Big Tech is extremely unimpressed by Apple’s EU App Store changes
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By far the simplest solution would be for Apple to remove telephony putting it on par with xbox, switch etc.
Simples.
Simples.
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Exactly. I don’t see Microsoft agreeing to allow GOG to sell games directly on an Xbox, and anyone who thinks Microsoft would sell them for $299/$499 if they could sell them for $1299/$1499 is either delusional or a liar.
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Yes, actually. American law has been infamously vague and sloppy and I am firmly against a revolving door of policy whiplash just because Congress refuses to do their jobs as legislators and fail to assign work to the president as they are meant to. I am also against any president trying to run things via executive order in a legislative vacuum, and based on current trends it seems the judicial branch agrees.
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This sounds like an American view of law. I’m not sure if it’s the same at the EU level but here in the Netherlands “letter of the law” isn’t a thing like in the US. Of course the words still matter, but intent is very much taken into account. It’s one reason why our legal system isn’t so rife with litigious bullshit.
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Selling at a loss is irrelevant. Or at least, I've never heard of the law that says a loss-leader is exempt from laws around business competition. Perhaps someone can point out the law one of these days. I've asked but all I get back is the article of faith that this is how it is. If it's a matter of personal belief, great but at least mention that in your posts.
Consoles use the exact same model as Apple's App Store, with the exact same justification. For logical consistency, opening one necessitates opening them all. Keeping some necessitates keeping them all.
Or are we just going to let people pretend that loudly proclaiming "I declare my device is sold at a loss!" means anything at all. Give me half an hour with actual costs and I can make any product at all look like a per-unit loss.
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I think it's also telling that it's only the big companies who are complaining. You don't exactly hear tech blogs post about what the common man on the street thinks, and maybe that's the whole point. That consumers don't exactly care about a 30% tax they will never see, and they don't really hate closed app ecosystems. But shining a light on this would violate the whole narrative that Apple is evil and needs to be as open as android, when in reality, consumers buy iOS devices knowing fully well what they were getting themselves into and consciously chose safety and security over the freedom to sideload apps (and malware).
Notice how nobody batted an eyelid when Fortnite was booted from the iOS App Store, and that there was virtually no outpouring of support for Epic or condemnation of Apple from consumers?
Perhaps if iOS users were more vocal, we might actually see a different story right now. Right now, the DMA still strikes me as a hit job being lobbied by companies like Epic and Spotify who are upset at the power that Apple wields over the App Store, and would rather burn this current model down to the ground for their own financial gain.
It's really all about power, and who wields it.
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Good luck with that.
Besides, for whatever reason - the reasons don't really matter - iPhone users typically spend more than those on competing phones, so why shouldn't it cost more to reach those users? That's the free market working as intended.
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Ah, so you side with the GOP & corporations like Apple and want to strip us of regulatory protections, got it. The current judiciary is infected by GOP hacks that Trump shoved in there that want to kill Chevron and strip away necessary protections and rights. We could kiss any hope of environmental protections goodbye, alongside constraints over corporate power, and taking down monopolies like Comcast and AT&T through Title II at the FCC, or any hope of the FTC toppling the monopolies of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and more. That's the kind of shithole you're arguing for when you say we should get rid of Chevron.
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I still struggle with the bigger issue:
Why is a company that makes a device forced to ”open it up” to alternate paths of sales for stuff that runs on said device? Ignoring that it’s Apple, a company build a device that allows it to sell add-ons. Just because it’s popular, does that give governments the right to dictate how it sells these add-ons? There are alternative devices consumers can buy. The term “walled-garden” gets tossed around but isn‘t that what capitalism is all about? Isn’t this similar to being forced into a subscription to use certain software (i.e. Excel) ? That pisses me off more...
Why is a company that makes a device forced to ”open it up” to alternate paths of sales for stuff that runs on said device? Ignoring that it’s Apple, a company build a device that allows it to sell add-ons. Just because it’s popular, does that give governments the right to dictate how it sells these add-ons? There are alternative devices consumers can buy. The term “walled-garden” gets tossed around but isn‘t that what capitalism is all about? Isn’t this similar to being forced into a subscription to use certain software (i.e. Excel) ? That pisses me off more...
