1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:07,280
Interoperability is a can opener, so it allows smaller companies to interact on a level playing field.

2
00:00:08,920 --> 00:00:14,280
Today, it is an absolute honor to have Lucas from the Free Software Foundation of Europe,

3
00:00:14,620 --> 00:00:19,640
one of the most fascinating interviews I've done on this podcast. Lucas comes forward and covers the

4
00:00:19,760 --> 00:00:24,500
Digital Markets Act, what it means, what it actually tries to do, the good and the bad of it,

5
00:00:24,550 --> 00:00:29,300
and he clears up probably like dozens of misconceptions along the way that many of us,

6
00:00:29,540 --> 00:00:31,860
including myself, have likely fallen victim to.

7
00:00:31,940 --> 00:00:34,640
He talks about regulation versus deregulation

8
00:00:34,980 --> 00:00:37,260
and what that means for free software.

9
00:00:37,540 --> 00:00:40,420
And not free as in beer, but free as in free code.

10
00:00:40,580 --> 00:00:42,140
The role of government in open source,

11
00:00:42,700 --> 00:00:45,000
digital sovereignty and open source collaboration,

12
00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:48,320
interoperability, and why that's actually very important

13
00:00:48,500 --> 00:00:50,820
to help fight big tech, and so much more.

14
00:00:51,140 --> 00:00:53,040
This is truly an expert in his field

15
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:56,160
that's breaking things down so simply for people like me

16
00:00:56,360 --> 00:00:57,780
and probably a lot of you listening.

17
00:00:58,100 --> 00:01:01,260
And so enjoy this interview, and I hope you learn as much as I did.

18
00:01:01,580 --> 00:01:01,980
Hello, Lucas.

19
00:01:02,310 --> 00:01:03,000
Welcome to the podcast.

20
00:01:03,630 --> 00:01:07,060
And I always like to open it up by just asking who you are and what you do.

21
00:01:07,980 --> 00:01:09,040
It's a great pleasure to be here.

22
00:01:09,350 --> 00:01:11,240
Thank you for opening this communication channel.

23
00:01:12,240 --> 00:01:12,960
So my name is Lucas.

24
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:16,400
I have been working mainly on the legal field.

25
00:01:16,740 --> 00:01:22,800
I'm a postdoc researcher at a university in Germany, the Halle Wittenberg University.

26
00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:25,880
But I also had a second hat.

27
00:01:26,060 --> 00:01:29,880
I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe as a legal project manager.

28
00:01:30,320 --> 00:01:34,140
And there I have been involved in several different policy and legal projects.

29
00:01:35,740 --> 00:01:40,180
So I know a lot of our audience is based in Europe, but still the majority is in the U.S.

30
00:01:40,190 --> 00:01:44,020
So do you mind explaining a bit what the FSFE is for those who don't know what it is?

31
00:01:45,180 --> 00:01:45,540
Absolutely.

32
00:01:46,030 --> 00:01:52,040
The FSFE is a charity, so it's a non-profit organization that empowers users to control technology.

33
00:01:52,540 --> 00:01:57,760
We have a sister organization in the US, the Free Software Foundation, but we are independent.

34
00:01:58,360 --> 00:02:04,560
While the FSF focus on the United States, the FSFE focus more on Europe.

35
00:02:05,220 --> 00:02:06,940
This is our main goal.

36
00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:14,720
And this is important because a lot of the work that the FSFE and FSF also in the United States,

37
00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:19,360
both of them do, is policy and legal work.

38
00:02:19,880 --> 00:02:25,880
And these two types of work, they are pretty much geographically restricted, right?

39
00:02:25,910 --> 00:02:32,700
So the U.S. has this own legislation, and the different countries in the EU have also their own legislation.

40
00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:37,460
So it is good that we are focused on our jurisdictions.

41
00:02:37,790 --> 00:02:43,280
It gives us a better overview of the processes, the democratic process on each country.

42
00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:53,980
But the overall goal of both organizations is to promote and to protect the concept of free software.

43
00:02:55,260 --> 00:03:00,340
Here, when I'm saying free software, I use the term as a synonym of open source software.

44
00:03:01,340 --> 00:03:09,340
But free software, for those who are listening to this for the first time, refers to the freedoms of software.

45
00:03:09,490 --> 00:03:13,660
The freedom to use, to study, to share, and to improve software.

