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The Digital Markets Act is a can opener for Big Tech's walled gardens, forcing Apple, Google, and Microsoft to open their platforms whether they like it or not. Henry sat down with Lucas Lasota from the FSFE (Free Software Foundation of Europe) to understand what the DMA actually does, why Big Tech is fighting it in court, and what it means for open source software and your digital freedom.
📱 RESOURCES
• Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE): https://fsfe.org
• Free Software Foundation (FSF US): https://www.fsf.org
• Public Money, Public Code campaign: https://publiccode.eu
📱 RESOURCES
• Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE): https://fsfe.org
• Free Software Foundation (FSF US): https://www.fsf.org
• Public Money, Public Code campaign: https://publiccode.eu
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 INTRO
00:01:36 WHAT IS THE FSFE?
00:04:12 LUCAS' ROLE AT FSFE
00:05:44 INTRO TO THE DMA
00:09:45 THOUGHTS ON REGULATION
00:12:47 PUBLIC MONEY, PUBLIC CODE
00:21:25 BREAKDOWN OF THE DMA
00:30:54 DMA ENFORCEMENTS
00:31:44 INTEROPERABILITY
00:36:20 DMA ENFORCEMENTS (CONT'D)
00:38:50 DMA CRITICISMS
00:50:41 USB-C ON IPHONES
00:53:03 APPLE'S "MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE"
00:56:57 UNDERSTANDING THE EU
01:02:12 EU COMMISSION & OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
01:06:58 DMA'S GLOBAL INFLUENCE
01:11:57 BIG TECH + INTERPRETATION OF LAW
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Interoperability is a can opener, so it allows smaller companies to interact on a level playing field.
Today, it is an absolute honor to have Lucas from the Free Software Foundation of Europe,
one of the most fascinating interviews I've done on this podcast. Lucas comes forward and covers the
Digital Markets Act, what it means, what it actually tries to do, the good and the bad of it,
and he clears up probably like dozens of misconceptions along the way that many of us,
including myself, have likely fallen victim to.
He talks about regulation versus deregulation
and what that means for free software.
And not free as in beer, but free as in free code.
The role of government in open source,
digital sovereignty and open source collaboration,
interoperability, and why that's actually very important
to help fight big tech, and so much more.
This is truly an expert in his field
that's breaking things down so simply for people like me
and probably a lot of you listening.
And so enjoy this interview, and I hope you learn as much as I did.
Hello, Lucas.
Welcome to the podcast.
And I always like to open it up by just asking who you are and what you do.
It's a great pleasure to be here.
Thank you for opening this communication channel.
So my name is Lucas.
I have been working mainly on the legal field.
I'm a postdoc researcher at a university in Germany, the Halle Wittenberg University.
But I also had a second hat.
I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe as a legal project manager.
And there I have been involved in several different policy and legal projects.
So I know a lot of our audience is based in Europe, but still the majority is in the U.S.
So do you mind explaining a bit what the FSFE is for those who don't know what it is?
Absolutely.
The FSFE is a charity, so it's a non-profit organization that empowers users to control technology.
We have a sister organization in the US, the Free Software Foundation, but we are independent.
While the FSF focus on the United States, the FSFE focus more on Europe.
This is our main goal.
And this is important because a lot of the work that the FSFE and FSF also in the United States,
both of them do, is policy and legal work.
And these two types of work, they are pretty much geographically restricted, right?
So the U.S. has this own legislation, and the different countries in the EU have also their own legislation.
So it is good that we are focused on our jurisdictions.
It gives us a better overview of the processes, the democratic process on each country.
But the overall goal of both organizations is to promote and to protect the concept of free software.
Here, when I'm saying free software, I use the term as a synonym of open source software.
But free software, for those who are listening to this for the first time, refers to the freedoms of software.
The freedom to use, to study, to share, and to improve software.
And for that, we divide our work.
The FSFE divides it.
It's working in three main areas.
Public awareness, policy advocacy, and legal intervention.
So when we talk about public awareness,
we want to promote the concept of free software
via educational public awareness campaigns and activities.
But when we have to interact with policymakers,
with decision makers,
then we activate our policy people
And last but not least, we have also several activities for the legal sector.
So we have legal interventions, we do strategy litigation, we organize one of the largest conferences related to legal and licensing issues related to free software.
So basically, these are the three main activities or areas of activities that the Free Software Foundation Europe is involved.
Very nice. And so where do you kind of fall into those three buckets? The last one?
Yes. I mean, since we are a small organization, and I think this is also important to point out that the FSFE and I think the FSF as well, we're not a super huge organization.
FSFE, if I remember correctly, we have 20 employees, but we have a very large network of volunteers.
Volunteers is our core aspect that enables our work.
So although we have 20 staffers, we have 13 groups, including local groups spread all over Europe.
And there are a lot of volunteers in Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Poland, you name it.
And they are very active working for free software.
And due to the limited size of staffers, I think everyone should do a little bit of everything.
So I'm involved with public awareness policy, but my core aspect is legal interventions.
We have some legal activities that go into the bucket of public awareness.
I have some other projects that also is related to, you know, legislative process, regulatory process.
But legal is I spend most of my working time.
Very nice. And so the big thing right now that's being discussed and has been discussed for years at this point now is the DMA, the Digital Markets Act in Europe.
Do you mind giving a very brief intro to the DMA?
I talk about it with our audience, but if anyone's new and they are not in Europe, this might be fairly new for them.
Yes. Thank you already for pointing this.
Yes. The Digital Markets Act is a law oriented to regulate the digital markets.
And when we talk about regulation, yeah, this topic is very broad.
And people start to are ready to think what is about regulation.
Any type of industry, any type of industry, when it becomes important to a degree that, you know,
millions of people are using this type of products and services that are being produced by a determined industry,
it tends to regulation.
Right. Think about the pharmaceutical industry.
Right. Or think about the medical equipment industry.
As soon as we start to use more and more, you know, X-rays type of equipment or equipment that involves nuclear energy, they are regulated.
The automobile industry, you know, we have regulations for safety, for security, you know, regulates how roads should be built, what are the signalization of the roads.
So this type of regulation, industry oriented type of regulation.
The digital industry was an exception because the digital industry grown up very fast.
So one of the characteristics that differentiated the digital industry from the other type of industry
that it grew exponentially and very fast, right?
So think about, well, the internet or even now with the emergence of chatbots and LLMs
In a matter of two or three years, billions of people are using these devices and these services and these products.
