I find it far fetched that Apple would either hire terrible lawyers that lead them astray or competent lawyers that they then ignore. I agree that they are probably hoping to go to court.
Maybe I’m just too American to understand but the idea of “the spirit” of the law seems ridiculous. If you want the law to force Apple to allow slide loading then pass a law that says that. If you want a law that forces Apple to allow any developer to make and distribute software on their platform then pass a law that says that. It certainly seems that they were able to achieve that level of clarity with the USB-C rule. Why isn’t this law like that one? Relying on, “C’mon, we all know what the law really means,” is at best sloppy legislating.
Trying to cover every case explicitly and rigorously just results in the legal mess the US has where you need way more lawyers than other countries to get stuff done, and still results in more abuse from companies since there will always be abusable holes in laws but there wont typically be holes in the spirit of the law.
So the main end result with the US system is that companies employs armies of lawyers so that they can legally break the laws. The main ones who benefits from that are lawyers and the massive companies who can afford them.
> Trying to cover every case explicitly and rigorously
Removing a gate but still charging and entrance fee isn't even close to a far-fetched corner case. I have to believe that the regulators understood they were only regulating the technical side of things, and not the financial side.
If the lobbyists for Spotify and Epic dropped the ball there, that's on them.
Notably, the DMA includes words like "fair" and "reasonable" for which there is no strict robot-like interpretation.
Apple's plans will be evaluated as such by regulators, and there are several provisions which are just plainly anti-competitive, especially the 50 cent per user per year fee just to run an app store. It's really hard to see that holding up.
> 50 cent per user per year fee just to run an app store. It's really hard to see that holding up.
Hard to see a set of circumstances where the regulators succeed in forcing a company to develop and maintain a complex set of APIs for free in perpetuity...
Writing a law without loopholes has the same chances of happening as writing a program without bugs. And continuing with the analogy, a "well-written" law just means the loopholes require more resources to find, thus being available in general only to very rich entities.
However, regardless of fairness or sloppyness, if a large part of society feels the law should be interpreted in a certain way, the fact that it does not literally say that may be irrelevant. Who is going to reprimand the judges if the legislative, the government, the people, the local corporations all feel Apple should be kneecapped?
Did the constitution of the USA not literally say "all men are created equal" while you still had slavery?
Maybe I’m just too American to understand but the idea of “the spirit” of the law seems ridiculous. If you want the law to force Apple to allow slide loading then pass a law that says that. If you want a law that forces Apple to allow any developer to make and distribute software on their platform then pass a law that says that. It certainly seems that they were able to achieve that level of clarity with the USB-C rule. Why isn’t this law like that one? Relying on, “C’mon, we all know what the law really means,” is at best sloppy legislating.