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The point is not lowering the prices of third-party services and content for consumers (not directly, at least); it is, quite clearly and openly, to protect competition in digital markets. The idea is that greater competition ultimately benefits everyone (consumers and the economy at large), and that competition is harmed if a company can stifle competition in one market (streaming services, app stores etc.) by virtue of having a large share of another market (smartphones, in this case). It restricts the power of platform owners, which happen to be entirely non-European, thus benefitting the companies that compete with them in digital services and content… which happen to be predominantly non-European. Seeing protectionism in this edges on conspiracy theory territory.
Edit: missing word
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Per their calculator, I am not sure that's accurate. I mean accepting the new developer agreement would cause there to be a fee. Even if they never use a their own processor or another store. I believe the developer agreement applies to all the apps. So even toying with the store would cause there to be increased costs. Let's say Microsoft wanted to open an alternate store for Gamepass. They would now be paying thousands if not millions for all their free apps. I would assume we would see a lot of merging of apps. Like getting rid of the separate Office apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). Eh. Its how apple is motivating large companies to not create competing stores. All their "free" apps would cost them money, even if they never put them in their alternate stores.
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They were determined to have a large enough part of the market that regulation is needed to ensure there is not monopolistic practices. Apple built a device that allows it to sell add-ons. The government set the rules of the marketplace they wanna sell that device and those add-ons in. Apple is not required to participate in the EU market.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Competition law factors in the control a company has over a market. Even if there are other players, a large business may have significant control.
Apple and Google both control the smartphone market, which is a billion (trillion?) dollar industry. You can't do anything on the iPhone unless Apple allows it, and though Android offers alternatives, it's still in a dominant position that can be leveraged to push ads, collect data, and filter content. For much of the world, there are no alternatives. The biggest competitor is HarmonyOS, at a measly 3%. Good luck finding one.
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Don't threaten me with a good time. Competing app stores would love to have all of the App Store catalog on their stores. Even the free apps.
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Trap card denied. I am a lifelong Democrat and have never voted for any Republican for any public office. Therefore you can stop right there with the knee-jerk dismissive histrionic and stupid assumptions that bring a bad name to all liberals.
You can also drop the buzzwords referring to any people as “infecting” things, because that makes you a huge hypocrite if you object to Trump and the MAGA nuts who refer to cities as being “infected” by “vermin” and other garbage language.
Are you saying that the nation is incapable of finding ANY leaders in a group of nearly 400 million people who are capable of writing clearer, updated laws? Or are you just going to sit on your ass, say “well, it’s been this way for a while so might as well ignore the potential foundational issues that could cause later problems” and complain when things get overturned later as happened with Roe?
Only the laziest and most intellectually dishonest type would go to such lengths to ignore the core of my argument the way you did. Again, as I have argued from the START of this comments section, WRITE CLEAR LAWS. If a handful of guys 250 years ago could peel a whole territory off a monarchy, found a nation, and write an entirely new system of government, perhaps you can get to work and help create some document that pragmatically handles a goddamned App Store and clarifies what an agency’s scope is.
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Yeah, agreed. Google and Apple work together to keep their duopoly. Windows Phone could've been good, but Google refused to make apps for Windows Phone and kept stringing Microsoft along and moving the goalposts for things like YouTube. Google signed off on/made YouTube apps for the damned WiiU and PS Vita in the same period of time that the Windows Phone was active, but decided Windows Phone was a no-go even though it would have had more staying power than those two gaming machines, especially when it became obvious they would be deemed failures. Requiring Microsoft to code the whole app in HTML5 was bullshit from Google, and everyone knew it. The company used the must-have nature of its apps to press their thumbs into Microsoft's eyes and keep a competitor from coming in.