And regulation for the digital have been a little bit lagging behind.
So, therefore, the European Union decided to take some steps in order to start regulating the industry.
The DMA is not the only law. There are other laws as well trying to regulate, well, the digital.
I think everybody remember in 2016 when data protection was the buzzword of the moment and EU had the GDPR, right?
And then some moments later, we had the AI Act.
And also when we talk about platform regulation.
So basically, we're talking about platforms, these very large corporations that they connect,
well, consumers from one side and business from other side, right?
So think about Amazon, right?
Amazon put together business that they want to sell things on their platform,
and then consumers come in order to buy.
Social media is another example.
You know, people come from one side, from other side.
So when we are talking about platform, there are two main legislations in the European Union
dedicated to regulate these platforms.
There are the DSA, the Digital Service Act, and now the viewer of our story, the Digital
Markets Act.
Digital Service Act regulate platforms on the content level, while the Digital Markets
Act regulates platforms on the infrastructure level.
So we are talking about infrastructure regulation.
So this is a short introduction to the DMA.
Perfect.
And yeah, we have a lot to dig into here.
But I want to start with a very simple thing I see a lot.
People hear regulation, and I almost have this instinct as well.
And it's not inherently a positive thing in my head always.
And I know, especially in the U.S., for Americans, there's this deep-held belief of, you know,
If you want to start a business, it should be as smooth as possible.
So regulation has this negative association.
So do you have kind of an initial thing to say to people when they hear the concept of
Europe regulating tech companies, which I feel like for Americans can sometimes come across
as a negative thing?
What do you normally respond to that with?
I think regulation is a normal phenomena in any type of business that becomes too important, right?
And I don't think that, although, yes, I also agree that there is good and bad regulation.
And one of the main aspects of my work at FSFE is also to identify regulation that can promote free software,
but also there are regulations that can hinder free software in other aspects of our life.
I don't think that regulation...
Yes, of course.
So, well, let's think about legislation that's put in place in the European Union
concerning procurement of software.
and this software, the legislation, gives the prevalence or gives an advantage or is biased
towards proprietary software. This, in my opinion, is bad regulation, right? Regulation should be
neutral, right? And free software and proprietary software, they should compete on the merits.
But if a regulation gives the, you know, an advantage to proprietary software, I would say
that this is a pretty bad regulation. And this happens, right? This happens and we have been
seeing this a lot. And one of our core activities is called public money, public code. And we think
that the public services, they should use more free software, right? It's toward bad regulation.
We want the public sector to implement good regulation.
On the context of DMA, and by any means, I mean that DMA is a perfect regulation.
No, we are very critical of several aspects of it.
And we have engaged with decision makers to make this better, to increase the level of
free software open standards on it.
But I think that in relation to free software, there are several synergies.
There are several aspects that we can say, yes, this can work.
And if we go ahead, we can make a positive change via regulation.
Got it. And yeah, sorry, I really want to nail this down before we get into the more technical aspects of the DMA.
So public money, public code, something.
And when I'm asking these questions, I'm, you know, of course, being an interviewer here and just getting so these aren't necessarily my views on things.
But I, you know, I covered the FDroid situation pretty extensively and I'm continuing to.
And how, you know, Google's locking down Android a little bit.
And not that long ago when the Trump administration started pulling a lot of funding, one of the funds they pulled impacted a lot of open source projects.
And we did some coverage for this.
And, you know, overwhelmingly our community was like, oh, this is bad. We like our projects. But there were actually some, there was a little bit of pushback from people saying it's not the government's job to like fund things.
So I really just want to quickly like maybe get your views on if somebody thinks that like it's not really the government's job to fund open source projects and neutrality means actually not funding anything, whether it's, you know, open source or proprietary.
Just because I haven't actually asked someone who's more of an expert on this about it yet.
Yes. So, yeah, I also encountered this position a lot out there and I respect them.
However, I have a different kind of position.
And I think the government, as anything in our society, it has a role, right?
And taking the history of the United States, which I respect and I appreciate very much,
I think the best things that the United States achieved, and this is my personal opinion,
don't quote me, you know, the FSA field, this is my personal opinion,
But I'm happy to share this.
It's when, you know, the government money was involved in order to fund things that are really great.
You know, when they put the first man on the moon and many, many other things, it was involved.
So I don't believe society only as, you know, a group of individuals doing their own things.
I do believe that the government and this public money also represents something collectively, a collective effort.
The beauty of the different free software communities is that different people from different backgrounds and with different mindsets, they come together to a common objective.
And then that's why I think that we can agree on collectively, democratically, that there are some things that, you know, a higher institution should fund things or not.
So I don't see the difference when we come to a non-profit organization, a foundation, and then we say, look, perhaps we should fund something that is good, a free software project, right?
To come to a governmental agency, fostering progress, fostering education, fostering wealth,
and say, look, we need to fund some free software projects.
I don't see the difference between involving the private and the public sector when we are building.
Think about a park in our city.
A park is something that puts people together.
There's some greenery.
We like to go there.
We can walk with our dog.
We can go with our family, spend some good time together, some quality time.
And so this park can be involved public money there or can be private money involved.
But the good thing is to have a park on your neighborhood.
And I have this attitude towards free and open source as well.
I think that free and open source, it is ethically and morally speaking, a good way of developing software.
And then if we can get private money to do this, great.
But if we can get public money, then it's also great.
So, yeah, this would be my personal humble position.
Yeah, thanks for sharing.
And, yeah, I always thought it was interesting because if you're a taxpayer, I don't know why there isn't this higher expectation that what your government does isn't transparent.
And they're not using more open source code.
And it's only now that we're seeing the geopolitical space that Europe has always, in my view, seemed to be a little bit better than the U.S. in terms of supporting open source projects.
But now we're seeing Europe really ramp it up big time because of digital sovereignty, because now there's this big wake-up call.
We can't trust big tech companies as much, especially if they're located in another country.
And this is going all directions.
You know, U.S. is scared of Chinese products.
I guess Europe is also probably scared of Chinese products, but Europe is also a bit concerned about using U.S. products.
And now everyone's realizing, well, man, if we invested earlier on in maybe some, you know, open source software that allows us to own our own stuff, have more digital sovereignty, then.
Yeah. So a bit of a side tangent there. But I think it's a big wake up call now people are seeing.
If I may, yes, I agree with you.
