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Because of the structure of the EU, the process of creating new laws is extremely vulnerable to lobbying. Parliament can only vote down laws, which can only be

Because of the structure of the EU, the process of creating new laws is extremely vulnerable to lobbying. Parliament can only vote down laws, which can only be proposed by unelected officials. So the leverage that the average EU voter has is only applicable at one very narrow point in the process (the vote to approve), while lobbyists can always buy influence with the lawmakers all they way through the process. And this is the result. Though it does have to be said that the same process came up with the GDPR and that was a decent (and necessary) piece of legislation. I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though

detaro 8y ago
> I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though They are quite active. I.e. Google is said to have spent 30+ millions on lobbying about the copyright reform. Facebook is lobbying too: https://www.politico.eu/article/inside-story-facebook-fight-against-european-regulation/ https://www.politico.eu/article/inside-story-facebook-fight-... (although not necessarily as one would think from their public statements, it seems like they're quite happy to tout how effective upload filters are when it seems like they can use that as an argument to avoid other rules)
- c3o 8y ago
  The 30 million figure was a downright lie by UK music publishers – it includes the entire lobbying budget (for the year 2016, bizarrely) of any industry association Google is listed as being a member of, which for some reason even includes the political think tank of the German CDU party, whose politicians are actually BEHIND the law, not opposed to it. Here's an in-depth factual analysis of copyright lobbying: > The limited information which is available about lobby meetings shows the intense level of lobbying taking place on the Copyright Directive, but it also interestingly exposes that the biggest lobbies were not in fact big tech companies and their associates, as many headlines claimed, but the publishers, creative industries and collecting societies. https://corporateeurope.org/power-lobbies/2018/12/copyright-directive-how-competing-big-business-lobbies-drowned-out-critical https://corporateeurope.org/power-lobbies/2018/12/copyright-...
YetAnotherNick 8y ago
> I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though I think they know that article 13 is going to be beneficial for them. If law requires costly content ID, it will make half of companies go out of business or non profitable in Europe. I really think many companies are going to ignore Europe as a whole.
- adventured 8y ago
  The approach that will continue to work for start-ups (both from Europe, eg Sweden is good at this, and the US), is to build out your service in the US first, monetize it there, and then push into the EU once you can afford compliance. This is already the ideal approach, anything the EU does to make regulation worse will merely increase the advantage of using the US as the springboard market. There's absolutely nothing stopping EU start-ups from first focusing on capturing the US market and then turning their focus back to the EU. There's another approach that is less legally certain. Build up users in both the US and EU, and only monetize the US users while entirely ignoring all EU law. You allow EU citizens to sign up, and do not place any infrastructure in the EU or do any business there initially. Jurisdiction will be in the US. The monetized US users, which will remain lucrative, subsidize building out into the EU member state markets without any revenue generation. You capture the EU userbase in this approach, then later comply with EU law and monetize that userbase after you're compliant. Would work best for ad platform businesses like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. If I'm operating a service in eg Brazil, I have zero obligation to comply with EU law (depending on treaties of course), nor do I have any responsibility to block EU citizens from signing up for my service. Let the EU users come in, comply with EU law later when you have to in order to monetize the market. Retro fines are one potential concern at scale, however that ends up being the equivalent of a speeding ticket and you own the market. One of the mistakes that keeps being made by EU tech promoters, is thinking that they should be concerned with competing with the existing US mega platforms (such that the EU needs to build a search engine to rival Google, photo platform to rival Instagram, mobile platforms to rival iOS or Android, etc). That battle was over a decade ago or more in some cases. The focus has to be on the next inflection point opening that allows for a creation of the next mega platforms. With platforms and the Internet, if you don't capture the US market first, the winner in that market will almost always smash you (or buy you) unless you bar access to your market as in the case of China. That's due to the enormous monetary value of capturing the US market (and you pretty much get Canada with it automatically, a $1.7 trillion economy), it acts as a perpetual well of resources to over-spend on then divide and conquering other markets like the EU.
vsl 8y ago
> came up with the GDPR and that was a decent (and necessary) piece of legislation. Funny you say that. I'd say it's just the same kind of shitshow - badly written, vague (case in point: if Google's layers can't safely parse GDPR, nobody stands a chance to have certainty: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191591/google-gdpr-fine-50-million-euros-data-consent-cnil https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191591/google-gdpr-fine...), entirely unnecessary, isolating EU from the rest of the world behind the new Great European Firewall. Not a day passes that I wouldn't encounter a site that geoblocks EU visitors because they don't want to deal with the uncertainty of GDPR. Expect much more of that if Article 13 passes. Great for VPN services, though.