46
00:03:14,380 --> 00:03:17,740
And for that, we divide our work.

47
00:03:17,850 --> 00:03:18,940
The FSFE divides it.

48
00:03:19,140 --> 00:03:20,400
It's working in three main areas.

49
00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:24,820
Public awareness, policy advocacy, and legal intervention.

50
00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:28,820
So when we talk about public awareness,

51
00:03:28,930 --> 00:03:32,620
we want to promote the concept of free software

52
00:03:33,560 --> 00:03:36,780
via educational public awareness campaigns and activities.

53
00:03:37,980 --> 00:03:40,380
But when we have to interact with policymakers,

54
00:03:40,790 --> 00:03:41,680
with decision makers,

55
00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:43,839
then we activate our policy people

56
00:03:44,360 --> 00:03:49,220
And last but not least, we have also several activities for the legal sector.

57
00:03:49,290 --> 00:04:01,500
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.

58
00:04:02,140 --> 00:04:10,960
So basically, these are the three main activities or areas of activities that the Free Software Foundation Europe is involved.

59
00:04:12,140 --> 00:04:16,959
Very nice. And so where do you kind of fall into those three buckets? The last one?

60
00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:32,680
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.

61
00:04:32,780 --> 00:04:41,660
FSFE, if I remember correctly, we have 20 employees, but we have a very large network of volunteers.

62
00:04:42,320 --> 00:04:47,440
Volunteers is our core aspect that enables our work.

63
00:04:47,580 --> 00:04:56,340
So although we have 20 staffers, we have 13 groups, including local groups spread all over Europe.

64
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:04,180
And there are a lot of volunteers in Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Poland, you name it.

65
00:05:04,680 --> 00:05:08,100
And they are very active working for free software.

66
00:05:09,540 --> 00:05:15,400
And due to the limited size of staffers, I think everyone should do a little bit of everything.

67
00:05:16,780 --> 00:05:24,580
So I'm involved with public awareness policy, but my core aspect is legal interventions.

68
00:05:25,060 --> 00:05:30,360
We have some legal activities that go into the bucket of public awareness.

69
00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:37,500
I have some other projects that also is related to, you know, legislative process, regulatory process.

70
00:05:38,260 --> 00:05:42,360
But legal is I spend most of my working time.

71
00:05:43,660 --> 00:05:53,620
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.

72
00:05:54,460 --> 00:05:57,200
Do you mind giving a very brief intro to the DMA?

73
00:05:57,620 --> 00:06:03,420
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.

74
00:06:05,020 --> 00:06:08,260
Yes. Thank you already for pointing this.

75
00:06:09,220 --> 00:06:14,980
Yes. The Digital Markets Act is a law oriented to regulate the digital markets.

76
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:21,460
And when we talk about regulation, yeah, this topic is very broad.

77
00:06:21,700 --> 00:06:25,620
And people start to are ready to think what is about regulation.

78
00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:34,640
Any type of industry, any type of industry, when it becomes important to a degree that, you know,

79
00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:39,880
millions of people are using this type of products and services that are being produced by a determined industry,

80
00:06:40,440 --> 00:06:41,340
it tends to regulation.

81
00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:44,460
Right. Think about the pharmaceutical industry.

82
00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:48,000
Right. Or think about the medical equipment industry.

83
00:06:48,440 --> 00:06:59,180
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.

84
00:07:00,050 --> 00:07:10,500
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.

85
00:07:10,850 --> 00:07:16,400
So this type of regulation, industry oriented type of regulation.

86
00:07:17,260 --> 00:07:22,720
The digital industry was an exception because the digital industry grown up very fast.

87
00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:29,540
So one of the characteristics that differentiated the digital industry from the other type of industry

88
00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:34,900
that it grew exponentially and very fast, right?

89
00:07:35,180 --> 00:07:44,319
So think about, well, the internet or even now with the emergence of chatbots and LLMs

90
00:07:44,820 --> 00:07:52,800
In a matter of two or three years, billions of people are using these devices and these services and these products.

91
00:07:53,700 --> 00:07:58,760
And regulation for the digital have been a little bit lagging behind.

92
00:07:59,640 --> 00:08:07,000
So, therefore, the European Union decided to take some steps in order to start regulating the industry.

93
00:08:07,320 --> 00:08:14,960
The DMA is not the only law. There are other laws as well trying to regulate, well, the digital.