But the beauty of open source and free software is the global collaboration.
right is this boundless and you said you covered f-dried i was talking also with f-dried people
and they said look we have developers contributing to the project in south in south asia you know in
latin america and they all come together and and and this is something that when there's this debate
of sovereignty here in europe me myself when when i'm engaged with the dma i make sure to to make this
very clear. Because some people that are involved in the DMA, they tend to take a very protectionist
approach and to create this tension, I would say that, yeah, we don't need North American product,
we don't need a product from that region. I personally, when I'm involved with FSFE in this
type of conversations with decision makers or in academia, I tended to rebook this saying that
the discussion here is rather big tech versus small tech than US versus EU or EU versus China.
I'm convinced that national borders, they don't mean much in the context of free software.
On the contrary, I do think that this borderless collaboration and communication is the way to go.
However, I do think that when the term company, any company in anywhere in the world,
and even here in Europe, you know, a monopoly is a monopoly in the US,
a monopoly is a monopoly in Europe, is a monopoly in Brazil.
As soon as companies become big enough to become a monopoly in digital markets,
nobody wins from this.
Nobody.
Not the North American consumer, not the European consumer,
not the Latin American consumer, nor the South African consumer.
The beauty of free software is that we democratize access to knowledge.
And monopolies, they put barriers to knowledge, right?
And therefore, again, we are talking about bad and good regulations.
So even now, I cannot answer for you with 100% sure that the DMA will become in the future
a good or bad regulation.
Right now, what I can say is that
the Free Software Foundation Europe
is working hard to make DMA a good regulation.
So we don't want to exclude
North American companies on the contrary.
What we want is that everyone
should have the same type of access
to digital markets.
So leveling the playing field.
We don't want monopolies.
So, but for that, we need to fight
in order to make this law viable in this way.
Perfect. No, thank you very much for your insight there. I think you're on the money, and it's exactly the approach that I should have to it and everyone listening.
It reminds me a lot of the discussions about banning platforms like TikTok because they're Chinese-based, but not for the fact that it's a big tech company that's implementing these crazy tracking measures, which if they were actually regulating that instead of the company itself and the origins of the company, then it would also sweep Google, Facebook, etc., all under that same rug as well.
And this is a big issue that we see in the U.S.
To pivot over to the DMA.
So I want to first get a little breakdown from you,
because I don't think many people actually know what the DMA is supposed to do.
There's a lot of misinformation out there.
So why don't we just start with what is the DMA intended to do from a broad point of view?
And then why don't you kind of give a bit of the main,
if there's maybe three to five core things that is really trying to, I guess, zero in on.
Can I start with a small history?
Please do. Whatever you need. I know it's a big topic to kind of touch on.
Okay. So as I was saying, the digital became free from regulation almost for 30 years.
The main aspect of regulating the digital in the US and in the EU was tackling copyright,
Copyright and content moderation.
These were the two main aspects of regulating the digital.
In other areas of the digital, especially the infrastructure one,
they were more regulated already into the already, you know,
kind of consolidated industry which had its own regulation.
It was the telecommunications industry.
So when we wanted to talk about the infrastructure of the digital,
We basically referred to telecommunications law.
While when we wanted specifically to target digital companies,
then we would be more concerned about e-commerce,
you know, perhaps copyright law.
But we would not deal with the infrastructure that is needed
for these companies to flourish, right?
This situation started to change in 2016, more or less, in the US and also in the EU,
when, I already mentioned, when the first regulations about data protection started to emerge.
And in Europe, the debate about regulating the main aspects of the infrastructure for digital happened in a series of antitrust enforcement by the European Commission against Google.
There were several of antitrusts.
And antitrust here is a branch of law that regulates competition, commercial competition among companies.
and there were several antitrust investigations and then enforcements done by the European
Commission which is the responsible for this type of investigation against Google. One of them is
Google Android where from 2013 until 2018 if I'm not mistaken the listeners please can check online
but I'm pretty sure that it was between 2013 and 2018,
when the European Commission started to analyze Google's commercial practice
regarding their search engine, regarding Android as operating system,
regarding their App Store.
And they found that Google was involved in a series of anti-competitive practices.
Relevant for free software, for example, Google imposed on smartphone manufacturers, device manufacturers,
some agreements called anti-fork agreements.
It means like, well, Google provides Android as free and open source,
But if the manufacturers would like to implement Google set of apps, they should not fork Android and have their own fork.
They should use the one that was compatible and accepted and approved by Google.
So there was this compatibility issue.
And the European Commission found that in 2018 that these practices were uncompetitive.
and they imposed huge fines, huge, huge fines on Google.
And then these fines were also confirmed by a court
because Google appealed the decision.
And I mentioned just one case, but there were several of them,
several against Google, several against Apple,
several against Microsoft.
Microsoft was the first tech company that the European Commission
really focused on competition issues.
The FSFE, 20 years ago, were involved in this as well.
So taking it in consideration, this whole thing, especially Google Android, the European Commission
and the European Union said, look, dealing with this only as a remedy measure, because
competition law runs after companies, they don't impose obligations beforehand.
We need to change our position.
So we need to regulate them.
But this is not something new per se.
there was always a moment in the term industry in the automobile industry in the pharmaceutical
industry in in the medical equipment industry that in a determined term in a determined moment
in time there were the well society the parliament the government they decided to say okay perhaps
we need to start regulating them right it happens in 2018 there were some reports very uh influential
reports here in the european union saying that okay we needed to to deal with these companies but
not regulate the market, like the whole spectrum of the digital markets, like
starting from A to Z, right? We needed to choose a layer of companies, if you will,
that we needed to regulate. And they could do, for an example, they could say we will
deal with the smallest one, we will do with the startups one, but they
didn't choose them. They choose the layer of big tech. Therefore, the DMA aims to regulate only a
very specific layer of the market. This is important because this law does not apply to everyone or to
every company. They apply to only a handful of companies. And this handful of companies should
be designated by the European Commission. The majority of the companies nowadays are North
American. There are some Chinese and there are some European as well. Booking, for an example,
in the case of the EMA, Zalando, in the case of the DSA, there are some companies European as well.
Perhaps this is what caused this resentment among North Americans
that the GMA is an anti-American law
because the majority of the companies being regulated is North American.
However, the big tech, the largest tech companies in the world,
for good or bad, if people think that's a good thing,
it's North American, but if people think that's a bad thing,
this is North American.
And so the law applies to these companies.
So they apply to Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, but also TikTok and others.
And which type of obligations they entail?
So then as soon as the European Commission said, look, this law should apply to this company.
And then the European Commission also should determine to which services of these companies.
