5 ms·

Macron Wants to Rein in Silicon Valley, from Brussels

55 points by awiesenhofer 8y ago

secfirstmd 8y ago
Highly likely Ireland is going to be against this but its going to be a lot harder to restrain many of the French governments more outlandish proposals when the Brits leave.
- reacweb 8y ago
  In France, we have the CNIL that has very few powers, but always gives very insightful advices and that is inspiring CNILs in other countries. We also have some politicians who are very well informed but are actively fighting against our freedom (like Kosciusko-Morizet who wanted madatory backdoors or Bernard Cazeneuve with his decrypt law). The problem is that the difference between a well balanced law and an insane nightmare is often a question of details.
peteretep 8y ago
This article is a bizarre set of weird talking points, trying to tie together a conspiratorial narrative through such breathless facts as: > To lock down his influence in Brussels, Macron needs to make sure he has sufficient clout to weigh on commissioners’ nominations, an objective he can only achieve via a broad voting bloc in European Parliament. His centrist La République en Marche (LRM) party is at work forging alliances with like-minded groups in other EU countries, notably in Spain with the Ciudadanos party. Yes. He's going to "lock down his influence" by ... finding like minded partners? > To press his influence with other governments, Macron relies on Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to conduct high-level diplomacy. European Finance Ministers in "they talk to each other!" shocker > Mahjoubi, who was hoisted to his current role after running the president-to-be’s digital campaign, has been more active lobbying the European Commission, frequently making the hour-and-twenty-minute train trip to Brussels to meet with top EU officials and stress French views on everything from the bloc’s artificial intelligence strategy to investment for startups. The fuck is this crap? This article is really odd.
- cjohansson 8y ago
  This was my feeling as well, the article tries really hard to incite some weird aggression based on a blurry case
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mkirklions 8y ago
And this is how FAANG ends up destroying democracy in Europe like our lobbyists destroyed our democracy in the US. These words are dangerous to the life of these companies. I can easily see (trillion dollar) companies starting various forms of political donations in EVERY country. Google cannot afford to lose its euro market, but google can afford to buy policies. EDIT: Whats the criticism? For the first time in human history, money wont be able to buy politics?
- geff82 8y ago
  Those words are essentially saying that France (and Europe) want to stop competing. Macrons words might put some inconvenience on Google et al. but the result will be that the US as a place to be for companies becomes even stronger.
  - mkirklions 8y ago
    I am not saying this. I'm saying that as we have seen again and again in history, money will influence politics.
    - geff82 8y ago
      I did not mean you but Macron/the article
- markus92 8y ago
  Too bad campaign contributions are heavily regulated in Europe. It's a bit harder to buy politicians here.
  - agorabinary 8y ago
    You can't regulate corruption, by definition
    - genericid 8y ago
      Making it illegal still reduces it.
MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
Disappointed that Macron is following the old french playbook here. Was under the impression that he was a more of a liberal guy. Unfortunately german conservatives are useless when it comes to internet regulation (see "Mitstörerhaftung", making platforms and operators of wifi access points liable if their users commit crimes), not sure how much resistance can be expected.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Mitstörerhaftung has lost it's bite, the latest court ruling makes network operators not responsible if someone commits a crime over their network. You might still get slapped with an order to block these sites but otherwise it's harmless now.
  - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
    True, yet they stuck to it for years despite widespread resistance and mockery. This will not be forgotten so easily.
- delecti 8y ago
  > Mitstörerhaftung Without knowing anything about what that is, I'm having a lot of trouble looking up anything about what that is. Most of the links about that seem to be in German, and the ones in English are talking about it too tangentially to get any meaning from context clues.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    It's a general legal concept that is mostly famous in one application: people having open (non password-protected) WiFis were considered to have full liability if some user misused their WiFi breaking copyright laws. The conservatives and social-democrats finally got around to kill this by law (although there are some fine details that are still not good), and the highest court basically affirmed this change, applying it even retroactively. But grandparent is not proposing a coherent argument, he's just expressing his dislike for the conservative party.
  - 8y ago
agorabinary 8y ago
One of the major concerns of EU skeptics has always been the ability (and the gall) to push ambitious acts of centralized control by like-minded European leaders. And more likely that big players like Google/FB will just buy off protections from mega-regulators than actually be "reigned in" as it always happens
- dtx1 8y ago
  Given what we have seen with the GDPR i have a feeling thats not entirely true
- tobylane 8y ago
  That doesn't match up with history. Two of the more notable fines by the EU have been on Microsoft and Google. The UK recently fined Facebook the maximum that agency could - 500k [1]. The politicians are on record speaking out against data abusers in ways that sound like they are users. Nearly all of what the EU does centralised is still policed locally. There's barely any of the control that skeptics say there is, even if you include the control the countries willingly handed over. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151
afsina 8y ago
I think this is all about money really. EU lost the tech war so they try to make winners life so hard so that they could either squeeze more money from them or enforce some government supported - controlled inferior products to replace them. These may be the excuse key words: "protecting civil rights, hate speech, terrorism, privacy"
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  It's much more than that. If you believe what Assange wrote--or even if you don't--these American companies must comply with the legal (and not-so-legal) requests of our various surveillance apparati. Having a foreign Google integrated into their web activities as much as we have a domestic Google integrated into ours is a threat to their own sovereignty.
- simion314 8y ago
  Similar with rules to traffic, the rules are there for the cops to make some pocket money not not for our safety /s I think is easy to see that you need to always had some new rules when someone finds a way to do harm to the society, I am sorry that the rules makes some billionaires have a few less billions.
  - growlist 8y ago
    I think it's naïve to believe these decisions are completely free of political considerations, and that the Commissioners responsible are merely the purest of heart rule implementers - on the contrary, I'd suggest that those at the upper echelons of EU decision making are by definition extremely sophisticated political operators; if not, how could they end up in a position of such power?
    - simion314 8y ago
      I do not understand how some people want free/fair market and at the same time you accept unfair practices like monopoly abuses or special deals or tricks to avoid taxes that only big companies can do, where is the fairness in the big players having advantage over smaller ones?
realusername 8y ago
> France, which is the only EU country to have a law against fake news on its statute books Nope, the law has not been voted yet and has been rejected by the Senate.
- baud147258 8y ago
  I didn't know that. But the other house, the National Assembly, can have the last word and bypass the decision of the Senate (I think, I'm not a specialist)
  - realusername 8y ago
    Kind of, the Assembly has the last word (for the modifications) but they can't bypass the decision of the Senate.