Google and Apple like the current phone market the way it is. They play off each other. Android is "open" with all the warnings for sideloading and all the Google tracking, and Apple is a walled garden where they have a stranglehold on everything. If you say you're fed up with one, then the fans of that one will tell you to swap to the other. The search engine deal that Google and Apple have with each other for iOS is another good piece of proof that they're a duopoly that's thick as thieves. I'd love to see the EU's competition authority and the U.S.'s FTC throw the book at them. But that can't happen if some people who are cheering for the killing of Chevron get their way.
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What stopped Microsoft from improving upon their prior mobile products platform? They ignored the market and Ballmer’s hubris was legendary. Furthermore, Apple and Google have no obligation to buoy a rival that was far larger than them at the time. Finally, most developers of all types and sizes ignored Windows Phone when MS finally got to the table, because MS had made it clear for the prior several years that they were not a priority. Want to know why Microsoft failed? The answer is Microsoft.
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i have yet to go looking for something that I can’t find in the App Store.
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If you were a lifelong Democrat, you'd remember how back during the Net Neutrality debates, telecom think tanks would talk about how regulation wasn't the way, but rather legislation. Legislation that the telecoms could then fuck over by making it toothless via the Congresscritters they bribe.
"This isn't a problem that regulation can solve, this is a problem that Congress needs to solve!" has been a key GOP and corporate asshat talking point for ages. And one that you willfully parrot, alongside your opinion that killing Chevron would be a good idea.
Legislators and legislation cannot move at the speed and rate at which technology and situations evolve. This is true around the world. This is why we have regulatory agencies that can move faster than lawmaking bodies, and lawmaking bodies confer authority and power to those regulatory agencies to act on their behest.
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I think the console business model is inherently anti-competitive, though from a practical perspective the anti-competitiveness here is not as important to deal with as in the general computing market.
I see the situation of device/OS vendors as being somewhat analogous to the situation of ISPs (though not quite identical, obviously). Both have a very strong gatekeeper position between end users and other third-party companies, and both have strong lock-in/network effects which result in a result in a fairly small number of viable options for consumers, and make it likely that a given consumer will tend to pick one option that is "best" (or more likely "least bad") at meeting their needs.
This means that an ISP or OS/platform vendor has a very strong natural gatekeeping potential between end users and third parties. If Comcast has a big percentage of the residential ISP market, and says, "Hey Netflix, pay us what we want, or we'll block your traffic to customers on our service", then Netflix is stuck in a position of complying, or losing access to a big potential part of the market. Likewise if Apple says, "Hey Netflix, pay us what we want, or we'll block your traffic (and app) to customers on our device"
Part of the reason why I think regulation should be applied here rather than just saying "well, consumers are free to choose Android if they want to side-load" is that this isn't just about what an individual user can do, it's about how the gatekeeping effect impacts the market transactions between customers and third-party product/service providers.
Sure, you could say that if Comcast makes demands of Netflix, then Netflix can either meet those demands, or choose not to be available to Comcast customers, and if those Comcast customers want to view Netflix, they're free to switch to a different ISP, but that would be ignoring the lock-in/network effects.
For people considering switching ISPs, in many cases they may not have many (or any) options without moving to a different city, and if ISPs are allowed to block services that don't meet their demands, those other ISPs might also have different services that they block. A customer might need to have subscriptions to multiple ISPs just to access all the services they want, and even then there might be some services blocked by all ISPs in their area. The purpose of net neutrality is to provide legal protections prevent ISPs from using their gatekeeper position to extort third party service providers like Netflix.
People considering switching to a different phone OS face a similar situation. Currently there are really only two viable platforms (as well as a bunch of minor Android forks that ride on the coattails of Android's semi-openness). From the perspective of a software provider, this means that the viable market for mobile apps is essentially defined as "whatever iOS and Android allow". This puts an extremely potent gatekeeping power in the hands of just two companies, and most end users are going to pick one or the other, not both, and are going to be very reluctant to change just for the sake of one app that's only on the opposite platform.