And then there are a set of criteria, qualitative and quantitative criteria that the regulator should attend.
For example, 45 millions of consumers in the European markets.
So the company needed to be really huge.
we are talking about a huge part of the market.
When the company meets this threshold,
then the law starts to apply to them.
Well, then the type of services.
We are talking about operating systems,
search engines, browsers, app stores,
cloud services, and social media.
And so basically the most important type of services
in digital markets, right?
And last but not least, just to give you this follow-up introduction on the DMA, the type of obligations they intend.
So the obligation to allow third-party, I'm sorry, to allow consumers to install and uninstall software on your devices, to allow the gatekeepers to provide access to third-party app stores, to provide data interoperability, so portability in real time.
So these are the type of obligations that are involved in the DMA.
Very nice. And so what does it kind of look like right now?
And, you know, the follow up is going to be what are the things that you think are good and bad as the FSFE?
Because you even hinted at not all of it being good.
So what are kind of the main things right now that are really trying to be enforced through the DMA?
So today is an interesting day. The commission just started an investigation on the cloud computing industry. Just today that we are speaking. But last year, the commission already analyzed interoperability.
Interoperability was a big element in the DMA.
Commission is analyzing AI and access to AI in operating systems.
Do you mind quickly talking about why interoperability is in the DMA?
Why is there this concept of interoperability being anti-competitive?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think this is a great question.
Yeah, because this interoperability is a can opener in the DMA.
I like to use this analogy, mainly because interoperability is marked by a paradox.
Companies, when they are small, they love interoperability because they want their service to interact with the bigger platform.
So as soon as your small company makes your service compatible with the one with the platform, the value of your service increases.
Think about, you know, if you have a MP3 player and then you can interact and download, you know, music from the platform streaming, you know, you are a smaller app store like FDroid that you covered.
You want FDroid to be present in iOS devices.
You want FDroid to be present in Android devices.
So when you are small, you really want to interact,
to interoperate with the platform.
However, as soon as your company starts growing
and become important to the point
that others want to start interacting with your platform,
then the incentives change.
then you start to limit interoperability to the functions that you only want. So you start to be
very picky, you know, to the ones that you want to interact and not. I will give a very short,
you know, use case, if you will, before the DMA, before the DMA, because the FSFE was already pretty
much involved in a very nice activity which I love, it's called Router Freedom. We also want people
to use their own routers, to install free software on their routers, to be able to choose their routers,
to connect their routers to the internet service provider. But the internet service providers,
before the GMA, they didn't allow you to use your own router here in Europe. They wanted to provide
only with their routers, very crappy routers with no security updates, you know, with proprietary stuff
where you could not you know um yeah uh tweak or install anything you could not set your own home
network so they limited interoperability you wanted to have your uh free open source router they they
said no you have to use my router and this is happening now let's go back again to dma when
google and microsoft and apple they cherry pick and they say i want to provide you with you to
interoperate only here and only there so apple says for an example apple smaller
app stores will not be available on ios you have in order for smaller um uh app stores to be available
have to provide a letter of credits of one billion euro you know uh and for an example you covered
fdroid uh right and then fdroid can google can say can start saying we will not allow
sideloading anymore although i know that they mitigated this policy a little bit but they started
to be uh nitty-peaky on the interoperability so interoperability is a can opener so it allows
smaller companies in smaller players to interact on a level playing field um services with the larger
platforms. Beautifully stated. Thank you. I actually just put out today how WhatsApp
just launched interoperability. And so there are already two live clients. I forgot what they're
called. You might know them. But they are now interoperable with WhatsApp. So you can just
contact the WhatsApp person without even technically needing a WhatsApp account. And
it's pretty awesome because for someone like Signal, this is pretty big for them. And it opens up a big
use case for signal. And now, you know, instead of just ignoring people or forcing them to move to
signal, which I guess it does kind of suck because it loses one of the main selling points of like,
well, you should move completely to signal, but it still allows you to message them and you don't
have to create a WhatsApp account. Some people were complaining that this is, they don't want to talk
with WhatsApp people, but I think they're kind of missing the broader point here. So I think he said
it very well. So that's one part of the DMA, the scan opener. You have, you know, interoperability.
I cut you off, so please go ahead and continue what else you're kind of chasing after with the DMA.
Yes.
So interoperability is so important in the DMA that academics tend to classify interoperability into two types of interoperability, the vertical one and the horizontal one.
Your example of WhatsApp is a perfect example of horizontal interoperability,
where two types of services that are the same messaging type of services,
they should interact with one another.
So this is called horizontal interoperability.
But also there is this vertical interoperability when, you know,
two types of services need to interact in order to communicate.
For example, you want your payment system to access the NFC chip of your device.
Or you want your messaging app to access the camera function on your device when you do a live call, for example.
And then depending on the incentives, it's all about incentives.
The company can limit the type of interoperability.
So we had in the past Apple blocking access to NFC chip, to blocking software interoperability,
for example, to the term functions controlled by iOS that they don't want others to access.
So this is very important.
Last but not least, the DMA.
It's about also, it's a huge law, you know, and not everything is relevant for free software,
right?
Because there are a lot of things regarding social media.
There are things regarding, you know, anti-steering provisions, search engines, how search should
be located.
So there's a huge group of obligations.
But for us, for free software, free and open source software, this basically what I just mentioned, interoperability, the installation of obligations, data portability, real time stream of data, which call data interoperability.
These are the bulk of obligations that are interesting for us.
Got it. And so now the great question is, what parts of the DMA do you guys disagree with?
What do you think is not good and you're fighting to make it better?
And then, of course, you know, what is good?
What are you guys really, like, hugely in support of and why?
The whole debate of the DMA in the beginnings in 2021, and even today, it's pretty much oriented towards industry.
Larger industry, not big tech, but larger industry.
So when you interact with decision makers, be it the European Parliament or the European Commission,
they come already with a mindset, more or less, that the solutions that the DNA should provide
is for big industry.
Not big tech, like the size or scale of Google or Apple, but, you know, a large industry,
know, a large company with hundreds of employees. And here, this is our first disagreement with the
DMA, because we do believe that the DMA should treat also smaller players, individual developers,
non-profits, SMEs, startups, with the same level of respect, if you will, with the big industry.
Because in the end, software industry in Europe, and I would like to stress this, is small tech.
There was a research in 2022 when there was also a very big law recently that this law also
catch the attention of the free software community, which was the Cyber Resilience Act,
which impose differently from the DMA.
