[pembrook]

We’re talking many 10s of billions in “fines” specifically levied against US tech firms where there is no EU competitor.

I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the laws themselves (some are incompetent EU risk aversion, some are good protections) but given the massive never ending fines being applied in bad faith and constantly moving goalposts it is indeed a defacto tariff on US tech firms.

[jonathanstrange]

The fines are not imposed in bad faith, they're imposed for actual, provable violations of the law. Companies who do not violate the law are not fined. Complaining about fines is another way of saying "We'd like to trade in the EU while violating EU laws that every EU company also has to adhere to."

[pembrook]

The laws are specifically designed to target US firms without affecting EU ones and enforcement of fines and the size of them is highly selective -- the most attractive targets with the highest willingness to pay without getting to the point where they would pull out of the market.

If you do not see the moral hazard in this, I don't know what else I can tell you. If the EU had a seriously competitive tech industry, many of these laws would have never been created, as the EU is not some moral believer in privacy (they fight against encryption domestically), they are just run-of-the-mill protectionists like all governments.

[jonathanstrange]

This is nonsense, I'm about to launch a company in the EU and these laws are a major consideration and potential pain point for us, too. They are very relevant for EU companies.

This makes me wonder if US companies complaining about the GDPR and DMA have any idea how many more laws EU companies have to comply with in addition to this. It's not easy.

[detaro]

If you claim GDPR is "not affecting" EU companies your position has nothing to do with reality.

[0xy]

There hasn't been a single DMA fine against an EU company, ever. Nor have any been investigated.

The DMA is a tax on the United States. Look no further than its enforcement and its text (highly targeted).

[cwillu]

Could it be because EU companies based on doing shitty and illegal things just never get started in the first place?

[marceldegraaf]

DMA is not the same as GDPR.

[0xy]

The thread is specifically about DMA. My parent comment mentions DMA specifically. This 'EU enforces the law equally' position is nonsense, considering Spotify, an EU company, was carved out from the DMA.

Sounds legit!

[0xy]

You're trying to claim a law that is exclusively used to fleece U.S. companies and never EU competitors is 'not bad faith'?

When has the DMA been used against EU tech companies? Never.

Your comment also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the DMA and GDPR laws. Neither of them are objective laws, and they are applied subjectively without guidance.

Let me be very clear: the EU does not tell you how to comply with either the DMA or the GDPR, period. The law is extremely vague and does not prescribe how to comply in any way, shape or form.

[marceldegraaf]

DMA has not been used against EU tech companies because US tech companies are clearly the market leaders in the area the DMA is concerned with. The DMA exists to make sure that companies (from the EU, US, or elsewhere) comply with EU regulations regarding privacy, tracking, and consumer rights.

It's not a "tax" on US companies, it's just that US companies don't bother to comply with the regulations that apply in the EU, and thus get fined.

[f33d5173]

>US tech companies are clearly the market leaders in the area the DMA is concerned with.

There's a good argument that this is targeted. Why didn't this regulation affect SAP? Their market position gives them leverage over a massive number of companies.

>it's just that US companies don't bother to comply with the regulations that apply in the EU, and thus get fined.

It's not that they "don't bother", it's that they understand complying with the regulation to cost them more than the fine. In other words, the regulation itself is a sort of fine, or tax imposed by the EU, with a magnitude of roughly equal proportion to the fines it imposes.

[jonathanstrange]

No offense, but this is a silly argument. Companies in country X tend to develop their products in conformance with country X. Of course, products developed in the EU will conform with EU law. By the same token, I would be surprised if US companies habitually developed products that don't conform with US law.

> It's not that they "don't bother", it's that they understand complying with the regulation to cost them more than the fine.

This means that the fines are not high enough and don't fulfill their purpose. That's an argument for the thesis that the EU is handling fines of violators in a too lax fashion, not the opposite. This has also been the impression of many EU citizens, and it seems to be the reason why so many huge US corporations keep violating EU customer protection rules again and again.

But the reality is also that US companies that violated those rules basically have no EU competition because the EU has an abysmal market in certain tech domains. There simply are no viable EU equivalents to Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

[f33d5173]

>Companies in country X tend to develop their products in conformance with country X

You have the order wrong. The companies came first, then came the laws. So we might reverse this statement to: "countries with company X in them tend to develop their laws so that company X is in conformance with those laws". This latter statement seems likely enough to be true, and is exactly the point of order in this discussion.

>By the same token, I would be surprised if US companies habitually developed products that don't conform with US law.

It's called "growth hacking". Uber was quite famous for it. The only time you'd benefit from breaking the law in a foreign country vs. your own country is if you intend to exit the market of that country; you don't have to worry about paying fines if the country can't reach you. If the intention is to continue doing business there, then any punishment will have to be borne just as if you were headquartered there.

>This means that the fines are not high enough and don't fulfill their purpose.

You're missing the point. The laws scale so that eventually they will be high enough that the company has to conform. The point I'm making is that a company's willingness to break a law shows that the law is costing them money, and we can even estimate how much money it costs them by the size of the fine. If we assume that all laws are fair and just then this just means that the company is evil. However, as we showed above, some laws are unjust, hence them costing a company money can be a way of unfairly extracting money from those companies.

[0xy]

Explain why Spotify got a carve-out from the DMA despite being an effective monopoly gatekeeper.

Is it because it's an EU company and the DMA is a tax on the United States?

'The law that applies only to US companies is applied equally and fair!'

[cwillu]

This argument would be just as valid if the US was the world leader in assassination markets: shitty and illegal practices are shitty and illegal, regardless of whether they were firmly established with significant markets in other countries first.

[0xy]

Unless you're EU company Spotify, who got a carve-out from the DMA despite being a monopoly gatekeeper :)

[sam_lowry_]

> provable violations of the law

If you ever tried reading GDPR or DMA... you will realize pretty quickly that there is little meaning in them.

I am totally unsure someone can prove a DMA violation. It's simpler with GDPR because a lot of concepts from it have been already somehow interpreted and agreed upon. But we do not have case law in EU, so I guess even known GDPR violations are often dubious.