Why is the EU able to pass pro-consumer laws, but America unable to? Are big tech companies just unable to properly bribe the European Union like they do the American Government?
I personally like these changes, but the cynical forum shopping underlying the €75B threshold they picked is pretty nasty behavior, and I hope US lawmakers retaliate appropriately.
If it were truly independent then Apple’s “global market cap” would be irrelevant, and Cupertino could collect via IP licensing in Luxembourg taxed at 5%.
[edited for clarity, I think]
That kind of loophole-explotation floats only in common law. Not in civil law. The civil law would go down like a hammer on such heads.
Oh, only the European VW and Daimler would be impacted? Such a shame.
There is a crucial difference. Unlike Google and Apple the German Autos employ a lot of Americans and pay quite some taxes in America (sometimes in structurally weak places). That gives them more leverage than their Digital counterparts.
Of course they are not doing that because they are more moral but because their products are bulky and need to be built locally.
The US has already won (and indeed was always winning) in terms of tech companies. There's nothing to retaliate against!
(Lawrence Lessig, a law professor, was one of the founders of Creative Commons. He later tried to change US copyright laws to be more consumer-friendly, but concluded that it's almost impossible to do so as long as corporate interests rule politics. He then shifted his research topics to institutional corruption in politics. He actually ran for presidency a few years ago, with funding only from the popuplation, and limited to a certain amount. It failed, he wasn't even invited to TV debates because "if he doesn't take company money he doesn't have a chance".)
US government just doesn’t care about its people
This leading to many actual left-wing MPs getting elected and informing entire parliaments about stuff which the average American may never know about - less American congressmen would ever want to hear about: The browser wars came to Euparl way back in mid 2000s and left-wing MPs first warned that major corporations would abuse it, then over time they demonstrated that it was happening exactly so. Leading to Microsoft vs the Commission and the browser ballot box. Then GDPR. In the meantime, also GMO labeling. And food standards WAY back. And right to repair and all that stuff. And now this.
There are even communist MPs in Euparl who are MAJOR proponents of Open Source since a long time ago. They also subscribe to the ideology as well.
Which brings about an interesting point: The legislation precisely targets the early, free state of the Internet from mid 2000s to early 2010s before major tech companies consolidated everything.