detaro 8y ago

> I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though They are quite active. I.e. Google is said to have spent 30+ millions on lobbying about the copyright reform. Facebook is lobbying too: https://www.politico.eu/article/inside-story-facebook-fight-against-european-regulation/ https://www.politico.eu/article/inside-story-facebook-fight-... (although not necessarily as one would think from their public statements, it seems like they're quite happy to tout how effective upload filters are when it seems like they can use that as an argument to avoid other rules)

c3o 8y ago
The 30 million figure was a downright lie by UK music publishers – it includes the entire lobbying budget (for the year 2016, bizarrely) of any industry association Google is listed as being a member of, which for some reason even includes the political think tank of the German CDU party, whose politicians are actually BEHIND the law, not opposed to it. Here's an in-depth factual analysis of copyright lobbying: > The limited information which is available about lobby meetings shows the intense level of lobbying taking place on the Copyright Directive, but it also interestingly exposes that the biggest lobbies were not in fact big tech companies and their associates, as many headlines claimed, but the publishers, creative industries and collecting societies. https://corporateeurope.org/power-lobbies/2018/12/copyright-directive-how-competing-big-business-lobbies-drowned-out-critical https://corporateeurope.org/power-lobbies/2018/12/copyright-...

YetAnotherNick 8y ago

> I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though I think they know that article 13 is going to be beneficial for them. If law requires costly content ID, it will make half of companies go out of business or non profitable in Europe. I really think many companies are going to ignore Europe as a whole.

adventured 8y ago
The approach that will continue to work for start-ups (both from Europe, eg Sweden is good at this, and the US), is to build out your service in the US first, monetize it there, and then push into the EU once you can afford compliance. This is already the ideal approach, anything the EU does to make regulation worse will merely increase the advantage of using the US as the springboard market. There's absolutely nothing stopping EU start-ups from first focusing on capturing the US market and then turning their focus back to the EU. There's another approach that is less legally certain. Build up users in both the US and EU, and only monetize the US users while entirely ignoring all EU law. You allow EU citizens to sign up, and do not place any infrastructure in the EU or do any business there initially. Jurisdiction will be in the US. The monetized US users, which will remain lucrative, subsidize building out into the EU member state markets without any revenue generation. You capture the EU userbase in this approach, then later comply with EU law and monetize that userbase after you're compliant. Would work best for ad platform businesses like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. If I'm operating a service in eg Brazil, I have zero obligation to comply with EU law (depending on treaties of course), nor do I have any responsibility to block EU citizens from signing up for my service. Let the EU users come in, comply with EU law later when you have to in order to monetize the market. Retro fines are one potential concern at scale, however that ends up being the equivalent of a speeding ticket and you own the market. One of the mistakes that keeps being made by EU tech promoters, is thinking that they should be concerned with competing with the existing US mega platforms (such that the EU needs to build a search engine to rival Google, photo platform to rival Instagram, mobile platforms to rival iOS or Android, etc). That battle was over a decade ago or more in some cases. The focus has to be on the next inflection point opening that allows for a creation of the next mega platforms. With platforms and the Internet, if you don't capture the US market first, the winner in that market will almost always smash you (or buy you) unless you bar access to your market as in the case of China. That's due to the enormous monetary value of capturing the US market (and you pretty much get Canada with it automatically, a $1.7 trillion economy), it acts as a perpetual well of resources to over-spend on then divide and conquering other markets like the EU.

vsl 8y ago

> came up with the GDPR and that was a decent (and necessary) piece of legislation. Funny you say that. I'd say it's just the same kind of shitshow - badly written, vague (case in point: if Google's layers can't safely parse GDPR, nobody stands a chance to have certainty: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191591/google-gdpr-fine-50-million-euros-data-consent-cnil https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191591/google-gdpr-fine...), entirely unnecessary, isolating EU from the rest of the world behind the new Great European Firewall. Not a day passes that I wouldn't encounter a site that geoblocks EU visitors because they don't want to deal with the uncertainty of GDPR. Expect much more of that if Article 13 passes. Great for VPN services, though.