55 points by awiesenhofer 8y ago

Highly likely Ireland is going to be against this but its going to be a lot harder to restrain many of the French governments more outlandish proposals when the Brits leave.

reacweb 8y ago
In France, we have the CNIL that has very few powers, but always gives very insightful advices and that is inspiring CNILs in other countries. We also have some politicians who are very well informed but are actively fighting against our freedom (like Kosciusko-Morizet who wanted madatory backdoors or Bernard Cazeneuve with his decrypt law). The problem is that the difference between a well balanced law and an insane nightmare is often a question of details.

peteretep 8y ago

This article is a bizarre set of weird talking points, trying to tie together a conspiratorial narrative through such breathless facts as: > To lock down his influence in Brussels, Macron needs to make sure he has sufficient clout to weigh on commissioners’ nominations, an objective he can only achieve via a broad voting bloc in European Parliament. His centrist La République en Marche (LRM) party is at work forging alliances with like-minded groups in other EU countries, notably in Spain with the Ciudadanos party. Yes. He's going to "lock down his influence" by ... finding like minded partners? > To press his influence with other governments, Macron relies on Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to conduct high-level diplomacy. European Finance Ministers in "they talk to each other!" shocker > Mahjoubi, who was hoisted to his current role after running the president-to-be’s digital campaign, has been more active lobbying the European Commission, frequently making the hour-and-twenty-minute train trip to Brussels to meet with top EU officials and stress French views on everything from the bloc’s artificial intelligence strategy to investment for startups. The fuck is this crap? This article is really odd.

cjohansson 8y ago
This was my feeling as well, the article tries really hard to incite some weird aggression based on a blurry case
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

mkirklions 8y ago

And this is how FAANG ends up destroying democracy in Europe like our lobbyists destroyed our democracy in the US. These words are dangerous to the life of these companies. I can easily see (trillion dollar) companies starting various forms of political donations in EVERY country. Google cannot afford to lose its euro market, but google can afford to buy policies. EDIT: Whats the criticism? For the first time in human history, money wont be able to buy politics?

geff82 8y ago
Those words are essentially saying that France (and Europe) want to stop competing. Macrons words might put some inconvenience on Google et al. but the result will be that the US as a place to be for companies becomes even stronger.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  I am not saying this. I'm saying that as we have seen again and again in history, money will influence politics.
  - geff82 8y ago
    I did not mean you but Macron/the article
markus92 8y ago
Too bad campaign contributions are heavily regulated in Europe. It's a bit harder to buy politicians here.
- agorabinary 8y ago
  You can't regulate corruption, by definition
  - genericid 8y ago
    Making it illegal still reduces it.

