[Advocacy Advisors] That Google vote today

Fri Nov 28 09:30:08 UTC 2014

Thanks Karl and Dimi,

That NYT piece is indeed a good one, putting things in perspective, and 
accurately downplaying things that ought to be downplayed.

I also found this FT article interesting,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5689f7a-7653-11e4-a704-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3KJiEF15l

especially the part about the French and German governments piling in 
behind the sentiment,

> While the parliament resolution is legally toothless, its political demands echo a concerted Franco-German push to convince Brussels to begin regulating more tightly access to internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.
>
> Calling for “public consultation” on these digital heavyweights, Paris and Berlin argued that regulations and antitrust rules should be toughened up to ensure “a level playing field” that allows European companies to compete.
>
> A joint letter to the European Commission, signed by Germany’s Brigitte Zypries and France’s Axelle Lemaire, on behalf of the German and French governments, suggests “essential” digital platforms should potentially be brought under existing rules for telecoms markets, a standalone regulation or specially tailored antitrust rules.
>
> “Essential platforms rely on closed and integrated ecosystems and constitute bottlenecks in certain markets,” said the letter, in a reference to legal doctrine that applies to natural monopolies such as utilities or transport hubs.
>
> “A necessary debate will show which conditions an internet platform has to fulfil to be qualified as essential in the digital world and to what extent these criteria are congruent to the definition of an essential facility in a classical sense.”

As you both say, it's probably not worth making too much of.  But if 
there was an analysis floating around in the next couple of days -- not 
by you, you've both got other things to do, but made by somebody else -- 
as to how the votes went on some of the amendments on this clause 
(rather than the overall final vote), and in particular how different 
national factions of the larger groups voted, that might be interesting 
to have.

But only if somebody else has done the work!

All best,

    James.

On 28/11/2014 07:21, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> @Karl thanks for the analysis! Very helpful.
>
> I honestly believe that what it was a media stunt. Here's what I think
> happened:
>
> The larger groups are in a grand coalition now and took some questionable
> positions - regarding international trade agreements and not dealing with
> some leaks about J-C Juncker.
>
> Simultaneously, in Germnay there is a lot of polemics surrounding the
> failed "ancillary copyright" for publishers (trying to get Google to pay
> for snippets displayed in search results). The German Commissioner
> Oettinger has publicly toyed with the idea of introducing it Europe wide,
> perhaps as part of a copyright reform deal. While such a piece of
> legislation would be DOA, punching giants like Google scores you a lot of
> sympathy points with the media and the public. And since it is just a
> resolution, it doesn't cost much political capital.
>
> The larger parties wanted to show that they're not always just defending
> "big business" and care about the "little guy" instead. What better way
> than to do this in a fuzzy, non-binding resolution? Most jumped on the
> bandwagon.
>
> I wouldn't read too much into this, but then again, the two largest groups
> voted in favour of it. Perhaps we can spin points 1-3 in our favour
> somehow, in case they don't support Free Knowledge in the future. The text
> reads: "address all existing barriers", " any legislative proposal related
> to the digital single market must comply with the EU Charter of Fundamental
> Rights" and "tackle and combat the digital divide in order to fully grasp
> the potential ".
>
> Dimi
>
> 2014-11-28 2:28 GMT+01:00 Karl Sigfrid <karl at wikimedia.be>:
>
>>   James,
>>
>> I cannot offer an in-depth analysis, but here are a few additions to what
>> you have already written:
>>
>> The resolution originates from within the EPP group, authored by, the
>> German Christian Democrat Andreas Schwab. As you point out, it was then
>> tabled by members from both EPP and S&D.
>>
>> Here is the entire thing for anyone interested:
>>
>>
>> http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B8-2014-0286&language=EN
>>
>> What some have described as a call for a Google break-up can be found as
>> item number 10 in the list. Judging from the non-committal formulations, it
>> is probably not meant to be taken as more than a general signal of
>> discontent.
>>
>> The parliament says in the resolution that the Commission should
>> “consider” proposals to unbundle search engines from other commercial
>> services “as one potential long term means” to achieve its policy goals.
>>
>> In other words, they don't really take a stand for unbundling. Only for
>> viewing unbundling as one of many options, but that doesn't make a very
>> good headline.
>>
>> A reason for the resolution to come now could be that we have a new
>> antitrust Commissioner whom the EP wants to encourage to follow up on
>> previous efforts to scrutinize practices such as integrating Google
>> services with the search engine.
>>
>> An article which I found informative was this one from from the NYT:
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/international/google-european-union.html?_r=0
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Karl
>>
>> James Heald skrev den 11/27/2014 9:10 PM:
>>
>> I appreciate that it was of symbolic value only, and the text is
>> exhortative only, but Dimi and Karl, could you give us a bit of background
>> on the Google vote today.
>>
>> It's always a bit difficult for outsiders to understand what's going on,
>> who's voted for what and why, because even the recorded roll-count votes
>> aren't published for a couple of days, and without really following the
>> dossier it takes a lot of work to unpack which amendment is which, and
>> which groups went which way over it.
>>
>> The crude picture I've got from tweets here and there is that there was an
>> amendment to take out the break-up language from the resolution, with (I
>> think) the Liberals and some national delegations critical of the measure,
>> and the Greens seeing it as a distraction; or worse, as a Trojan horse to
>> force Google to have to index links even if it had to pay for the
>> privilege.
>>
>> But these amendments were voted down roughly 3-to-1 -- presumably by other
>> groups who hadn't written them.
>>
>>
>> Both the Economist and policy tank EPIC had some things to say about why
>> it doesn't appear to make that much sense
>>
>>
>> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21635000-european-moves-against-google-are-about-protecting-companies-not-consumers-should-digital?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/shoulddigitalmonopolies
>>
>> http://www.epicenternetwork.eu/briefings/unbundling-search-engines/
>>
>> Even if Google's market share is massive, search is a very contestable
>> market, and there's very little consumer lock-in.
>>
>> Google's Android can arguably be said to be pro-competitive, a defensive
>> effort that made sense for Google, to prevent its core offerings being
>> sidelined at the Operating System level.
>>
>>
>> So why did this motion get so many MEPs to pile in with their support?
>>
>> Which were the groups that pushed it, and why?
>>
>> And if, as some are saying, this is the publishers showing their
>> legislative power with a warning shot against those who seek a more
>> liberalised downstream copyright environment, is that analysis right; and
>> does it suggest that the forces of restriction have a strong hold on a
>> large swathe of MEPs ?
>>
>> I'd be interested to know the team's analysis.
>>
>>    --  James.
>>
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