94
00:08:15,350 --> 00:08:24,100
I think everybody remember in 2016 when data protection was the buzzword of the moment and EU had the GDPR, right?

95
00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:29,580
And then some moments later, we had the AI Act.

96
00:08:30,900 --> 00:08:34,360
And also when we talk about platform regulation.

97
00:08:34,800 --> 00:08:43,180
So basically, we're talking about platforms, these very large corporations that they connect,

98
00:08:44,580 --> 00:08:48,100
well, consumers from one side and business from other side, right?

99
00:08:48,240 --> 00:08:49,700
So think about Amazon, right?

100
00:08:49,960 --> 00:08:55,160
Amazon put together business that they want to sell things on their platform,

101
00:08:55,400 --> 00:08:57,640
and then consumers come in order to buy.

102
00:08:58,500 --> 00:09:00,020
Social media is another example.

103
00:09:00,460 --> 00:09:02,800
You know, people come from one side, from other side.

104
00:09:03,100 --> 00:09:08,500
So when we are talking about platform, there are two main legislations in the European Union

105
00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:11,520
dedicated to regulate these platforms.

106
00:09:12,360 --> 00:09:18,300
There are the DSA, the Digital Service Act, and now the viewer of our story, the Digital

107
00:09:18,640 --> 00:09:19,200
Markets Act.

108
00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:26,540
Digital Service Act regulate platforms on the content level, while the Digital Markets

109
00:09:26,540 --> 00:09:31,320
Act regulates platforms on the infrastructure level.

110
00:09:31,840 --> 00:09:35,120
So we are talking about infrastructure regulation.

111
00:09:35,560 --> 00:09:38,520
So this is a short introduction to the DMA.

112
00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:40,100
Perfect.

113
00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:42,200
And yeah, we have a lot to dig into here.

114
00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:45,340
But I want to start with a very simple thing I see a lot.

115
00:09:45,900 --> 00:09:49,020
People hear regulation, and I almost have this instinct as well.

116
00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:52,200
And it's not inherently a positive thing in my head always.

117
00:09:52,320 --> 00:09:59,280
And I know, especially in the U.S., for Americans, there's this deep-held belief of, you know,

118
00:09:59,580 --> 00:10:02,200
If you want to start a business, it should be as smooth as possible.

119
00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:04,440
So regulation has this negative association.

120
00:10:05,260 --> 00:10:10,340
So do you have kind of an initial thing to say to people when they hear the concept of

121
00:10:10,500 --> 00:10:16,420
Europe regulating tech companies, which I feel like for Americans can sometimes come across

122
00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:17,340
as a negative thing?

123
00:10:18,500 --> 00:10:19,860
What do you normally respond to that with?

124
00:10:22,060 --> 00:10:31,200
I think regulation is a normal phenomena in any type of business that becomes too important, right?

125
00:10:31,920 --> 00:10:39,960
And I don't think that, although, yes, I also agree that there is good and bad regulation.

126
00:10:40,560 --> 00:10:47,740
And one of the main aspects of my work at FSFE is also to identify regulation that can promote free software,

127
00:10:47,860 --> 00:10:54,360
but also there are regulations that can hinder free software in other aspects of our life.

128
00:10:54,820 --> 00:10:55,819
I don't think that regulation...

129
00:10:57,400 --> 00:10:58,320
Yes, of course.

130
00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:08,920
So, well, let's think about legislation that's put in place in the European Union

131
00:11:10,660 --> 00:11:12,460
concerning procurement of software.

132
00:11:13,240 --> 00:11:20,700
and this software, the legislation, gives the prevalence or gives an advantage or is biased

133
00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:26,720
towards proprietary software. This, in my opinion, is bad regulation, right? Regulation should be

134
00:11:27,040 --> 00:11:31,500
neutral, right? And free software and proprietary software, they should compete on the merits.

135
00:11:32,180 --> 00:11:38,439
But if a regulation gives the, you know, an advantage to proprietary software, I would say

136
00:11:38,460 --> 00:11:43,600
that this is a pretty bad regulation. And this happens, right? This happens and we have been

137
00:11:43,740 --> 00:11:51,380
seeing this a lot. And one of our core activities is called public money, public code. And we think

138
00:11:51,560 --> 00:11:59,260
that the public services, they should use more free software, right? It's toward bad regulation.