The DMA does not impose any type of obligations on smaller providers.
But the CRA, there were some obligations that also,
cyber security obligations that are imposed on smaller providers.
And in this law, there was a research involved in this, a big research,
that 94% of the software industry in the EU is done by SMEs with less than nine employees.
So, software is developed by small tech in Europe.
This is a fact.
It's a plethora of small organizations,
groups of people, individual developers
that are developing software.
So, in this sense,
our first disagreement some years ago with the DMA
was not to include on the text of the law
even more, you know, stronger interoperability obligations
that would contemplate these smaller players.
I'll give a very concrete example.
When the DMA establish an obligation for an interoperability solution,
the providers, for example, WhatsApp for messaging apps
or Google for Android or Apple for App Store,
they are not obliged to use open standards.
If they wanted to use their own standards,
they can do so under the condition
that it should be under fair and reasonable terms, right?
But there is no obligation proposing open standards.
And I'm sad about this
because I do think it was a great opportunity,
a missed opportunity for us to implement a tech
that is interpellable by design
when we have open standards,
when we don't have copyrights,
patents in the way to impose
and to create a new tech
that is more democratic, distributed,
that is aligned with the principles
of free and open source.
So every time that we need to propose
a solution when we are engaging the DMA,
we need to remember this
and we need to remind the policymakers
that, look, when we establish a solution,
it's not only for big players.
And I will give a very concrete example for you.
Last year, we were involved in the discussion about enabling alternative app stores in iOS.
You know, until now, until today, there is no independent app store in iOS.
There is Outdoor.
Everybody knows and loves Outdoor.
They are great guys, but they are still not independent.
Apple still controls how you sideload, how you install apps on iOS.
You know, they imposed via notarization, it's called notarization, this process of app review.
The entire review of apps are not done independently, like in Google, for example, right?
It's done.
Or even macOS.
Or in macOS, perfectly.
Perfectly.
This is crazy, right?
So when we were fighting this, and we are fighting, we helped civil society organizations to submit a formal complaint to the European Commission to enable site loading, to enable alternative app stores in iOS.
When we were fighting about this, we told the European Commission that, look, we needed to
contemplate smaller, you know, developers like F-Droid.
Because the bigger app stores, the bigger commercial proprietary app stores in Europe,
they would be okay in just paying less fees for Apple.
And, you know, if Apple could also retain the control,
but just for them to pay lower fees, that would be okay.
But we went further, much further,
saying, look, only paying lower fees is not good for us.
It's not good.
If this is good for our industry,
this is not good for civil society.
This is not good for smaller free and open source projects.
We really need to disentangle the control from site loading, the control for enabling independent app stores in iOS and Android.
So this is an example that things that we don't like too much in the DMA.
It's oriented to our industries.
And then when there is a solution, you know, may I give another example?
Of course.
The examples are good.
They make it a lot more tangible.
Yeah.
So in the beginning of this year, we criticized also.
We work very close with the commission and we are very appreciated that they hear our positions.
But we put ourselves also in the position of a watchdog.
Like, as I said, there is good and bad regulation.
When the regulation is good, we applaud.
But when the regulation is not good, we complain.
So in the beginning of this year, we were involved in an investigation.
Well, the term is not investigation, but a specification.
The European Commission started to investigate how Apple was dealing, you know, this type of interoperability blocks that I mentioned, not allowing access to camera, not allowing access to NFC chip.
And they opened two specification procedures,
well, basically regulatory procedures
against Apple for hardware
and software interoperability, right?
And we took part
on the software interoperability one.
Other guys took part also
in the hardware interoperability.
But we worked with the commission
on the software interoperability.
we urge the commission to establish interoperability by design.
So, I would say this is a great opportunity
to impose interoperability by design in Apple.
So, what do we do mean by interoperability by design?
Unfactoried side loading.
You know, let's make iOS as macOS.
People can just download things from the internet,
install alternative operating systems.
You know, no need to this app review.
course if Apple wants to retain control on App Store, fine, it's their right, it's their App Store,
they can do so, but if end users want to install an alternative App Store, then like F-Droid, they
can do so, distribute security checks over different App Stores, right? So this would be
some of examples of interoperability by design, when some, you know, Apple should use the same APIs
or provide the same internal APIs that they use and they should document this publicly, you know.
So they use the same type of APIs that third parties can also use. They should document their
APIs, they should document how access is provided for cameras, for NFC chips and etc.
right basically how this is also done uh in android and and this is key uh and that
they do not need necessarily to give away their intellectual property you know they can
um develop interoperability solutions that they do not necessarily to give away their
intellectual property it is completely possible to do via open standards for an example right well
uh that's all good and dandy uh but then when the commission finalized the decision they didn't
impose this on apple they didn't impose interoperability by design instead they they agreed
with apple that apple has a very complex system for requiring interoperability so the the developer
should enter should create an account with apple pay 99 euros uh for uh the development account
and then they should submit their request.
Their request should be like literally a bureaucratic process.
They should write everything.
Then there is a committee from Apple that will decide on this.
And then if the committee doesn't agree, there is a second instance,
and then the developer goes to the second instance.
And then if the second instance also disagrees,
there is a conciliation procedure where a third party comes.
Very bureaucratic, very bureaucratic, you know.
And but for industry, they are accustomed to this, the big industry, you know, and they
have resources to do this.
Startups, SMEs, individual developers, they don't have this.
So we criticized this.
We were not happy with that, you know.
So on a general level now, because just to summarize this very long answer, and I apologize
for this, you said, what is the stance of the DMA, right?
I remain optimistic because I do think that we are moving towards more open kind of tech,
more interoperable.
There are these hiccups.
Yes, I just mentioned some of them.
No open standards, some bureaucratic process to get interoperability.
Yeah, but this is normal because, you know, big tech is fighting seriously against the DMA.
So compromises are a natural process in democracy.
But in general, I do think that the DMA has a huge potential to grow and to make tech more
interoperable by design and more open.
So the first thing, first, okay, actually, before I ask this question, USB-C on iPhones.
Apple will never admit this, ever, ever, ever, ever.
But I am still, and I'm sure a lot of people agree that the EU is the reason we finally got USB-C on iPhones.
Because this was an EU mandate, and I don't think Apple wanted to deal with shipping two different versions of iPhones.
But now they kind of are with the whole SIM thing, because you guys still require physical SIM cards.
The U.S. does not.
So Apple's completely dropped SIM cards.
Now we have two different versions of iPhones.
