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Comment by quitit

1 day ago

>I just read the post about Japan.

Great, now let's stack what you've written in both of your comments directly against what Gruber has written, and not what an imaginary strawman wrote.

You wrote:

1. I have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad.

2. The EU has already gone through the hard work of drafting the law, working with a non-cooperative Apple, and then actually seeing it implemented and the practical issues that arise.

3. Most of his description of what Japan does better is simply “mutual respect”.

Addressing point 1 (again):

I wrote words to the effect of (they're just above): Gruber's writing is not as black and white as you assert and then I made reference to the Japan regulation article as an example where Gruber again makes nuanced arguments towards regulated changes.

That article does not make a blanket statement that regulation is bad, and Gruber points to a long-standing idea that he has which neither the EU nor Japan have regulated, which he believes should be. He's also stated (repeatedly) that he's in favour of link-outs and other commonly requested changes to the app store terms, and believe's Apple are too slow to change on these.

So does Gruber believe all regulation is bad as you have asserted: no. His views are demonstrably in favour of well-minded regulation.

Addressing point 2: The belief that the EU bears the brunt of regulation teething, and that's why it goes well in other regions.

Maybe you skipped the part where Gruber points to a 2021 regulation requirement from Japan, which Apple in fact did not provide resistance to, but worked with the regulatory authority to achieve their goal - then Schiller himself (the overseer of the App store at the time) came out and spoke in public with supportive language. That is an example Gruber provided, however there are plenty more examples of the app store changing policies long before the EU took notice. The EU gets all the attention here because they seem to be uniquely incapable of foreseeing unintended consequences.

So is the EU's leading the source of friction. No and they're not even first in many respects.

Addressing point 3: Gruber makes only immaterial "mutual respect" comparisons between DMA/MSCA.

I'm guessing you skimmed this bit too - Gruber talks at length to MSCA and DMA's approach to regulation, stating that MSCA's changes prioritise privacy and security in contrast to the DMA, and practical aspects such as user safety (that's a wee bit more than "mutual respect"). Secondly that users are not presented with onerous choice screens (see end note 1) which is making reference to the EU's requirement that browser selection screens must be repeatedly shown when the user's default browser is Safari (but not if it's any other browser), Japan doesn't take this approach to a browser selection screen.

So is it true that Gruber makes immaterial comparisons between the two: again no.