← The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:01]
A
Your film is now ready to be shown.
- [00:12]
B
Good morning. I'm Justin Hendricks, editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish reporting, analysis and perspective on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. Back in 2022, after Elon Musk announced his bid to purchase the platform then known as Twitter, former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and visited Musk at a Tesla plant in Austin, Texas. Part of their discussion focused on the EU's Digital Services act, the DSA, which was politically agreed right around the time that Musk made his offer to purchase Twitter.
- [00:41]
A
So we are in Austin together with Elon Musk. Thank you very much, Elon, for welcoming me. Thank you most welcome. And of course we discussed many issues and I was happy to be able to explain to you the DSA a new regulation in Europe. And I think that now you understand very well. It fits pretty well with what you think we should do in a platform. No, I think it's exactly aligned with my thinking. I very much agree with. It's been a great discussion and I really think.
- [01:11]
B
I agree with everything you said.
- [01:13]
A
Really. I think we're all very much of the same mind and.
- [01:18]
B
I think just.
- [01:19]
A
Anything that.
- [01:22]
B
My companies can do that.
- [01:23]
A
Would be beneficial to Europe, we want to do that.
- [01:25]
B
Much has changed since that exchange. For some time, it has been clear that Musk was on a collision course with the Commission, given his management of the platform now known as X. On Friday, the European Commission announced a 120 million euro fine on X for failure to comply with the DSA. Here's a Commission spokesperson announcing the action and the basis for it on Friday.
- [01:45]
C
Today, the Commission has issued a fine of 120 million Euro to X for breaching the Digital Services Act. This is the first ever fine under the dsa. X has indeed breached its transparency obligation under the dsa. This includes X's blue check mark. It deceives users, anyone can pay to obtain the verified status and X does not meaningfully verify who is behind. Also included includes X advertising repository, which does not work properly and X doesn't provide effective data access for researchers. Failure to comply with the non compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments on top of today's fine. At the same time, we have adopted today and accepted TikTok's commitments to make its own advertising repository work. What does this show? Our objective is not a fine. If you engage constructively with the Commission, we settle cases. If you do not, we take action.
- [02:56]
B
But despite the measured tone of European regulators, Musk and his allies in the Trump administration did not hold back. On Saturday, Musk called for no less than the abolition of the European Union, which he called a tyrannical, unelected bureaucracy oppressing the people of Europe. U.S. secretary of State Marco Rubio said the fine was not just an attack on X, but, quote, an attack on American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments. What's more, the rhetoric by Trump administration officials and other Republicans is congruent with the White House's newly released National Security Strategy, which says it is the policy of the United States to help Europe restore its, quote, civilizational self confidence and Western identity. The document criticizes the European Union as among the transnational bodies that, quote, undermine political liberty and sovereignty, including through, quote, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition. To discuss the fight on X, the political context around it, and other matters at the intersection of tech and regulation, I spoke to an expert, Joris van Hoboken.
- [03:57]
A
I'm Joris Joris van Hoboken. I'm a professor of Information Law at the University of Amsterdam.
- [04:02]
B
You also are part of a project that we track closely, the DSA Observatory. Can you tell my listeners a little bit about it, what it gets up to?
- [04:11]
A
Yeah, so we, we launched this DSA Observatory as an initiative like running up to the legislative process for the Digital services Act in 2020. So it's a little bit ago and yeah, we really aim to be a hub of independent expertise on this important new legislation. So we were involved in following the legislative process, but then pretty quickly also because it went so fast, like the DSA was adopted in quite the record speed, we've moved to all sorts of questions of implementation and enforcement and analysis of the legal framework and how it's performing in practice. So it's a project that's running at the University of Amsterdam, the Institute for Information Law, and there's quite a lot of colleagues also contributing to it and we collaborate a bunch with other academics and also with civil society.
- [05:02]
B
Well, we rely on it at Tech Policy Press. The experts. Experts is how I think of the DSA Observatory. So you all have literally written the book on it and we appreciate all the work that you do. We're going to talk a little bit about the implications of the first big non compliance decision. And fine. Under the DSA, all the headlines are about X and 120 million euros that the Commission has demanded for non compliance. I want to ask you a question essentially trying to get at not so much what's happened, but what happens from here. You know, most folks are familiar with the idea that essentially Elon Musk and His platform have been found to have, you know, done something wrong. They've got to pay a fine. But what happens next? What are the next steps for X in the Commission legally, in the wake of this ruling?