Is the USB-C thing part of anything we're talking about?
I mean
Or is it different?
No, no, it is part
But the only difference here is on the time frame
The OSBC was a little bit earlier than the DMA
But the type of discussion on OSBC
Is precisely the type of hardware interoperability
That we are talking about
Was this the DMA?
Was it the DSA?
What?
No, it was not the DMA.
Oh, my God, I was involved with this several years ago,
but my memory is killing me.
It was a directive that intended to regulate chargers in the U.S.
I'm sorry, in the EU, you know.
So it was around 2021.
So it was before the DMA to come into force.
But the spirit of this
padronization, standardization
is more or less found as well in the DMA.
There is this hardware
interoperability. Now people are talking about
earbuds, interaction with AI translation
things on earbuds in Apple. I'm not following this
debate too much because this is a more hardware thingy. But on the hardware
side. We are, again, discussing
side loading. We are discussing enabling
app stores, enabling alternative
browsers, access
in
operating systems. So
this is what is happening more or less on the software side.
Got it. And then
so going back to a bit of the negatives
and how Apple is fighting tooth and
nail, and this has been the pattern, is Apple
has fought almost
everything about the DMA as far as I've been able
to see. So there's a lot
of malicious compliance. That's kind of the word I've been seeing a lot kind of define what Apple
is doing here. Where is this shortcoming coming from? Do you see this as a natural part? You
mentioned that there are some natural things that happen of this process. Is that just kind of the
expected role that Apple has to play? Does it mean that the DMA is too aggressive? Does it mean the
DMA isn't aggressive enough? Just kind of what are your views on Apple's malicious compliance approach
to everything that's been imposed on them.
Yes, I heard this term malicious compliance as well.
I'm not sure if I agree 100% with this
because, well, this is the problem.
When we have compliance, we have compliance, right?
But this is a different topic
and I don't think this, yeah.
So to answer precisely your question,
I'm a lawyer as education.
I study in Brazil.
I'm a lawyer in Brazil.
And here in Europe, I'm an academic and also I work for the FSFE.
But my mindset, the way that I see the world is more or less like the lawyers see the world.
And there are always two versions, right?
There are always two versions.
So when we are applying a law, you know, think about family law.
There are always the version of the husband.
There are always the version of the wife.
There is the version of the kid, right?
This is the beauty of the law, but this is also the shortcomings of the law.
You know, this is...
And if you ask me,
as a representative of the Free Software Foundation Europe,
how I interpret Article 6.7 of the DMA,
I will give you an interpretation.
Now, if you invite Apple's lawyer,
you know, they're based in Dublin, I think,
you'll call them and say,
look, can you give me an interpretation
of Article 6.7 of the DMA?
They will give a completely different interpretation.
You know, because this is how law works, right?
And therefore, when commission asks or imposes an obligation to Apple,
Apple will comply as they see fit.
And they say, look, this is my way of doing compliance.
Now, it's the role of the regulators, it's the role of civil society,
it's the role of competitors to say, look, the way that Apple is complying is really bad.
It's malicious compliance.
We should not comply this way.
In the end, then the regulator or the court has to say,
yes, indeed, Apple was wrong.
So this dialectical process is a natural phenomenon.
That's why I said, while we are in a democracy,
we have to deal with this dialectics of law.
The problem with when we have monopolies in the market
is that, well, in a sense, compliance becomes easier
because then we have just one view of the law.
But then the problem of monopolies in the law
is more or less non-democratic societies.
In non-democratic societies, we have just the view of the government.
With a monopoly in the digital markets,
we have just the view of one corporation.
Both are corporations.
Governance or a corporation.
So when we are coming into a democratic process
that we need to comply with the law,
Then Apple will come and say, this is my interpretation.
And then the FSFE as a civil society will come and say, this is our interpretation.
And the commission should come with a solution.
We complain when the commission takes Apple's view more correctly, if we will, than ours.
Then we say, no, look, there's this reason that you should reconsider, right?
But when they accept our vision, then we're happy.
Perfect.
Yeah, so now I kind of want to zoom out a little bit here. And I apologize if you're going to have
to explain some basic, you know, perhaps elementary school, middle school EU stuff here. But it's kind
of funny, you know, when you're based in the US, it seems like a lot of the world has kind of been
imposed. There's this expectation that if you're outside the US, there's some basic things about the
US you have to know. But if you live in the US, it doesn't go back the other way. So I still have
some confusion, but I know a lot of people in the U.S. have some confusion over what is the EU as a
whole, right? And it can be kind of confusing to outsiders because we have things like the DMA that
can be seen as a big win for digital rights. I know not everything's quite positive about it,
like we talked about, but we also see chat control come out of the EU. And I know that's
kind of tapered down a little bit. It seems like it's at least temporarily paused, but we also see
this omnibus happening tomorrow. They're releasing the paperwork for it, and we're kind of waiting to
see if it's good, bad, etc. But overall, the draft that was leaked was very negative,
because it'll weaken GDPR a bit. But then we have great things like the DMA. So can you just briefly
explain how the government is structured, where the regulation comes from, and just general explain
it like I'm five to someone who's outside of the EU, so they can kind of understand the
political nuances here of what is the EU.
Yes.
All right.
So before we enter a little bit into the structure of the EU so we can understand how the legislative
process happened, it's a little bit hard, just as a very zoom out, very zoom out, you
perspective to have a general moral uh judgment on the eu itself uh it's very hard uh to say look
uh yeah sometimes the you have bad regulations sometimes have good regulation this is normal to
at least in my humble perspective to any government you know and that's why we have the shift of
governments uh five four years you know because it's good for governments to change so we have some
fresh air coming sometimes, right? You gave two examples, chat control, a bad thing, you know. So
and even before chat control, we had already some other type of regulations that were really,
really bad. You know, I would say that one of the first regulations to tackle copyright in the first
place back in the 90s, I don't think that it was a very good, wise decision to start regulating
digital with copyright, but this is a topic perhaps for another meeting. Very shortly about the EU.
The EU is a form of government. There are some countries which the government is a king,
like in the UK, or a queen, I'm sorry, right? So basically they have the monarchy, right?
In other countries, well, they have a president, right? Which is democratic elected.
In other countries, they have a dictator, which is not democratically elected, but is there.
The guy or the woman is governing, right?
And the EU is also a form of government.
And it was achieved because the European countries, after World War II, they said,
look, perhaps we need to put our differences aside, and perhaps we need to work together to a common goal.