Legislation to mitigate this gatekeeping potential (both in ISPs and mobile devices) seems like a very good and important thing to me, but from the look of it the current legislation in the EU may not be effective at all in actually achieving this goal if Apple can still maliciously comply in a way that still lets them act as gatekeepers between app developers and iOS users.
So with this basic reasoning for why regulation of gatekeepers is good and appropriate in general, should this also apply to consoles? I would say that it probably should, just because it eliminates the need to make a legal distinction between different form-factors of computing devices. I think you could make an argument for exempting certain types of devices from the regulation, with the intent of letting game consoles and TV set-top boxes be exempt from the regulation, while imposing the regulation on "general purpose" computing devices (desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones), but I think there is a potential for messy arguments if/when companies start making devices that blur the boundaries just to avoid the regulations, and I also think that the exemption for game consoles is not really necessary (at least not anymore).
Back when most games were sold on physical media at retail stores, it might have been necessary for the console business model to have locked-down consoles to essentially force game devs to pay licensing fees to release games for the console, but digital downloads change the equation. On a physical retail store shelf, a game that paid the license fee and one that didn't would sit there with equal accessibility to the consumer, and the only difference might be a "Nintendo Approved" logo on the box, so there wouldn't be much incentive for devs to pay the license fee if it was not mandatory. With digital sales, the "default app store effect" is quite strong even when side-loading is possible, as Android and SteamOS have demonstrated.
For example, Valve could probably afford to sell Steam Decks at a very slim profit or even a small loss, and make up for it with increased revenue on Steam game sales because despite the Steam Deck having no lockdown, there is a strong "convenient default" effect of Steam being the pre-installed game store that's right there when you start the system up. You can side load games from other stores on SteamOS, or even wipe SteamOS entirely and install Windows if you want, but I strongly suspect that most Steam Deck users primarily (or entirely) use them to play games purchased on Steam, just like most Android users primarily use apps downloaded from Google's store.
I think this "default app store effect" is strong enough to economically support a subsidized console market without the need for lockdown of the systems, especially considering that most modern consoles are not generally sold at a large loss, they tend to be more like break-even or slight profit, or maybe a slight loss early in their lifecycle, with production cost eventually being brought down to achieve slight profit.
The primary benefit (to end users and app/game devs) of having all computing devices required by regulation to be unlocked is not so much that that most users would get most of their software from a third-party store (or direct from the developer), but that they could do so if the platform provider's store policies or fees become too onerous. It allows the market to apply pressure to the platform vendors by weakening their gatekeeping power, and preventing the Apple situation where the gatekeeper can say, "submit to our terms, or be totally blocked from all customers using our devices".
In the "open system" model, most software would likely still be sold through the default store, but the platform vendor would have a strong incentive to not be too greedy or restrictive, because they don't want popular apps being available only in alternate stores, and thus getting users accustomed to buying from those alternate stores.
Basically, I think from around 1990 to 2010, computing in general benefitted greatly from having a dominant platform (DOS/Windows) that didn't impose restrictions or fees on people wanting to devlop software for it, and I say this as a Linux user who really dislikes Windows.
As mobile devices are largely taking over from PCs as the general computing device of choice for many people, I think there is a significant risk of this openness and freedom being thrown away, or at least marginalized, by having a major platform provider exercising the level of control over the ecosystem that Apple has right now.
The idea of general computing becoming increasingly locked down and controlled by a few companies is an incredibly dystopian idea in my opinion, particularly as more and more services are tending to abandon the open web in favor of apps released only for the two dominant mobile ecosystems. Even at the height of Windows dominance of computing, with Microsoft's most monopolistic practices, they never tried to impose the sort of control over Windows software developers that Apple imposes on iOS developers.