- [05:57]
A
Yeah, so legally speaking, like, I mean, legally, there is like a process, you know, for, you know, access a certain amount of time to, to get into compliance. There's obviously still also the chance to, you know, enter into some kind of discussions also with the European Commission. As we saw in some of the other cases, there's. There's a commitment of the European Commission also to get these, like, kind of binding commitments from companies that are under investigation. That seems to be maybe even like the preferred mode of operation for the Commission to agree on, like, hey, how companies should proceed complying with the dsa. In this case, you know, there were some clear violations. X is still under investigation actually for some other issues that are a bit more sensitive, politically sensitive. But here it's basically a combination of no compliance or transparency obligations. So, like, there are some, like. So one of the, one of the areas is on the areas of the blue check mark and the fact that, like, the way that that has, like, is running and implementing and what is actually happening is concluded to be misleading for users. It's like there are a few things there that like, one can imagine. X could start to comply. Start to comply. Maybe in Europe they would have to rebuild maybe some of their systems. It could be quite complicated though, for some of the obligations to comply with. So in case, like, they're choosing not to comply, they will have to go to court, and that's a possibility. These types of decisions from the European Commission, like the European Commission is acting as a regulator implementing, enforcing the Digital Services act. And anybody that gets subjected by a decision like that can go to court. And that's something that X could choose to do.
- [07:44]
B
I want to ask you a question about the kind of proportionality of the fine. You know, that's been a big focus in the media. Everyone always looks at the sum of money. Was this enough money? Does it matter? You know, everyone kind of puts it in the context of Elon Musk's personal wealth, which of course dwarfs 120 million euro. Fine is a bar tab by comparison. What do you make of the proportionality of the fine in the context of this?
- [08:10]
A
Yeah, I think so. First of all, I'm not sure that the European Commission is really testing the boundaries still of what is possible. They have signaled also under the other platform regulation package, the Digital Markets act, which is more economic Regulation that they're not into kind of like getting to the maximum fine and the maximum deterrent. They're actually really trying to be relatively moderate still could be also because of some of the political pressure and they're really aiming for improvements and showing like the law can lead to improvements in this case. Define and the way to calculate it, it's been going around for almost a year now. I think that apparently also the Commission has been kind of like looking at like, what is the proper basis for calculating, defying. What are they actually targeting? You know, is it like, is it just X as the surface? Is it the broader kind of like corporate structure around X, or is it even Elon Musk, you know, and his wealth, because he's the like single owner of the company. And so what they ended up doing is, is picking a fine that in relation to the company itself, like just the service X, I think it's about four and a half percent of, of revenues, which are calculated to be a bit more than 2 million euros, I think. So that's kind of what they, what they went for. But it's clear that, that maybe like more aggressive fines could be possible in the future. But I think maybe the European Commission is also considering that escalation is possible in the future. But at this point it's a sizable fine though there's a number of clear violations. But overall and looking at the breadth of obligations under the dsa, there are some clear violations, but it's not that there's a conclusion of violation across the board. So I think this defined comes across as relatively proportionate. Probably the European Commission also takes into account the unwillingness of X2 to move into compliance. You know, there have been a bunch of conversations. This is not coming out of the blue. The investigations were opened quite a while ago that probably fed into their thinking on the fine as well.
- [10:24]
B
There was the preliminary results of the investigation, I think, what, more than a year ago. Are there any differences from the preliminary results and you know, kind of what we saw yesterday with the announcement of the enforcement, anything that appears to have changed in the way that the Commission has described what they're holding X responsible for?
- [10:44]
A
That's a good question. I would actually have to look at that still. That's like, I haven't done that analysis. I mean, the thing that I would say like, stands out in particular is that like in the earlier proceeding proceedings and the request for information, there was like a number of issues that X was under investigation for. And on issues related to content moderation, issues related to hate speech, disinformation on the platform and X maybe not being in compliance with their risk management obligations under Article 34 and 35. That is left open and the decision is on the transparency related provisions. So that's like, I think the thing that stands out in particular that like some things are left open still.
