia moves first. Putting aside cultural differences, we're a medium power in a world with many medium powers, even in the West, why would we expect to be first, ahead of European countries, or North American ones, or developed nations in Asia?

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/australias-ne...

The revenue-sharing laws were a scam, basically the Government forcing Google and Facebook to pay arbitrary bribes to a few big media companies.

If the laws weren't a scam, that money would have gone to pay for journalism, not prop up the bottom line of companies which are consistently cutting back the number of journalists under their employ.

And it's worth remembering the ACCC's central role in this scam.

https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

My advice to any future Federal Government would be to gut the ACCC and rebuild it from the ground up. And then if the rebuilt entity demonstrates competence, significantly increasing its funding.

We were one of the first on having overseas companies signup and remit GST directly for low value personal imports.

NZ/UK have copied this model and the EU is following mid this year.

The scheme has a special definition for marketplaces so that they can rope in eBay and Amazon to collect for them rather than having to go after every little Chinese eBay seller.

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