MrBuddyCasino 8y ago

Disappointed that Macron is following the old french playbook here. Was under the impression that he was a more of a liberal guy. Unfortunately german conservatives are useless when it comes to internet regulation (see "Mitstörerhaftung", making platforms and operators of wifi access points liable if their users commit crimes), not sure how much resistance can be expected.

zaarn 8y ago
Mitstörerhaftung has lost it's bite, the latest court ruling makes network operators not responsible if someone commits a crime over their network. You might still get slapped with an order to block these sites but otherwise it's harmless now.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  True, yet they stuck to it for years despite widespread resistance and mockery. This will not be forgotten so easily.
delecti 8y ago
> Mitstörerhaftung Without knowing anything about what that is, I'm having a lot of trouble looking up anything about what that is. Most of the links about that seem to be in German, and the ones in English are talking about it too tangentially to get any meaning from context clues.
- Tomte 8y ago
  It's a general legal concept that is mostly famous in one application: people having open (non password-protected) WiFis were considered to have full liability if some user misused their WiFi breaking copyright laws. The conservatives and social-democrats finally got around to kill this by law (although there are some fine details that are still not good), and the highest court basically affirmed this change, applying it even retroactively. But grandparent is not proposing a coherent argument, he's just expressing his dislike for the conservative party.
- 8y ago

agorabinary 8y ago

One of the major concerns of EU skeptics has always been the ability (and the gall) to push ambitious acts of centralized control by like-minded European leaders. And more likely that big players like Google/FB will just buy off protections from mega-regulators than actually be "reigned in" as it always happens

dtx1 8y ago
Given what we have seen with the GDPR i have a feeling thats not entirely true
tobylane 8y ago
That doesn't match up with history. Two of the more notable fines by the EU have been on Microsoft and Google. The UK recently fined Facebook the maximum that agency could - 500k [1]. The politicians are on record speaking out against data abusers in ways that sound like they are users. Nearly all of what the EU does centralised is still policed locally. There's barely any of the control that skeptics say there is, even if you include the control the countries willingly handed over. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151

afsina 8y ago

I think this is all about money really. EU lost the tech war so they try to make winners life so hard so that they could either squeeze more money from them or enforce some government supported - controlled inferior products to replace them. These may be the excuse key words: "protecting civil rights, hate speech, terrorism, privacy"

jstewartmobile 8y ago
It's much more than that. If you believe what Assange wrote--or even if you don't--these American companies must comply with the legal (and not-so-legal) requests of our various surveillance apparati. Having a foreign Google integrated into their web activities as much as we have a domestic Google integrated into ours is a threat to their own sovereignty.
simion314 8y ago
Similar with rules to traffic, the rules are there for the cops to make some pocket money not not for our safety /s I think is easy to see that you need to always had some new rules when someone finds a way to do harm to the society, I am sorry that the rules makes some billionaires have a few less billions.
- growlist 8y ago
  I think it's naïve to believe these decisions are completely free of political considerations, and that the Commissioners responsible are merely the purest of heart rule implementers - on the contrary, I'd suggest that those at the upper echelons of EU decision making are by definition extremely sophisticated political operators; if not, how could they end up in a position of such power?
  - simion314 8y ago
    I do not understand how some people want free/fair market and at the same time you accept unfair practices like monopoly abuses or special deals or tricks to avoid taxes that only big companies can do, where is the fairness in the big players having advantage over smaller ones?

realusername 8y ago

> France, which is the only EU country to have a law against fake news on its statute books Nope, the law has not been voted yet and has been rejected by the Senate.

baud147258 8y ago
I didn't know that. But the other house, the National Assembly, can have the last word and bypass the decision of the Senate (I think, I'm not a specialist)
- realusername 8y ago
  Kind of, the Assembly has the last word (for the modifications) but they can't bypass the decision of the Senate.