- [11:30]
B
I wanted to press you on that. It's something I definitely wanted to ask about. I think most listeners may not be aware that there are other investigations into X ongoing. Can you just say a word or two about that, about this concept of systemic risk? This almost seems like in some ways a more potentially volatile set of issues that the Commission's wading into. The idea of systemic risk is perhaps a lot less defined than consumer deception. I don't know. What do you make of what to expect on that front?
- [12:03]
A
Yeah, I think what to expect on that is also like that we really, and the Commission and everybody kind of needs to learn still of how to work with this framework. And in the first instance it's really been the platforms that have been designated as very large online services.
- [12:20]
To do an assessment of these risks. And these risks there like different buckets, you have illegal content, the fundamental rights risk and then, you know, some specific risks, societal issues, like, you know, issues with civic discourse and also the protection of minors. And so we've had now three years of these risk reports going to the Commission and I think what we can see is that there's generally there's like, you know, like kind of like a bunch of issues that are, you know, being discussed about. But there's overall, there's a sense that maybe, you know, like the risk based approach is, is ultimately going to be difficult to really operationalize in practice. And we don't like, we don't yet know, you know, how the European Commission is really going to give it more teeth because we have had, we haven't seen any kind of direct enforcement actually in relation to X, what happened in 2023, soon after the US attacks and the start of the Israeli war in Gaza. That is when also like under the former European Commissioner there was an exchange with Axel some of the issues in respect to illegal content. And so that is actually where some of that kind of investigatory work of the European Commission started. But we haven't seen a lot of updates since on what is actually under investigation. But overall there, you know, like the Commission has stated that it appears that, you know, like X is not in compliance with their risk obligations with managing illegal content on the platform and managing some of these risks related to hate speech and also civic discourse on the platform, which is not exactly a surprise, though I think we've seen, of course, also under the ownership of, of Elon Musk, that accents had a very particular. Has positioned itself also in a very kind of particular political way in, in Europe and also, of course, internationally. And and so that is, that is something that, that is also feeding, I'm sure, into that investigation.
- [14:26]
B
I want to ask you a little bit about the response that you are seeing from abroad, how you think it's being heard in Europe right now. And of course, the Trump administration has locked arms alongside Musk and regarding this as a censorship action. There's intense political pressure generally on the commission to produce results, as it were. I don't know. What do you make of all the kind of political noise around this, particularly the noise that's coming from across the Atlantic?
- [14:54]
A
Well, definitely the US Administration is good in producing a lot of noise, but it's also, of course, taken seriously. And I think maybe, you know, like the reactions to, to the X fine, they are dwarfed by of course, what, what, what came out of the administration with the national Security strategy. That's a much broader kind of thing and that is really about this transatlantic relation. And also it is about issues of democracy. But it's quite clear that the US Government is, they're planning like, to kind of to interfere basically in the politics in Europe and in the democratic politics of Europe and to be supportive of the far right and the kind of far right talking points on migration and speech. And so this is, I think, what is drawing people's attention even more than this particular kind of reaction to the xpeng, which also, like, is clearly not very convincing. You know, there are possibilities to discuss about, like, what is the appropriate kind of way in which government and government regulation can deal with some of the online content moderation issues. And then there's been, of course, these broader accusations of censorship coming out of the administration that have not been necessarily very convincing. But then we have, in this case, you know, clear, like, violations of things that don't necessarily have much to do with speech. It's about misleading users. It's about lack of transparency, about certain, you know, important mechanisms like transparency about advertising and also researchers being able to do research on the data of the platform. I think that in that case it's just kind of showing a willingness of US Administration and people at the highest level to keep, like, somehow weaponizing and pushing and trying to have as much leverage as possible. But I think, yeah, in this case on the X fine. It just doesn't. It's not very convincing.
- [16:50]
B
Let me ask you about just feeling in Europe as this ruling came down or as this enforcement was announced. What's the mood like in the bubble or around it? What do you think people were sort of feeling as this was happening?