The origins of the EU, it's very beautiful, because then it was France and Germany coming together
and to make peace and say, look, what we need to avoid two world wars.
The first world war, the second war, because they were deeply involved in this, right?
And they came with an idea to say, look, perhaps we need to share our most important resources.
the resources that we use to build weapons.
It is coal and steel.
And then they created an organization to use commonly,
to share coal and steel.
And there it was the infancy, the emergence of the European Union.
And then it was increasing the type of organization that it became,
I'm sorry, it started with this cooperation in the area of coal and steel, right?
But it started to grow and grow to the extent that basically all types of industry are now regulated
and several other elements are being regulated in what we call a supranational government.
So there are two levels of government.
There is the Union level, European Union level, but also there is the level of governments,
government of France, government of Germany, government of Portugal, government of Ireland,
right?
But in the term cases, they come together and they agree and they say, look, this should
apply to everyone.
And then when they agree, there is a regulation or there is a directive.
Yeah, I think that's a really good overview.
And then do you mind explaining, you know, the EU commission versus some of the other organizations that kind of make up the EU?
I think there's because, you know, we have we have like the executive branch, then we have Congress and then we have the judiciary.
And you guys have your own pretty similar version of that that I think is good to explain and kind of who handles what kind of thing and the scope of what we're discussing today.
Absolutely. The history of the US is also very beautiful because the US consolidated this division of power that was thought in France during the French Revolution.
We are talking 300 years ago when France, they were sick about the medieval times where, you know, the kings ruled together with the church.
And they said, look, perhaps we need to think about a republic, a more, you know, democratic view.
And they came, there are several philosophers, you know, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and several of these very non-philosophers,
which, I'm sorry, thought that, okay, how we should organize this government?
I told you that the European Union is a government, as in the U.S., we have a presidential type of government, right?
In the U., we also have a government here.
But 300 years ago, some guys in France thought how we should organize government, how we should,
you know, empower people in a democratic way.
And then they came with the idea of branches, as you just mentioned, right?
They think, OK, so we need someone to produce the law.
So they should write the law.
And this would be the Congress, the legislative branch of the power.
OK, good.
then we need someone to apply this law, but this should not be the same person, right?
Okay, so when the law is ready, we need to give this law to another person.
And this person is the executive branch.
They want to execute the law, the president, right?
And then in the end, when someone has a problem with the law itself,
perhaps we need a third person to decide on the law.
And this is the judiciary.
These are the courts, right?
So in the US, we have the Supreme Court.
We have, well, the executive branch, and then we have also the Congress.
In the EU, it's the same, absolutely the same.
We have the European Commission, which is the branch, the executive branch.
We don't have a president, but we have a commission, a commissioner from the Lion.
The name is different, but it's more or less the same.
We have the European Parliament, which is, again, as the U.S. Congress, you know.
And there we have parties and we have representatives.
In the US, in the Congress, we have representatives of the state, right?
In the US, we have representatives of the countries.
But the system is the same, more or less.
The principles are the same.
And then, last but not least, we have the Supreme Court in the US
and we have here the European Court of Justice.
To give a concrete example, how the DMA works on this.
So in 2020, in the end of 2020, the European Parliament came with the law.
Said, look, we need to start approving this law.
Then it took some time.
And now I don't remember precisely when the law was passed into law.
I think it was the end of 2022.
But then there was a period for the law to apply, to start being applied.
It was at the beginning of 2024.
Then it means like now the European Commission can start applying the law, right?
So the European Commission started these investigations and it started putting fines.
But this law was prepared, was written by the European Parliament, right?
Now, one of the first things that, well, the European Commission did was to call Apple and say,
Apple, now the DMA will start applying to you.
And what Apple did, I don't agree.
And then Apple went to the European Court of Justice.
So the third branch.
And they say, look, we are against this law when we don't agree with the opinion of the European Commission.
And they started to litigate against the European Commission in the judiciary branch.
So, yeah, this is more or less how this works.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
And I know that can probably put the final piece of the puzzle together for a lot of people who don't understand how the EU works.
including myself as well.
So the last thing I want to ask you
before I kind of just open it up
to anything that you think we may have missed.
I've been seeing a lot of similar things
to the DMA start to pop up around the world.
Do you want to speak to maybe the global influence
that the DMA has, that you've seen it having?
Yes.
So I think the moment that we are living now
with the DMA is like a historical spiral,
you know, that we saw in the end of the 70s.
Today, everybody, literally, in the EU is talking about digital sovereignty.
You know, as something that is modern and something that has emerged.
People are talking about digital sovereignty since 2018 here in Europe.
But I would like to have a historical detour a little bit in the end of the 70s.
In the end of the 70s, a lot of people were discussing data sovereignty.
And who are these a lot of people?
basically countries in Africa, in Latin America and South-West Asia that they were just leaving
colonization because European countries they had colonies. Portugal had colonies, France had colonies,
Belgium had colonies, the Netherlands had colonies all over the world and after World War II when
there was this process of decolonization especially in Africa and South-West Asia, remember Vietnam
was a colony of France. Angola was a colony of Portugal, Mozambique as well, right? And when
these countries started to become independent and they started thinking about organizing the
government, just like we just said, 300 years ago, it was France thinking about organizing the
government. And I'm sorry, I forgot to mention what France thought and started to implement with
Napoleon was consolidated in the US with the founding fathers, right? So the US has a very
important history in democracy in Rome because they consolidated this, right? Fast forward in
300 years forward. In the 70s, these countries, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, you
know, and many, many others, many, many others, they were thinking how we should organize our
countries. And then they realized that the communications infrastructure that they had in
place, you know, the antennas, the channels in TV, the channels in radio, they were dominated by
these companies from the colonies themselves. So they said, how should we enforce sovereignty
in our country when our whole communications infrastructure is being detained by foreign
companies and they started to think about sovereignty in relation to data sovereignty you
know well nowadays we are thinking about digital sovereignty and well and this is more or less
what is happening in europe but this process although we are very eu focused this is a natural
process happening elsewhere and i give several examples japan just passed a very similar legislation
like the DMA.
South Korea
passed a legislation
that is also similar to DMA.
Australia has started
to reform its competition law
with similarities,
to incorporate some similarities
of the DMA.
South Africa,
South Africa and also Japan
contacted Daphidroid, for example,
on their views on alternative app stores.