139
00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:04,000
We want the public sector to implement good regulation.

140
00:12:06,460 --> 00:12:13,340
On the context of DMA, and by any means, I mean that DMA is a perfect regulation.

141
00:12:13,880 --> 00:12:17,240
No, we are very critical of several aspects of it.

142
00:12:17,540 --> 00:12:22,520
And we have engaged with decision makers to make this better, to increase the level of

143
00:12:22,520 --> 00:12:23,980
free software open standards on it.

144
00:12:24,620 --> 00:12:28,999
But I think that in relation to free software, there are several synergies.

145
00:12:29,780 --> 00:12:32,999
There are several aspects that we can say, yes, this can work.

146
00:12:34,120 --> 00:12:40,440
And if we go ahead, we can make a positive change via regulation.

147
00:12:41,220 --> 00:12:47,040
Got it. And yeah, sorry, I really want to nail this down before we get into the more technical aspects of the DMA.

148
00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:49,660
So public money, public code, something.

149
00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:55,840
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.

150
00:12:57,060 --> 00:13:03,240
But I, you know, I covered the FDroid situation pretty extensively and I'm continuing to.

151
00:13:04,160 --> 00:13:06,640
And how, you know, Google's locking down Android a little bit.

152
00:13:07,260 --> 00:13:16,560
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.

153
00:13:17,560 --> 00:13:19,320
And we did some coverage for this.

154
00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:33,760
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.

155
00:13:34,740 --> 00:13:49,360
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.

156
00:13:49,920 --> 00:13:53,460
Just because I haven't actually asked someone who's more of an expert on this about it yet.

157
00:13:54,860 --> 00:14:01,400
Yes. So, yeah, I also encountered this position a lot out there and I respect them.

158
00:14:02,060 --> 00:14:05,200
However, I have a different kind of position.

159
00:14:06,100 --> 00:14:12,060
And I think the government, as anything in our society, it has a role, right?

160
00:14:13,679 --> 00:14:20,100
And taking the history of the United States, which I respect and I appreciate very much,

161
00:14:20,780 --> 00:14:25,920
I think the best things that the United States achieved, and this is my personal opinion,

162
00:14:26,580 --> 00:14:29,500
don't quote me, you know, the FSA field, this is my personal opinion,

163
00:14:29,780 --> 00:14:32,380
But I'm happy to share this.

164
00:14:33,420 --> 00:14:41,240
It's when, you know, the government money was involved in order to fund things that are really great.

165
00:14:41,520 --> 00:14:47,920
You know, when they put the first man on the moon and many, many other things, it was involved.

166
00:14:48,160 --> 00:14:54,600
So I don't believe society only as, you know, a group of individuals doing their own things.

167
00:14:54,900 --> 00:15:01,880
I do believe that the government and this public money also represents something collectively, a collective effort.

168
00:15:02,100 --> 00:15:13,400
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.

169
00:15:13,840 --> 00:15:27,480
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.

170
00:15:28,170 --> 00:15:40,380
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?

171
00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:48,520
To come to a governmental agency, fostering progress, fostering education, fostering wealth,

172
00:15:49,260 --> 00:15:52,300
and say, look, we need to fund some free software projects.

173
00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:58,400
I don't see the difference between involving the private and the public sector when we are building.

174
00:15:58,580 --> 00:16:00,340
Think about a park in our city.

175
00:16:00,860 --> 00:16:03,200
A park is something that puts people together.

176
00:16:03,500 --> 00:16:04,600
There's some greenery.

177
00:16:05,320 --> 00:16:07,280
We like to go there.

178
00:16:07,500 --> 00:16:08,860
We can walk with our dog.

179
00:16:09,060 --> 00:16:12,820
We can go with our family, spend some good time together, some quality time.

180
00:16:13,680 --> 00:16:19,340
And so this park can be involved public money there or can be private money involved.

181
00:16:19,450 --> 00:16:22,080
But the good thing is to have a park on your neighborhood.

182
00:16:22,760 --> 00:16:26,400
And I have this attitude towards free and open source as well.

183
00:16:26,710 --> 00:16:35,540
I think that free and open source, it is ethically and morally speaking, a good way of developing software.

184
00:16:36,140 --> 00:16:39,260
And then if we can get private money to do this, great.