- [17:06]
A
No, I mean, I think there's been significant pressure also building up a little bit in the last months and weeks. Last week still, of course, Macron said something about it. There's been also in the European Parliament, building pressure overall. Civil society is making it very clear that they're, like, at a loss of, like, hey, when are you starting to really do work on this? When are you really going to enforce it? You're seeing all these preliminary findings and we don't see any fines and there's clear violations. So I think, like, the moods within, like, you know, expert circles is like, this is a very good sign that, like, the European Commission is actually going to follow through. It's also, I think, very clear that more, know, decisions will come. And that's generally seen, I think, as a, as a very positive thing that Europe is standing by, you know, like, the rules that it, that it adopted, also through democratic processes. Let's make it very clear, if the European Commission does make mistakes, we do have courts, you know, like to go to and to and to offer corrections to any kind of overreach.
- [18:12]
If that were the case. So I think.
- [18:16]
There'S a mood change in that regard and I think people will be following closely what will be coming next and also maybe seeing an appetite to continue working with some of these tools also that the DSA is offering, as we are at the moment in Europe, going through this new push for competitiveness, also like a simplification agenda and discussions are ongoing. It was like, what is that going to mean for the DDSA and the DMA? And even though evaluation and these kinds of things will only be happening to 2027, it's very clear that there needs to be something done to show that all this new regulation actually has value. So I think that's the path that the European Commission is on. And that's also the whole broader ecosystem of entities that are also, you know, like, part of the broader kind of, like, ecosystem that can also help with the enforcement, including also through litigation. They're probably feeling supported by this, by this new development.
- [19:20]
B
So all the news headlines for the most part were about X, but other things came out of the Commission in the last few weeks and also alongside the X enforcement yesterday let's talk about TikTok first. This more of essentially a kind of settlement with the Commission over the investigation into that platform. What do you make of it and how does it fit alongside Newsround X? What does it tell us about the Commission's enforcement of the Digital Services Act?
- [19:50]
A
No, so what I mentioned earlier, I think very clearly that the European Commission is like very interested in coming like to this kind of binding commitments and not getting to the place where they have to issue fines. And, and I think that it maybe signals different things. I think it signals that the Commission does believe maybe also that ultimately the companies should be in the driving seat of how to organize their compliance. This is something also that the risk based approach does. I don't think the Commission thinks that they have all the expertise of how to do things the best way. And so with these kinds of binding commitments they do also give like a certain amount of space to, to companies to come up with the right measures to, to get into compliance. The second thing I would say though is on TikTok, you know, like for also maybe people that are not so, you know, familiar with the specifics of this investigation and the ultimate decision and the commitments that were made. I even also personally feel that when I think about TikTok and the kind of issues maybe that TikTok has from, you know, like a broader societal perspective, I'm more thinking about maybe addictive design recommender system types of issues, disinformation kind of issues. And these are not the issues that were decided on by the Commission by and large. For me there's a sense of this is maybe not the end of the discussion also between the Commission and TikTok. And there I think it is interesting to see also the broader developments around especially maybe child safety of course, because TikTok is also very popular with younger users and you see that also the European Parliament putting significant pressure also in the area of these types of topics of addictive design and impact on minors of services like TikTok. So I do expect that we're seeing a bunch of commitments on some specific aspects, but that doesn't, it's not the end of the story for TikTok and DSA enforcement.
- [21:48]
B
The Commission has a lot of other investigations going under the dsa. Any that you're particularly watching or any that you're aware that we might see, you know, enforcement action or judgment on in the near term?
