Squeeze on Apple, Google and Amazon. The EU Parliament approves DSA and DMA
The European Parliament has definitively approved the new law on digital services (DSA) and the law on digital markets (DMA)
Brussels seeks to curb the power of tech giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.
On Tuesday, the EU Parliament meeting in Strasbourg in plenary session approved the regulations on digital which establishes innovative rules on the responsibility of online companies in an open and competitive digital market.
This is the approval of the law on digital services (DSA) and the law on digital markets (DMA), following the agreements reached between Parliament and the Council on April 23 and March 24.
The Digital Markets Act (Dma) will introduce new “ex ante” competition rules for control tech giants to ensure that markets are fair and open. In essence, the DMA aims to stem the anti-competitive practices of groups such as Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Amazon and Microsoft.
Instead, the DSA will require online platforms to do more to monitor the Internet for illegal content.
Once officially adopted by the Council, Dsa in July and Dma in September, both acts will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and will enter into force twenty days after publication.
"For the first time ever, the European Commission will become the supervisor of gatekeepers and very large online search engines and platforms" announced EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
All the details.
WHAT DMA PROVIDES
DMA is intended to enforce changes in businesses by requiring them to make their messaging services interoperable and provide business users with access to their data.
Business users would be able to promote competing products and services on a platform and reach agreements with customers outside the platforms.
In fact, the DMA aims to ensure that no large online platform that is in a “gatekeeper” position against a large number of users abuses its position to the detriment of companies wishing to access such users.
THE CONSEQUENCES FOR APPLE AND GOOGLE
Therefore, big techs will not be able to privilege their services over those of rivals or prevent users from removing pre-installed software or apps. Two rules that will particularly affect Google and Apple.
But the two American tech giants had already warned the EU , suggesting that the legislation will reduce innovation and efficiency.
THE OBJECTIVES OF THE DSA
The DSA, on the other hand, concerns the regulation of digital services by forcing the main platforms to comply with the laws on online content and to cooperate with the authorities. Specifically, the legislation prohibits targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race and political opinions. In addition, so-called "dark patterns" and deceptive practices aimed at manipulating user choices will be prohibited.
WHAT COMPANIES RISK IN THE EVENT OF DMA AND DSA VIOLATION
Under the DMA, fines for violations can be as high as 10% of a tech giant's global annual turnover, or as much as 20% for repeat offenders. While the penalties under the DSA can reach up to 6% of the global annual turnover.
THE PAUSE OF AIE AND FEP
Full satisfaction from the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), together with the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) for the approval of the two regulations.
In particular, Aie considers very positive the choice of the European Union to impose new obligations on the major online platforms, including Amazon. These include in particular: the obligation to share sales data with its "business users" (in the case of Amazon, the publishers); the prohibition of favoring own contents / products for sale on the platform with respect to those of third parties who use the platform as a market place; the ban on applying the "Most-Favored-Nation clause", that is the clause that obliges each third party to offer the platform the best conditions compared to its competitors and new obligations regarding the interoperability of content, a crucial issue in the ebook market.
"The obligation to share sales data is of particular importance for us: we live in a company that is based on data analysis and making this data accessible by all the players in the publishing market is essential to ensure the development of free competition. and make publishers able to seize all the opportunities offered by digital ”commented Ricardo Franco Levi, president of Aie and vice president of Fep.
THE NODES TO SOLVE
Finally, many questions remain about the resources for enforcing these new rules, reports Techcrunch .
And it was the European Commissioner Breton who offered a preview of how the Commission is approaching its new supervisory tasks.
Writing in a blog post published today on LinkedIn, shortly after the parliament vote, he said the Commission will set up dedicated teams within the EU's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect) , which will be "organized around thematic domains"; including "the social aspects, the technical aspects and the economic aspects".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/stretta-su-apple-google-e-amazon-il-parlamento-ue-approva-dsa-e-dma/ on Wed, 06 Jul 2022 05:20:33 +0000.