185
00:16:39,570 --> 00:16:42,780
But if we can get public money, then it's also great.

186
00:16:43,300 --> 00:16:47,300
So, yeah, this would be my personal humble position.

187
00:16:48,440 --> 00:16:49,380
Yeah, thanks for sharing.

188
00:16:49,430 --> 00:16:59,620
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.

189
00:17:00,040 --> 00:17:01,660
And they're not using more open source code.

190
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:12,520
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.

191
00:17:13,100 --> 00:17:20,020
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.

192
00:17:20,030 --> 00:17:24,339
We can't trust big tech companies as much, especially if they're located in another country.

193
00:17:24,490 --> 00:17:25,620
And this is going all directions.

194
00:17:25,890 --> 00:17:27,680
You know, U.S. is scared of Chinese products.

195
00:17:29,520 --> 00:17:34,320
I guess Europe is also probably scared of Chinese products, but Europe is also a bit concerned about using U.S. products.

196
00:17:34,460 --> 00:17:43,700
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.

197
00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:48,980
Yeah. So a bit of a side tangent there. But I think it's a big wake up call now people are seeing.

198
00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:51,640
If I may, yes, I agree with you.

199
00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:59,180
But the beauty of open source and free software is the global collaboration.

200
00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:05,380
right is this boundless and you said you covered f-dried i was talking also with f-dried people

201
00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:11,480
and they said look we have developers contributing to the project in south in south asia you know in

202
00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:17,520
latin america and they all come together and and and this is something that when there's this debate

203
00:18:17,570 --> 00:18:25,299
of sovereignty here in europe me myself when when i'm engaged with the dma i make sure to to make this

204
00:18:25,320 --> 00:18:31,660
very clear. Because some people that are involved in the DMA, they tend to take a very protectionist

205
00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:39,300
approach and to create this tension, I would say that, yeah, we don't need North American product,

206
00:18:39,370 --> 00:18:46,600
we don't need a product from that region. I personally, when I'm involved with FSFE in this

207
00:18:46,710 --> 00:18:53,139
type of conversations with decision makers or in academia, I tended to rebook this saying that

208
00:18:54,340 --> 00:19:02,160
the discussion here is rather big tech versus small tech than US versus EU or EU versus China.

209
00:19:03,840 --> 00:19:11,520
I'm convinced that national borders, they don't mean much in the context of free software.

210
00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:18,840
On the contrary, I do think that this borderless collaboration and communication is the way to go.

211
00:19:19,420 --> 00:19:25,160
However, I do think that when the term company, any company in anywhere in the world,

212
00:19:25,730 --> 00:19:30,640
and even here in Europe, you know, a monopoly is a monopoly in the US,

213
00:19:30,750 --> 00:19:34,340
a monopoly is a monopoly in Europe, is a monopoly in Brazil.

214
00:19:36,260 --> 00:19:40,660
As soon as companies become big enough to become a monopoly in digital markets,

215
00:19:41,120 --> 00:19:42,240
nobody wins from this.

216
00:19:42,620 --> 00:19:42,740
Nobody.

217
00:19:43,380 --> 00:19:46,260
Not the North American consumer, not the European consumer,

218
00:19:46,460 --> 00:19:50,140
not the Latin American consumer, nor the South African consumer.

219
00:19:50,470 --> 00:19:55,740
The beauty of free software is that we democratize access to knowledge.

220
00:19:55,990 --> 00:19:59,440
And monopolies, they put barriers to knowledge, right?

221
00:20:00,740 --> 00:20:06,179
And therefore, again, we are talking about bad and good regulations.

222
00:20:06,790 --> 00:20:14,579
So even now, I cannot answer for you with 100% sure that the DMA will become in the future

223
00:20:14,600 --> 00:20:16,220
a good or bad regulation.

224
00:20:16,940 --> 00:20:18,720
Right now, what I can say is that

225
00:20:18,740 --> 00:20:19,900
the Free Software Foundation Europe

226
00:20:20,560 --> 00:20:24,220
is working hard to make DMA a good regulation.

227
00:20:24,340 --> 00:20:26,140
So we don't want to exclude

228
00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:28,040
North American companies on the contrary.

229
00:20:28,340 --> 00:20:30,440
What we want is that everyone

230
00:20:30,660 --> 00:20:32,660
should have the same type of access

231
00:20:32,820 --> 00:20:33,380
to digital markets.