- [22:01]
A
No, I think in the, in the social media space the meta investigations are important. I think so here also the Commission is not necessarily like Targeting the, really the speech norms and things like that. But like, they're having issues with the way that the Meta services designs, you know, like the procedures for notifying Meta services of illegal content and issues with the content. So we have laws in Europe that allow anybody, you know, like to start some kind of legal proceedings about like illegal content online. So it's not that like people are dependent on the DSA for dealing with issues of illegality and harm. The thing is that a lot of the procedures that exist, they're costly, they're difficult, they're maybe like, they're. They cost a long time to go to a court. So really what the DSA also tries to do is say there should be this kind of low threshold types of procedure available to people to notify services of illegal content. And you know, these procedures should be time efficient and they should, you know, like get to, you know, like get to a result that then also can be appealed by users. So it's really on these types of procedures that the DSA is trying to add value, you know, low thresholds for regular users. And then when you see the implementation of this by Meta, and that's what the European Commission has reacted to, is that they're really difficult for users. And users are also steered into the direction to basically notify just about terms of service violations instead of like complaining that something is illegal or unlawful under European law. And then basically things get triggered and channeled in particular directions that are not necessarily in the interest of users. So it's really about the design of these kind of procedures and the usability of these procedures to users. That Meta is also under investigation and I do expect that the Commission takes that very seriously. We have seen that earlier. It's not the first time that this kind of happens. And we've seen it earlier on the German legislation on the netstegue. That the way that also at the time Facebook implemented those obligations under German law, they were misleading. They were kind of like designing things. They're designing the compliance in a way that's really not in the spirit of the law. And they were also found at the time. And I expect that that would also happen again.
- [24:33]
B
I think the picture that's sort of emerging, and tell me if you agree with this, but just seems like a kind of reasonable regulator enforcing the law. It's picked off, for the most part, things that are more straightforward to deal with upfront and some of the more complicated things it's still yet to deal with. Is that right? Generally, I mean, I think there's so much noise from where I sit over in the United States. And we're so unused on some level to seeing regulatory action against these tech firms that everyone has this kind of caricature in their mind of fusty European regulators. But I don't know. In many ways this seems boring.
- [25:14]
A
Yeah, well, the overall politics is generally also not boring. I do think that you're right that maybe, you know, and this is like, makes complete sense, you know, like that some of the easier issues, like sometimes of rules, they're just very clear. You, you comply or you don't, you know, it is directly visible and it can be documented. And that's going to make investigations and decision making also by the regulator much easier. Yeah, so. And some of those things are not. Some of those violations are much harder to document. They require also some decisions on precisely how to interpret things like these risk management obligations to, you know, like make some proportionality assessments. Like, hey, if we require or think that there should be some, some kind of mitigation, what could it mean for fundamental rights? And the more political issues around how certain types of decisions could be perceived by the public. But just alone documenting the violations and coming with solid legal theories around whether there is a violation, it takes a lot of time. In some places of the dsa, we are dealing with new types of law. And so that just takes a long time. I think the commission is quite set on not making really, you know, like, so they don't want to be caught with a whole bunch of procedural mistakes. They don't want to end up, you know, like picking, picking a target that then, you know, like they get back into their phases like, and it fails. So it makes sense. But I do think that there was maybe some delay with some of these also even easier types of decisions or more compliant. There's maybe was some delay because of the preference of getting binding commitments. That obviously takes time to negotiate. But now the first real decision and fang is out. It's also one of the politically more sensitive ones. So I think we can expect more of them. Some of them also being relatively straightforward and maybe boring. But I do expect that we will see some of the more boring stuff also being picked up at some point because just because that, that took more time.
- [27:28]
B
While I have you, I also want to ask you about another thing that happened this week at the Court of Justice. The European Union delivered a judgment and A Case X vs. Rust Media Digital and Informed Media Press. Can you tell my listener just a little bit about what this case is and why it matters?
