The veil of hypocrisy surrounding the Trump administration’s reasons for imposing tariffs and the European Commission’s recent weak show of strength highlight the EU’s structural problem: the absence — in the technology sector and beyond — of a strategically realistic vision by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian on Italian Tech
Continue reading “Why the EU is destined to lose the technology tariff war”
Italy asks Meta, X and LinkedIn to pay VAT. Will there be retaliation from Trump?
Reuters once again raises the issue of data monetisation, but above all that of web tax and the consequent risk (now more concrete than ever) of US retaliation. How realistic is this scenario? A hypothesis by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian on Italian Tech – La Repubblica
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The Wrong Equation…
5g ain’t no 4g+1
What the US FCC Ruling on Net Neutrality Actually Means
The US FCC Ruling favouring Net Neutrality is a definitive step toward the shift of ? Internet-regulation-power from the Parliament to the Government.
It is of little importance whether the FCC endorsed or rejected the (notably wrong and unjust 1) idea of Net Neutrality. What actually counts is that somebody else than a Parliament self-advocated a ruling power affecting fundamental rights that should have remained under the legislative assembly shield.
The US case is not the first and is not alone. Italian Autorità garante per le comunicazioni (a sort of FCC-like independent body) has since longtime passed regulations and opinions about issues that should be a prerogative of the Parliament.The most notably case is the anti online piracy regulation that superimpose a due-process infringing, parallel investigation and trial system to the actual, court-led criminal trials.
- The idea of an equal, non discriminated access to the Internet is not bad as such. But if a State wants to provide this opportunity, it shouldn’t be done at the ISPs and Telcos expenses. In other words: traffic shaping and – in general – the techniques that make possible to prioritize the packet’s transit – allow small companies to compete with bigger ones without the need of huge infrastructural investments. Why smaller companies should be banned by the competition “just” because somebody “wants” a free access? This “need” ought to be satisfied by the State itself with a Net-Neutral, publicly-owned and managed network leaving the private sector free to compete. I understand, of course, that this “socialist” approach is out-of-history and is not backed by an economic rationale. And this is exactly the reason why Net-Neutrality is wrong or – at least – non sustainable if its burden is on the private-sector only. ↩
Google and Germany’s Ministry of Justice: A Wrong Idea of Dominant Position
The Germany’s Ministry of Justice asked Google to disclose its search algorithm because of the Mountain View company dominant position on the relevant market.
The request is not legitimate at least for two main reasons.
First: Google’s current “market position” is not based on a “users’ lock-in” as in the file-format case (for longtime, not being able to open a .doc file has been an effective method to have the users stuck to Microsoft Word). Everybody is free to use whatever search engine of choice. Yes, because Google is not the only kid in town: Yahoo!, Bing, DuckduckGo are in the same business, but steps behind Google. Sure, Google is THE search engine, as Altavista was a few years ago. But who but (some) historians still remember about the Google’s predecessor? And here comes the point: Google’s success is made by the people who use it: give them a better search engine (and additional features) and Google will fall on a fingers’ snap. This is the last iteration of a wrong concept of “dominant position” and “monopoly” when matched with a successful digital business model based on information as quid-pro-quo for providing (partially) free services.
Second: even if the “dominant position doctrine” were relevant to this case, the German solution would be possibly worst than the disease to be cured, because it would set the precedent that a company, for the sake of the “free market”, should be forced to disclose its industrial and trade secrets. Try to tell this to the pharmas or the automotive manufacturers and wait for the answers!
So the bottom line is: If you want to beat Google, instead of tying its hands, do create a better one.