A simple comma is going to cost Apple billions in Europe | Hacker News Reader

A simple comma is going to cost Apple billions in Europe

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25 pointspseudolus21 comments

> This lengthy sentence creates ambiguity

It doesn't, Apple *generates* ambiguity for obvious reasons

Here is a simple example:

"shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers," is ambiguous because Apple doesn't charge, but demands return on its investments in those business users via distribution platform support. See, I've created "ambiguity" around the "simple" word "charge".

So it's not a comma that costs anything, it's the intention of the regulators to remove some mandatory payments

Is it "a simple comma"? Or is it a very intentional comma? The courts debating commas, at least in circumstances of this sort, strikes me as a particularly farcical consequence of modern justice systems.

Can't we ask legislators to clarify their own legislation?

The courts interpretation is pretty clearly the correct one. The title is laying it on a little thick as Apple very clearly tried to interpret the law in a way that favored them and then threw up a pretty shoddy defense to try to feign ignorance.

All debates leading to the laws are public with transcript available and it’s the EU so you have access to dozens of translation.

It’s not about a comma. It’s Apple trying to argue they can breach a law because look we might twist it if we mistreat despite the law being clear and on the way to be slapped in the face because there is nothing the EU hates more than companies trying to play clever tricks with legislation.

The only surprising thing is that Apple has still to understand that despite all the fines. Apple keeps acting like the EU is the US and lose most of the time. You have to wonder if they plainly refuse to hire good counsels or the American executives are just to proud to listen to them.

Yeah Apple keeps trying to act like smart pants lawyers, trying to find breaches of interpretation.

This wont end well for them because EU stance is clear: give users more freedom and stop with the BS.

As someone who has spent 25+ years working with legislation and legislators in the US, to me the point is not whether the comma is the problem (to Apple) but rather that the law is the law. If the legislators wanted to do something other than what they did, they should have been more clear. If there was a mistake in the drafting, legislators can now fix it. But any fix will not be retroactive.

And in my experience, very few legislators would be able to tell you what they thought they were doing when that provision was drafted.

As to it being farcical, I wonder if this behavior of parsing grammar and punctuation is getting more common.

> If the legislators wanted to do something other than what they did, they should have been more clear

Except for the fact that this mythical clarity simply doesn't exist, so no amount of want can create it. And to add more to the farce: the criteria the courts use aren't clear either

> As someone who has spent 25+ years working with legislation and legislators in the US, to me the point is not whether the comma is the problem (to Apple) but rather that the law is the law.

It is my understanding that this is a big difference between the US and the EU: the US leans heavily into textualism / literal interpretation, while the EU leans much more into purposivism / teleological interpretation.

While the purposivism approach has its own problems, it does seem to avoid a lot of shenanigans of the form "Well you didn't say we couldn't sell ground up orphans as soup."

There should be space for companies and people to make honest mistakes or misunderstandings and not get punished too harshly for it, but when a company like apple has their lawyers go over legal texts with a fine tooth comb to look for a single sentence that could be possibly interpreted in their advantage, knowing full well they are circumventing the intent of the law by doing so, I don't see an issue with telling them in no uncertain terms to knock it off.

Apples behavior, is going to cost Apple billions in Europe.

> “shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions […], and to conclude contracts with those end users.”

> This lengthy sentence creates ambiguity: what exactly does "free of charge" apply to? Apple claims it only applies to “communicate” and “promote,” meaning the right to insert redirect links in an app. But not to “conclude contracts,” meaning making purchases. Based on that, Apple argues it can still charge commissions on those external transactions.

Malicious compliance go brrrrrrrrrr

> Malicious compliance go brrrrrrrrrr

What does this even mean?

Took 2 seconds to search and find you a link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/hn3qnw/whats_...

Apple asking for what are effectively lead fees was easily the most news-worthy and reported change made for the EU market.

Which raises the question: how are we this far into that change with Apple being informed that the EU meant something else?

To me, the optics are terrible on both sides. It's easy to be uncharitable to Apple for preserving their income stream, but it's equally just to be uncharitable to the EU for fishing for reasons to leverage what will certainly be a disproportionate fine instead of clarifying their position early. It's quite clear what they want is fine-revenue, not actual developer protections.

>It's quite clear what they want is fine-revenue, not actual developer protections.

I don't know how much out of touch with reality must be someone to make such a delusional statement. For everyone else out there, it's just clear that Apple failed again with their malicious compliance.

If they were interested in fine revenue they would have fined Apple far more in the first place. 500 Million is a slap on the wrist. They could have fined them up to 6% of Global Turnover.

And the EU isn't dependent on that Pocket Change either.

Maybe you should try travelling outside of the US once, and broaden your horizons

Reminds me of https://www.businessinsider.com/this-typo-cost-america-about...

it's not going to "cost" billions. those are billions they were not entitled to in the first place

This should have happened 15 years ago.

Apples dogshit behaviour is going to cost them billions and they deserve to lose every cent of it.

Apple's interpretation of that sentence is the same as mine.

I think it is pretty clear that Apple's reading is the most obvious reading of that sentence.

At the same time I do believe that this reading wasn't the intended one, so the law was badly written.

What makes court battles about this so annoying is that it turns laws from, in this case, rules about ethical businesses into word games.

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