- [27:46]
A
Yes. So there's been, there's been a discussion in Europe about like what is precisely the responsibility and liability of intermediaries online that deal with user generated content. You know, like social media companies and other types of online platforms. And they have these like protections against you know, like liability. They're conditional like, but as long as you don't like really have knowledge of specific issues, you should generally not be held liable. That also carries over in the Digital Services act and the overall rule then also like one like the big rules in this space is that governments and course they should not be allowed to put general monitoring obligations on these kinds of platforms that facilitate user generated content. So there should not be strict liability. There should not be an obligation on these platforms to check every piece of content that is posted on the platform for issues of illegality. We've seen over the years some rulings that are kind of pushing on the boundary of you know, what is this general monetary obligation and maybe some specific monitoring can be allowed. We have seen these debates under the Copyright Directive and the need for you know, some, some type of filtering of, of copyright protected content. And we've seen also like in areas of defamation, we've seen cases, there's this recent case again where you know, the court was asked to, to determine whether like hosting providers were you know, in particular responsible also for complying with data protection rules and data protection rules under the gdpr. And, and the court concluded that this was indeed the case and that this hosting provider in the case, RUS Media, which allowed for, you know, like third parties to post advertisements with personal data, whether they were responsible for complying with the GDPR with like the handling of this personal data. Some people have concluded that because the court said there is this responsibility under the gdpr, the RUS Media site can be considered like a controller for the personal data jointly with the advertiser that somehow that means that there's a general monitoring obligation. They will have to just monitor everything that comes on the site. But the court didn't say that. And in some of these other judgments also the court was quite careful not to say this means, you know, like that to comply the company has to do this and that they have to do filtering. They have to do like basically scanning all the content, prevent any illegal content. They don't say that but they make it clear that there is a compliance obligation. But the way that that can be organized, it doesn't have to entail general monitoring. But this is an ongoing discussion. It, it hit quite a bit and it was also picked up in, in the US and you know, some people have been like, alarmed with the development. There are some issues with the ruling. But I think it's important, you know, like to recognize that if the court doesn't say that there has to be general monitoring, we can still conclude also on the basis of general principles of European law, that hosting providers, social media, they don't have to take draconian measures, you know, that would be clearly like involving mass surveillance of the user scanning all the golden, like very restrictive towards the freedom of expression of users on the Internet. And so that is, that's the position I have on that. And ultimately I think what we see with some of these rulings that maybe there's some mistake in the way that like the court has, like maybe there's some lack of balance in the ruling, but there will be opportunities in the future to, to correct that.
- [31:32]
B
So with all of this going on, I can't help but also ask about the digital omnibus and Europe's general effort to kind of relax the red tape or cut red tape around its digital regulation. I don't know. What are you thinking on that at the moment? We have a final text to review. A lot of folks in civil society are upset, disappointed and concerned, I think fair to say. What do you make of it from your seat?
- [32:00]
A
No, I mean, unfortunately, the first omnibus act, it doesn't look like it's very well crafted. And one of the things it does, it's attacking some core principles also of the GDPR and so of data protection in Europe. And data protection has been under attack. It's been said to create too much cost and burdens and be bad for innovation. And it's possible that to rethink some of the ways in which the DSA puts certain burdens. But what is happening is also is really some of the kind of big industry talking points on the gdpr. What could change they're picked up like making some changes in which the concept of personal data, how it operates and also creating more space for reuse of data, also for AI and restricting important rights of individuals like getting access to their data, which have really been at the core of data protection law since the start. I expect this to blow up. I don't think this is going to go politically well. I think even if some of these changes would be adopted as law, they're very vulnerable to litigation also because the right to data protection is in the charter. But most of all, also I'm quite worried that the whole process of simplification, it's not going to work as maybe people hope that it will work. As a legal expert, I would say, you know, like, I've been also struggling to keep up with the amount of digital regulation coming out of Europe. You know, it's clear that also, like, an effort to systematize some of the laws that have been adopted to. To prevent like, like, bad ways in overlap and maybe sometimes even conflicting rules. There's really something that could be done there. But typically this takes, you know, like, quite a lot of thinking and work and now just kind of scrapping certain things with law, it easily is just gonna. I think it's gonna easily just blow up and make things even more complicated. What's not happening is that we have, like, some kind of committee that gets to decide which parts of the law gets to be scrapped. That's not how it works. Like, actually, all these omnibus proposals will be legal proposals themselves, and then the European Parliament can say something about it and the council can say something about it. And often the compromise, you know, that comes out of it is more complicated than the original proposal. And easily, of course, new things will be added through the simplification process because, like, that seems like, politically opportune to do so before, you know, like, the simplification process is actually making things more complicated. And so I think the whole mechanism, it sounds great maybe, but I think it's. It's going to. It's going to be difficult to really get to simpler rules in the way that this is happening.