232
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:34,980
So leveling the playing field.

233
00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:36,360
We don't want monopolies.

234
00:20:36,940 --> 00:20:39,820
So, but for that, we need to fight

235
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:43,420
in order to make this law viable in this way.

236
00:20:44,700 --> 00:20:56,080
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.

237
00:20:56,520 --> 00:21:18,660
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.

238
00:21:18,660 --> 00:21:20,760
And this is a big issue that we see in the U.S.

239
00:21:22,120 --> 00:21:23,500
To pivot over to the DMA.

240
00:21:24,160 --> 00:21:27,920
So I want to first get a little breakdown from you,

241
00:21:28,100 --> 00:21:32,020
because I don't think many people actually know what the DMA is supposed to do.

242
00:21:32,340 --> 00:21:33,800
There's a lot of misinformation out there.

243
00:21:33,980 --> 00:21:38,920
So why don't we just start with what is the DMA intended to do from a broad point of view?

244
00:21:39,460 --> 00:21:42,480
And then why don't you kind of give a bit of the main,

245
00:21:43,120 --> 00:21:50,580
if there's maybe three to five core things that is really trying to, I guess, zero in on.

246
00:21:51,460 --> 00:21:53,440
Can I start with a small history?

247
00:21:55,020 --> 00:21:58,460
Please do. Whatever you need. I know it's a big topic to kind of touch on.

248
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:10,620
Okay. So as I was saying, the digital became free from regulation almost for 30 years.

249
00:22:12,320 --> 00:22:19,400
The main aspect of regulating the digital in the US and in the EU was tackling copyright,

250
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:21,420
Copyright and content moderation.

251
00:22:21,940 --> 00:22:25,860
These were the two main aspects of regulating the digital.

252
00:22:27,620 --> 00:22:31,320
In other areas of the digital, especially the infrastructure one,

253
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:35,900
they were more regulated already into the already, you know,

254
00:22:36,360 --> 00:22:40,440
kind of consolidated industry which had its own regulation.

255
00:22:41,140 --> 00:22:42,960
It was the telecommunications industry.

256
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:48,260
So when we wanted to talk about the infrastructure of the digital,

257
00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:53,640
We basically referred to telecommunications law.

258
00:22:54,410 --> 00:22:59,780
While when we wanted specifically to target digital companies,

259
00:23:00,860 --> 00:23:03,560
then we would be more concerned about e-commerce,

260
00:23:04,940 --> 00:23:07,240
you know, perhaps copyright law.

261
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:12,000
But we would not deal with the infrastructure that is needed

262
00:23:12,130 --> 00:23:14,560
for these companies to flourish, right?

263
00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:24,640
This situation started to change in 2016, more or less, in the US and also in the EU,

264
00:23:25,300 --> 00:23:31,920
when, I already mentioned, when the first regulations about data protection started to emerge.

265
00:23:32,220 --> 00:23:48,940
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.

266
00:23:50,260 --> 00:23:52,220
There were several of antitrusts.

267
00:23:52,940 --> 00:24:00,460
And antitrust here is a branch of law that regulates competition, commercial competition among companies.

268
00:24:01,260 --> 00:24:08,620
and there were several antitrust investigations and then enforcements done by the European

269
00:24:08,980 --> 00:24:14,220
Commission which is the responsible for this type of investigation against Google. One of them is

270
00:24:14,940 --> 00:24:25,400
Google Android where from 2013 until 2018 if I'm not mistaken the listeners please can check online

271
00:24:25,540 --> 00:24:29,340
but I'm pretty sure that it was between 2013 and 2018,

272
00:24:29,900 --> 00:24:36,860
when the European Commission started to analyze Google's commercial practice

273
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:42,220
regarding their search engine, regarding Android as operating system,

274
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:45,640
regarding their App Store.

275
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:53,100
And they found that Google was involved in a series of anti-competitive practices.

276
00:24:54,140 --> 00:25:01,400
Relevant for free software, for example, Google imposed on smartphone manufacturers, device manufacturers,

277
00:25:02,580 --> 00:25:06,120
some agreements called anti-fork agreements.

278
00:25:06,750 --> 00:25:13,300
It means like, well, Google provides Android as free and open source,

279
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:25,580
But if the manufacturers would like to implement Google set of apps, they should not fork Android and have their own fork.

