On one hand it seems like Apple is trying to take a US style approach, but on the other they must have European lawyers on staff explaining how that won’t work.
One might conclude that it’s a calculated risk, or a stalling tactic to extract a few more years of revenue from the current model while waiting for things to play out in the courts.
Maybe I’m just too American to understand but the idea of “the spirit” of the law seems ridiculous. If you want the law to force Apple to allow slide loading then pass a law that says that. If you want a law that forces Apple to allow any developer to make and distribute software on their platform then pass a law that says that. It certainly seems that they were able to achieve that level of clarity with the USB-C rule. Why isn’t this law like that one? Relying on, “C’mon, we all know what the law really means,” is at best sloppy legislating.
So the main end result with the US system is that companies employs armies of lawyers so that they can legally break the laws. The main ones who benefits from that are lawyers and the massive companies who can afford them.
Removing a gate but still charging and entrance fee isn't even close to a far-fetched corner case. I have to believe that the regulators understood they were only regulating the technical side of things, and not the financial side.
If the lobbyists for Spotify and Epic dropped the ball there, that's on them.
Apple's plans will be evaluated as such by regulators, and there are several provisions which are just plainly anti-competitive, especially the 50 cent per user per year fee just to run an app store. It's really hard to see that holding up.
Hard to see a set of circumstances where the regulators succeed in forcing a company to develop and maintain a complex set of APIs for free in perpetuity...
In any case iPhones aren't free.
However, regardless of fairness or sloppyness, if a large part of society feels the law should be interpreted in a certain way, the fact that it does not literally say that may be irrelevant. Who is going to reprimand the judges if the legislative, the government, the people, the local corporations all feel Apple should be kneecapped?
Did the constitution of the USA not literally say "all men are created equal" while you still had slavery?
No, that was the declaration of Independence, some of the authors of which adamantly opposed slavery.
I was looking to confirm or deny that statement and came across a fun detour in the form of an article entitled "What's So Special About American Law?". It doesn't address the point about spirit vs. detail at all, but is an amusing and informative read.
> As I said, this fact seems to me a deep and fundamental point of difference. The American legal system, to a greater extent than any other Western legal system, encourages the direct injection of democratic values into the legal process. Our legal system, like our society, places great emphasis on the value of equality. We do not fully trust professional elites.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
Is this satire? Must be satire, right?
In terms of the crafted impact, not so much.
A lot of inequality is enacted in the name of equality.
- Freedom of choice (for corporations to limit choice).
- Regulation welcomed by big business to protect customers (from startups that can’t afford to comply).
Etc.
The US allows for a lot of interpretation on intent and context by judges. In the EU this is far more restricted and the black letter law is way more important.
That said, in the EU there’s more of a tradition in civil law cases to deviate from the law and agreements for “the sake of equity” (i.e., civil law judges love to split the baby and have everyone be a little unhappy).
This is of course not civil law but administrative law, which in the US isn’t really a thing. In the US non-criminal cases involving the government are adjudicated according to civil law v (for the most part).
Source: before getting into software engineering I practiced law in the EU, during my last years in law school I focused on comparative law, now living in the US and married to a lawyer who went to law school in the US Or you know, just trust me bro, because I’m just a stranger in the internet.
Yes, because we can have a functional, productive society based on a legal system where the foundational principal is, “We’ll write laws so vague that we can just say they mean whatever we want them to mean after people and companies try to follow them”.
If you disagree, educate me.
Tim Cook met personally with EU regulators before their changes were introduced.
I doubt they would knowingly introduce something that would result in a punitive fine.
I seriously doubt that their ultimate approach was "cleared" with regulators because it's quite blatantly against the intention of the DMA. The fact that he met with EU people says precisely nothing.