- [35:02]
B
A little more than a year ago, you had a piece on tech policy press called A Brussels Affect with Petrus. And I think the listener is well familiar with the idea of the Brussels effect, you know, the phenomenon where Europe sets worldwide norms or seeks to set worldwide norms where its regulators are sort of seen as a. A gold standard. But your piece kind of asked the question, you know, sort of, what are we doing here? Right, and what's this all for? On some level, I don't know, as you step back from all of this and, you know, even admitting that it's getting difficult now to follow every regulation, and I'm certain all the proceedings and all of the detail of all of this. Where's your head at on the Brussels affect at this point?
- [35:51]
A
Well, thanks for asking that. And about the piece, which we, yeah, we really enjoyed working on, and, and we got good reactions. And I think, you know, one of the things that we really questioning is this kind of pride around, like, being the regulator of the world and really be like, do we really want to do we really want to go there. Also just looking at it in an historical perspective for Europe to setting the rules for the rest of the world is kind of by itself problematic. And also we question whether like on some of these regulations actually that's actually something that we would want overall we're saying let's be much more cautious about this Brussels effect. If I would like add to it now, I mean the Brussels effect thing is off the table now. This is a thing from the last commission period and it underpinned some of this push to adopt the dsa, to adopt the DMA in record time. To also adopt the AI act, you know, to still include also regulation of general purpose AI models like LLMs and things like to still pull it into the AI, to be the first that regulating in this, in this space and then to rely on this mechanism of the European market, you know, to have like an out sized, also like standard setting kind of impact internationally. And I think here we see really the geopolitics have really changed and just relying also on markets to do this kind of work.
- [37:23]
It's not enough. There was not so long ago was a piece in an opinion piece called the Brussels Defect. And it was about this kind of thinking in Europe about this open markets, regulation of markets, creating incentives for the players. That's kind of the way that you could set standards and basically saying the geopolitics have really changed and that's not really how it works anymore. Maybe a second thing I would say about it, and that's something we discussed in the piece, is also this way of saying we have these values in Europe and these values should be put into these regulations. And that's why it's also a good thing we get these standards that are having a more global impact because we have these beautiful rules, we have these beautiful values. And so that's also something that is not part of the kind of political climate anymore. Like we discussed earlier, the focus is really on competitiveness. Instead of like regulating for values, it's deregulation that is going to make Europe more competitive and also like make Europe more digitally sovereign is actually to be more competitive and to deregulate. And so there a lot of stuff has shifted. So on the one hand, you know, like that is just more maybe Europe showing party also its real face and starting to show itself in, in this new way. But I, you know, I do think there's also like a serious concern about values becoming maybe even less part seriously of the, of the regulatory mix.
- [39:02]
B
What's next for the DSA observatory. I mean it's a big project to follow all of this. You all have produced so much detailed documentation and scrutinize this thing very, very closely with a magnifying glass. Will you be able to kind of keep at it?
- [39:17]
A
Yeah, we're definitely planning to. And like we keep doing a bunch of work on the risk based approach. We are really interested also in the data access obligations like for that allowing researchers to document issues of risk and how they're mitigated. What we also do is try to build community around this law and the expertise around these laws. And so the major thing that's upcoming is a big conference we are organiz February on the 16th and 70s where we're bringing like the research community together and including all sorts of other stakeholders, you know, that are, that are working on the dsa. So that's, that's really the big thing at the moment to, to pull that all together.
- [39:57]
B
Before we go, I have to ask you. You play in a band?
- [40:01]
A
Yeah, that's. That's correct. I play in a band and I have a concert tonight.
- [40:06]
B
And what kind of music and what do you play?
- [40:09]
A
I play punk rock and I play guitar.
- [40:29]
B
Well, I would look forward to coming to see you play some punk rock sometime.
- [40:33]
A
I don't know the becoming so soon to the US anymore. We've played fair amounts in the US but become more complicated.
- [40:40]
B
I'm certain it has. I'm grateful for you taking the time today to speak to me about this. Grateful for all of the analysis you do and support you provide for Tech Policy Press and look forward to talking to you again about this down the line when we have more major action by the commission.
- [40:56]
A
Thanks so much. It was a pleasure.
- [41:24]
B
That's it for this episode. I hope you'll send your feedback. You can write to me at Justin at TechPolicy Press. Thanks to yours. Thanks to my co founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening.
- [41:43]
A
Tech policy press.