280
00:25:25,870 --> 00:25:33,440
They should use the one that was compatible and accepted and approved by Google.

281
00:25:33,590 --> 00:25:35,560
So there was this compatibility issue.

282
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:43,140
And the European Commission found that in 2018 that these practices were uncompetitive.

283
00:25:43,180 --> 00:25:47,660
and they imposed huge fines, huge, huge fines on Google.

284
00:25:47,730 --> 00:25:51,640
And then these fines were also confirmed by a court

285
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:53,480
because Google appealed the decision.

286
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:57,120
And I mentioned just one case, but there were several of them,

287
00:25:57,540 --> 00:25:59,740
several against Google, several against Apple,

288
00:25:59,890 --> 00:26:00,800
several against Microsoft.

289
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:04,820
Microsoft was the first tech company that the European Commission

290
00:26:05,540 --> 00:26:09,220
really focused on competition issues.

291
00:26:09,620 --> 00:26:12,420
The FSFE, 20 years ago, were involved in this as well.

292
00:26:13,020 --> 00:26:18,640
So taking it in consideration, this whole thing, especially Google Android, the European Commission

293
00:26:19,700 --> 00:26:26,260
and the European Union said, look, dealing with this only as a remedy measure, because

294
00:26:26,580 --> 00:26:32,880
competition law runs after companies, they don't impose obligations beforehand.

295
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:35,700
We need to change our position.

296
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,180
So we need to regulate them.

297
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:42,420
But this is not something new per se.

298
00:26:42,460 --> 00:26:47,780
there was always a moment in the term industry in the automobile industry in the pharmaceutical

299
00:26:48,220 --> 00:26:53,360
industry in in the medical equipment industry that in a determined term in a determined moment

300
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:59,440
in time there were the well society the parliament the government they decided to say okay perhaps

301
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:06,640
we need to start regulating them right it happens in 2018 there were some reports very uh influential

302
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:12,440
reports here in the european union saying that okay we needed to to deal with these companies but

303
00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:19,640
not regulate the market, like the whole spectrum of the digital markets, like

304
00:27:20,120 --> 00:27:27,780
starting from A to Z, right? We needed to choose a layer of companies, if you will,

305
00:27:28,540 --> 00:27:33,320
that we needed to regulate. And they could do, for an example, they could say we will

306
00:27:33,690 --> 00:27:37,940
deal with the smallest one, we will do with the startups one, but they

307
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:47,580
didn't choose them. They choose the layer of big tech. Therefore, the DMA aims to regulate only a

308
00:27:47,690 --> 00:27:56,940
very specific layer of the market. This is important because this law does not apply to everyone or to

309
00:27:57,050 --> 00:28:03,100
every company. They apply to only a handful of companies. And this handful of companies should

310
00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:10,760
be designated by the European Commission. The majority of the companies nowadays are North

311
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:16,440
American. There are some Chinese and there are some European as well. Booking, for an example,

312
00:28:17,380 --> 00:28:24,180
in the case of the EMA, Zalando, in the case of the DSA, there are some companies European as well.

313
00:28:25,980 --> 00:28:32,220
Perhaps this is what caused this resentment among North Americans

314
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:35,760
that the GMA is an anti-American law

315
00:28:35,940 --> 00:28:39,800
because the majority of the companies being regulated is North American.

316
00:28:40,620 --> 00:28:45,160
However, the big tech, the largest tech companies in the world,

317
00:28:45,700 --> 00:28:48,800
for good or bad, if people think that's a good thing,

318
00:28:48,940 --> 00:28:52,460
it's North American, but if people think that's a bad thing,

319
00:28:52,700 --> 00:28:53,460
this is North American.

320
00:28:54,440 --> 00:29:00,720
And so the law applies to these companies.

321
00:29:01,020 --> 00:29:12,240
So they apply to Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, but also TikTok and others.

322
00:29:14,239 --> 00:29:19,240
And which type of obligations they entail?

323
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:24,820
So then as soon as the European Commission said, look, this law should apply to this company.

324
00:29:25,780 --> 00:29:30,580
And then the European Commission also should determine to which services of these companies.

325
00:29:31,900 --> 00:29:38,420
And then there are a set of criteria, qualitative and quantitative criteria that the regulator should attend.

326
00:29:39,180 --> 00:29:43,500
For example, 45 millions of consumers in the European markets.

