Dear Sir Keir, re: UK tech policy…
A letter to the UK Prime Minister (and my MP) on his government’s troubling technology policy in the era of Donald Trump.
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Category: Regulation
Openness and interoperability at MWC
The annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is undoubtedly the glitziest, most gigantic, shiniest exhibition I’ve ever been to. This years’ featured a panel from the Coalition on Open Digital Ecosystems featuring Google, Samsung and me!
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Fleeing the hellsite: Mastodon vs Bluesky?
Who should win? In one corner, the butterfly of Bluesky… in another, the heavyweight Mastodon… AND THE DIGITAL MARKETS ACT HAS ENTERED THE RING! SENSATIONAL!
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Digital competition law reform Down Under 🦘
With my old friend and colleague Prof. Chris Marsden, we have just responded to the Australian Treasury’s consultation on creating a Digital Markets Act-like ex ante competition regulation regime. We have focused in particular on the possibilities of interoperability mandates, and on lessons learned so far from the EU’s experience with the DMA.
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EDPB guidance on sensitive data and “legitimate interest” processing needs more clarity
This Note is an immediate response to the recent EDPB guidance relating to the processing of certain special categories of personal data that enjoy special protection under the GDPR, commonly referred to as “sensitive data”. The Note explains why the EDPB’s guidance is not clear enough.
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Super Mario publishes EU “competitiveness” report
Part A of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU on “competitiveness” reform was published this morning. In one sentence, he concludes: “Europe must profoundly refocus its collective efforts on closing the innovation gap with the US and China, especially in advanced technologies.”
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No, EU competition policy was not responsible for global IT chaos II
More excitement as the world cleans up after Friday’s global IT chaos, caused directly by poor CrowdStrike testing processes and marking its software as essential to Windows booting — but indirectly by Microsoft allowing inadequately tested/sandboxed code to run in “kernel” mode on PCs, where it can/did cause a system crash on around 8.5m Windows PCs globally and billions of dollars of insured damage.
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Mixing civil service expertise and management roles
Both the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority, and the European Commission’s Competition DG are looking for very senior “digital” experts for senior management roles. Unfortunately I think it’s a mistake to combine the two, as very few people have experience of both.
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X to become DMA-designated gatekeeper?
Exciting news indeed from Brussels. Apparently X has told the European Commission it meets the criteria to be designated as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act 🤩🍿. If so, then we REALLY need the DMA Art. 7 messaging interoperability mandate expanded to social networking services, and aggressive enforcement of those existing provisions which would partly enable this.
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On the persistence of exTwitter
With X/Twitter, Elon Musk seems to be singlehandedly illustrating the exciting antitrust concept of Significant Non-transitory Decreases in Quality while having limited impact on X usage (thanks to network effects).
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