I also think that regualtion is likely the only way to protect that type of openness, for basically the same reason that I don't think openness would be a fatal blow to the console business model: For most consumers most of the time, convenience wins over almost everything else. "Openness" isn't really direct selling point to most consumers choosing a phone or tablet, at least not one that outweighs other more immediate factors, but the lack of openness on the platform does impact the software market, which generally has to go where the users are. The problem is that these effects tend to manifest as things that don't exist, which might have existed in an open ecosystem, and this hypothetical software that might have existed in an alternate timeline isn't really something that influences consumer behavior.
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I wouldn't say it's badly written (outside of the arbitrary thresholds to determine who is a gatekeeper), it just wasn't designed to do what the likes of Spotify, Epic, Meta and Microsoft want which was give them free access to a major platform.
It's also Epics fault that Apple have only deducted 3% for payment processing as they have spent the last few years loudly claiming that is all it costs, when a 5% deduction would have been a fairer amount as that is around what paypal and other payment processors charge. Though given Apple's scale there is a good chance it does only cost them 3% to process payments, and the EU don't really care if competitors cannot match that as the goal is to open the platform up for competition, but that doesn't mean prices will drop, and there is no chance the EU will tell Apple to charge more for payment processing unless they are shown to be charging below their costs which would be predatory pricing.
The thing the EU are most likely to object to are the restrictions Apple are putting on who can operate third-party stores.
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Though even if you had multiple stores on an iphone you still wouldn't get any price competition between them and that is because all major digital stores work on the agency model where the devs\publisher sets the price and the store takes a set cut - for example on PC the RRP price of a game on Steam, GOG, Epic, Microsoft Store (well that sometimes uses the higher console price) or publisher store is generally the same price. (Same thing with ebooks, music, movies).
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
You make very good points. But you also make a point that explains why the answer is "no":
As you note, the level of control over Android, iOS and consoles does not exist on PCs. The console and PC gaming markets currently share roughly equal percentages of the overall gaming market. A developer who doesn't want to pay the gaming tax can release for Linux, macOS, and/or Windows, and reach the same customers. So, while it's philosophically correct to open up consoles to competing stores, the lack of market control is what allows consoles to remain closed.
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Part of me wonders just how hard the EU will actually fight against a lot of Apple’s restrictions since the DMA makes allowances for privacy and security and any they risk a lot of negative publicity if the changes they force lead to negative consequences. I mean the EU never hesitates to mouth off against big tech and yet they’ve been curiously quiet since Apple announced its changes. Not to mention these changes are supposedly the result of work done with regulators.
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I basically agree with this stance, which is why I said in my first paragraph "I think the console business model is inherently anti-competitive, though from a practical perspective the anti-competitiveness here is not as important to deal with as in the general computing market."
On a philosophical level I think consoles should be opened, but on a practical level, I think it's not really as critical there.
I think the main reason to consider forcing them to open up would be for the sake of legal consistency, and to avoid companies trying to skirt the regulations by using weird hybrid device form factors to try to get a tablet or phone classified as a game console (like the way car manufacturers got around emissions standards by selling SUVs that were classified as light trucks rather than cars).
While currently today, Windows PCs (and to an extent SteamOS/Linux with Proton riding on the Windows gaming ecosystem's coattails) are still providing a significant open counterweight to the closed console gaming ecosystem, I see that as a potentially fragile situation as mobile devices with iOS and Android eat into the PC user base.
I think regulators should not be looking just as the market as it exists today, but paying attention to market trends and getting ahead of them so we don't see a situation where the open PC user base withers and becomes not economically viable for game devs, and we get left with just mobile devices and consoles.
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fellow human
Ars Praefectus
I don't think third party stores are available yet. To be clear I'm not saying this will happen, just that theoretically there are ways third party stores could affect people who choose not to use them.
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Apple controls the iOS market. In the EU, Samsung alone outsells Apple, and when the other Android vendors are considered, It's tough to argue Apple controls the whole smartphone market.
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As written, the OP implied Apple and Google did so jointly. As the first sentence of my post states, Apple controls the iOS market, not the Android market.