Brazil, just recently,
really recently, last month,
started also to have a law to regulate internet platforms in the content layer and also in the
infrastructure layer. So Canada is also thinking about this as well. And the United States is also
not an exception. And in 2016, 2018, there were also some movements in order to start thinking
about regulating big tech. You know, Professor Tim Wu, Lina Han, there were some names that were
involved in this process in the United States as well. So this is the type of, that's why I said
this is a historical spiral, right? Because then we had this in the 70s, then in the middle of the
90s and now it's coming back now in the 2020s as well a natural process when
think people start thinking about monopolies at that time in the 70s it
was telecommunications monopolies monopolies over the TV channel monopolies
over the radio spectrum today we have monopolies in the digital sphere you know
it's natural for people to start thinking it in Europe or elsewhere very very
Very nice global view on things.
And I really appreciate the insight on that.
Do you feel like there's something that I haven't touched on in this interview that is important to mention to our audience?
I just wanted to say that I didn't give too much concrete examples on these interpretations of the law from Big Tech.
I gave some examples, but I would like to expand this a little bit just to give a little bit more context
also to how other companies, not only Apple, are dealing with this.
Recently, the FSFU was involved.
Let's start with Google.
Recently, the FSFU was involved in a formal complaint against Google
because Google has a different interpretation of the word uninstalling software on their devices.
If you have an Android device yourself, and it's not the Googleized, you have a stock Android,
you're going to see that there's a lot of pre-installed apps, right?
There's this suite of apps that are pre-installed.
And according to the DMA, there are some dispositions there that end users should uninstall software,
and they can back to default settings.
Well, Google came with different interpretations of the meaning uninstalling.
Sometimes it's disabling, sometimes it's deleting, sometimes it's uninstalling.
So we feel the formal complaint asking that uninstalling should be deleting.
So we want to remove the app from our devices.
You said you covered the FDroid case about the app certification.
Tomorrow, I'm traveling to Brussels because we are also involved in a study that the developer certification is the pinnacle of a series of, and I think you covered also very nicely in your channel, about the other restrictions that Google imposed on alternative Android ROMs, right?
So when they started to provide device trees, the drivers with the release of Android 16 source code, right?
And we also think that some of these restrictions are not compliant with the DMA.
And we are going to Brussels tomorrow and to discuss with the European Commission
that the release of device trees, the release of drivers for pixels devices
is very important to this ecosystem around Android.
There are millions of people, literally millions of people using Lineage OS, AOS, Graphene OS,
you know, and they depend on this privacy and security oriented alternative drones for the
work.
Think about journalists.
Think about people involved with protection of human rights.
They need to have a secure phone and they don't have the money to buy Apple, you know.
Apple is very expensive, so they buy an authorized phone.
And when they have the possibility to install an alternative ROM, this is crucial for them,
you know, to have more secure and more privacy-oriented solutions.
So we think that alternative ROMs play a very important role in the digital ecosystem.
And we are going there to say that Google is not complying with interoperability obligations
of the DMA.
So this is also for Google, right?
Regarding Apple, we talk a lot about app stores, but the FSFE is also involved in strategy.
litigation against Apple. And we are helping the European Commission because I gave this example of
the commission calling Apple saying, the GMA will apply to you. And then Apple said, we don't agree,
we go to the court. And they went to the court, you know, and I'll give what they are claiming in
the court. They say that the commission was wrong to designate their app store because they don't
have one app store. They have five app stores, Apple is saying. They have an app store for iOS,
for iPadOS, for MacOS, for Apple TV,
and for, I think, for also iWatch, I think.
So, yeah, and they go to the court
and claim this type of things, you know,
and then the commission has to prove that,
no, yeah, although they have five different app stores,
it's all one service, you know.
So, and then we went to the court to,
And look, this is not only thing that is being discussed on the court.
Apple is also claiming that the interoperability obligations,
that's why I mentioned that it is possible to implement interoperability
that does not necessarily impact on intellectual property
because Apple is claiming that interoperability expropriates their intellectual property rights.
They say that interoperability is really, really bad for their patents and copyrights and trademarks, etc.
And we have our lawyer.
It's an awesome lawyer.
He's a professor in London, Dr. Martin Ruzovic.
He's pretty much involved with platform regulation and free software.
And he developed a whole thesis.
It's on our website, if your audience wanted to read about this,
where it's a beautiful piece.
And he says, like, as soon as society grows in complexity,
interoperability becomes inevitable.
And he told a very touching and moving history of a fire in Baltimore,
if I'm not mistaken, the city in the United States,
in the beginning of the century,
when a fire erupted across the city,
and the local firemen, they were not able to put out the fire,
and they had to call fire brigades from other cities.
And when the fire brigades from other cities arrived in Baltimore,
they realized that the equipment was not interoperable with the waterhouses there,
and they had to watch the city to burn in front of their eyes.
You know, so, and he explained this in our submission to the court,
to say, look, interoperability is really important for communication.
Interoperability is key to enable the exchange of human knowledge,
and therefore, we need to regulate these companies from the perspective of public interest.
You know, public interest should be our goal.
And therefore, we are, yeah, interacting on the court for this.
So I would like just to give some context, right, to show that, yeah, there's a huge array of activities that we are being interacted, involved with decision makers,
in order to make the DMA free software developer friendly.
So we want the DMA to be friendly to free software developers.
This is our main goal.
Got it.
Well, you guys, I know it's probably a bit of a hidden battle.
I feel like it's kept a lot from the public eye and most normal people don't know about
what's going on.
But I know they feel the impacts.
And I know I can speak on behalf of a lot of people that your work is much appreciated
on this.
And I hope that it really pushes tech in a good direction in the coming years.
Yeah, that's all I have for this interview.
I especially want to thank you for your time and just being here today and talking about
this and hopefully us talking about these issues puts it a little bit more in the public eye and
more people who might not know what's going on or they don't know all the details got a lot more
context today. So just thank you for your time and thank you for everything you guys are doing
to fight for digital rights. Harry, it's a great, great pleasure. I thank you,
sincerely thank you for opening this channel. It's a great pleasure. I thank you. I thank your
audience. You do an awesome job in, you know, spreading this knowledge in YouTube platforms and
other platforms. So this is really, really appreciate. I thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you, Lucas. And that is the episode. I will leave everything down in the description for you
all to dive a little bit deeper and take some action for some of the things that Lucas has talked
about. I know I learned a crap ton of stuff from this interview, and I know I'm not the only one.
So I really want to thank Lucas for coming out there, taking his time to educate all of us on what's going on with the DMA and how we can get better active with it.
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