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I'm not, that's why we have regulators to write exactly what you are asking for. Asking a collection of ~550 elected people to be experts on everything (even if you multiply that by 10 to include their staff) is not reasonable. Especially so when you consider that someone may hold an elected position for as little as 2 years (assuming they don't leave early). There is no reason to think an elected official should be expert enough to decide what requirements there should be for automotive lighting (49 CFR 571.108) (even if I disagree with the current regulations, I don't think it is elected officials who should change it).
You need career bureaucrats and experts defining and updating regulations (and more frequently than anything should go to a vote of representatives). We absolutely do not want every regulation to be turned into a political statement intended to win elections. So no, I disagree, writing overly prescriptive laws is not what elected officials should be doing. They should be defining high level policies and objectives and writing laws that provide over arching guidance and empowering regulators to define specific ways to achieve those ends. The details of specific requirements should be left to experts and do not need to be sent to the president for approval.
This is not to say that regulations shouldn't occasionally be pushed against by the elected officials, they certainly should have overall oversight and if an organization is over stepping it is certainly in congress's and the judiciary's power and responsibility to reign them in.
And yet we've spent the last 250 years interpreting and arguing what they "meant" sometimes with 180 degree change in interpretation from a prior decision. So no the handful of guys didn't make a new government with no room for interpretation.
You also seem to be a bit ignorant about how regulations work. Sometimes regulators write the regulations to the best of their ability and then the affected industries get out their pencils (and lawyers) and look for ways to meet the letter even if not the intent of the regulation (assuming they don't just fight it in court instead). Then ideally the regulations are revised to close the loop holes. That's how it should work. And to head off the predicted, "they should get it right the first time, then" argument I'll just counter with if that's true then programmers shouldn't need debuggers and writers shouldn't need editors. Regulators are still human and make mistakes and miss things, meanwhile businesses can get surprisingly creative to save a few dollars.
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Dont fall for it. Apple and Android are pretty much the same, as far as privacy goes -- Android is more secure than people think (and can be made totally locked down with variants) and iOS is less secure than people think (one single OS to attack, no transparency, not open source). But by default, they're really not different. Apple just markets more, but in typical Apple fashion, they give no details...
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So you also remember that the net neutrality being overturned willy-nilly just because the FCC changed hands under Trump, right?
FCC has the authority to regulate, but how often must back-and-forth like that happen for people to get that codifying it somewhere is a good idea?
I am not American so maybe I’m wrong interpreting it, but a quick skim of Wikipedia says a lot of states agree and have written their own laws.
As for antitrust: if you want something different that the current laws say and precedents give you and go on to sue and/or fine anyways, you are going to lose in court, as the FTC is learning in the hard way.
You do not run to referee to bicker what rules you want to get changed. Similarly, you don’t run to the court to beg the question that who should lose with the currently laws not working in your favor; you run to congress/the EC or whatever for new laws.
As I said, I take issue with how the DMA propose to regulate and the arbitrarily chosen limits and categories, but EU is totally correct on creating a new law instead of using old ones with poor fit.
Edit: mixed up FCC and FTC in the first half.
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There is no expectation that every law is final and of course there can be unforeseenable “workarounds” that need to be closed after the fact.
But It’s one thing to do small fixes when the general idea is correct, it’s another if your guiding principle of writing the law misses the mark.
Like the GDPR rules around Cookies: Cookies aren’t dangerous, data aggregators (using Cookies) can potentially be. So why am I greeted with a prompt on every site to decide what Cookies I want (hoping not to break site functionality), not with what data aggregators I consent to track me across the internet.
Don’t see that part of the GDPR gets amended or replaced anytime soon.
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And no, I'm not gonna touch official AppStore even with a meter long stick. For some reason I'm expected to pay 90$/year + buy a piece of e-waste just to package the app (and no, I'm not hating on macs, they are decent, but I already have a workstation, so for me, it's a piece of e-waste). Also, I personally don't agree with Apple content policies, but that's more of a me thing.
EDIT: Okay, maybe that was a bit too emotional, so let's actually talk about problems for OSS/FOSS on AppStore. The main problems are ones I've stated above - an obligation to buy Apple hardware and developer account. This by definition forces you to make your app paid (unless you're maintaining a big project with sponsorships and big donations). While this isn't much of a problem, for small apps, it's still requiring an investment that isn't guaranteed to even pay for itself (at least in reasonable time). Many FOSS apps are pretty niche, so why even bother supporting this platform? Also, going through AppStore moderation is a pain in the ass, it can take a ton of time to publish a simple bug fix. Because of this, many FOSS apps I've seen, only support iOS through JB or exploits like TrollStore (or, of course, something like AltStore Server).
It's not really a problem, it's not like FOSS apps are made for money, so there is no need to chase all possible platforms. But it still would've been nice to bring open source to iPhones & iPads. Really hoped that making something like F-Droid would be possible on iOS. But it's Apple, so we can't have neat things.
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I take issue with this unbalanced stance. Because this results in tactics like monopolization, achieved through aggressiveness such as bullying and crushing the smaller ones underneath them. First they strangle the 3rd party developers of any real finance, no matter how amazing their app is or how well it sells, then they buyout that developer and it's assets if it does amazingly well to further bolster their overlord position. Any that do not sell up that are proving to be popular, are then crushed underfoot instead by copying their idea with an alternative but slightly different program from the big guys at the top, who then abuse their power over the ecosystem to push the small guy who was unwilling to sell into obscurity in the store whilst slapping their own competing product into the limelight with aggressive advertising and large banners.
No, just because you've created a popular product that sells well, does not mean you can bully and destroy the competition through abuse of the market you have gained and the money that comes with it. Yes they deserve to make money, but no they don't deserve free reign to piss on everyone. Rules are put in place to ensure competition has a fair chance without this kind of BS.
By acting in quite an obvious way in bad faith of the rules, they do exactly deserve the fine they'll receive, since they knew full well that'd be a possibility in response. It's not the fault of the people who wrote legislation with flaws that could be taken advantage of or worked around, but rather the fault of the ones that specifically do that without any effort to at least meet partway with what the legislation was trying to achieve in the first place. If you want to sell in an economic zone, do the right thing and stop pissing on their lawn.
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Stop making excuses. Chevron was FORTY years ago. Roe was FIFTY years ago. You see, you and I have very different ways of handling these things. You go in assuming defeat, and I do not. When I spent 20 years actively working on building support for marriage equality, I didn’t sit and moan about how it hadn’t worked before, nor did I waste my breath calling the people whose support I needed names. I talked to people, let them know why it mattered to me, knocked on doors, called people, went to places that never would have seen me otherwise, and stripped the listeners of the ability to assume I was some alien species or caricature as per Fox News. For years. And years. And over time it worked.
What are you doing? Throwing up your hands and leaning on tenuous tricks and temporary fixes, and complaining from afar. DO THE WORK. Stop making flimsy excuses. It is not convenient nor is it fast. I don’t care. Do it, or shut up when you do not get what you want.
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The reason antitrust in the U.S. is fucked is for two reasons: Reagan and Bork fucked us over by enshrining the bullshit Consumer Harm Standard as practice within the antitrust regulatory framework through the years. And corporate lobbyist scumbags keep scuttling that much-needed antitrust legislation.
AICOA and OAMA were antitrust bills like you said they should be writing up. But lobbyists threw queer people under the bus to stoke up fears about what would happen if AICOA and OAMA would pass. The law got amended to fix the "bad stuff" even though it didn't need to be amended, but it never moved forward after that because the damage had already been done by the lobbyist shitheels.
Looking at the FTC losing court cases as if the win/loss ratio is important, when Khan's FTC and the DOJ have been racking up victories and slowly shifting things back to where they were before Reagan and Bork fucked things up. People who think that killing Chevron will lead to better regulatory and legislative outcomes straight-up do not understand what they're asking for. It would be a nightmare.
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I complain, but nobody cares what I think. I would really like to be able to install whatever I want on my iPad.
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