327
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:47,740
So the company needed to be really huge.

328
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,940
we are talking about a huge part of the market.

329
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:54,880
When the company meets this threshold,

330
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:56,540
then the law starts to apply to them.

331
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:01,260
Well, then the type of services.

332
00:30:01,460 --> 00:30:03,260
We are talking about operating systems,

333
00:30:03,820 --> 00:30:06,880
search engines, browsers, app stores,

334
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,920
cloud services, and social media.

335
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,060
And so basically the most important type of services

336
00:30:15,060 --> 00:30:16,340
in digital markets, right?

337
00:30:17,420 --> 00:30:26,280
And last but not least, just to give you this follow-up introduction on the DMA, the type of obligations they intend.

338
00:30:26,380 --> 00:30:46,400
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.

339
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:51,360
So these are the type of obligations that are involved in the DMA.

340
00:30:53,060 --> 00:30:57,040
Very nice. And so what does it kind of look like right now?

341
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:03,340
And, you know, the follow up is going to be what are the things that you think are good and bad as the FSFE?

342
00:31:03,500 --> 00:31:05,380
Because you even hinted at not all of it being good.

343
00:31:05,820 --> 00:31:10,480
So what are kind of the main things right now that are really trying to be enforced through the DMA?

344
00:31:12,420 --> 00:31:32,060
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.

345
00:31:32,460 --> 00:31:36,920
Interoperability was a big element in the DMA.

346
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:43,160
Commission is analyzing AI and access to AI in operating systems.

347
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:49,540
Do you mind quickly talking about why interoperability is in the DMA?

348
00:31:49,820 --> 00:31:55,060
Why is there this concept of interoperability being anti-competitive?

349
00:31:55,860 --> 00:31:56,360
Absolutely.

350
00:31:56,490 --> 00:31:56,640
Absolutely.

351
00:31:57,220 --> 00:31:58,340
I think this is a great question.

352
00:31:58,820 --> 00:32:05,460
Yeah, because this interoperability is a can opener in the DMA.

353
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:12,520
I like to use this analogy, mainly because interoperability is marked by a paradox.

354
00:32:15,100 --> 00:32:21,920
Companies, when they are small, they love interoperability because they want their service to interact with the bigger platform.

355
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:32,040
So as soon as your small company makes your service compatible with the one with the platform, the value of your service increases.

356
00:32:32,370 --> 00:32:46,480
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.

357
00:32:46,940 --> 00:32:49,820
You want FDroid to be present in iOS devices.

358
00:32:49,860 --> 00:32:52,180
You want FDroid to be present in Android devices.

359
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:56,540
So when you are small, you really want to interact,

360
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:58,920
to interoperate with the platform.

361
00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:02,400
However, as soon as your company starts growing

362
00:33:02,980 --> 00:33:09,000
and become important to the point

363
00:33:09,380 --> 00:33:12,640
that others want to start interacting with your platform,

364
00:33:13,700 --> 00:33:16,120
then the incentives change.

365
00:33:16,620 --> 00:33:23,600
then you start to limit interoperability to the functions that you only want. So you start to be

366
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:31,320
very picky, you know, to the ones that you want to interact and not. I will give a very short,

367
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:38,640
you know, use case, if you will, before the DMA, before the DMA, because the FSFE was already pretty

368
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:44,599
much involved in a very nice activity which I love, it's called Router Freedom. We also want people

369
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:49,000
to use their own routers, to install free software on their routers, to be able to choose their routers,

370
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:55,860
to connect their routers to the internet service provider. But the internet service providers,

371
00:33:56,200 --> 00:34:01,620
before the GMA, they didn't allow you to use your own router here in Europe. They wanted to provide

372
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:10,839
only with their routers, very crappy routers with no security updates, you know, with proprietary stuff

373
00:34:10,899 --> 00:34:17,379
where you could not you know um yeah uh tweak or install anything you could not set your own home

374
00:34:17,620 --> 00:34:25,000
network so they limited interoperability you wanted to have your uh free open source router they they

375
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:31,440
said no you have to use my router and this is happening now let's go back again to dma when

376
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:37,799
google and microsoft and apple they cherry pick and they say i want to provide you with you to

377
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:44,580
interoperate only here and only there so apple says for an example apple smaller

378
00:34:46,399 --> 00:34:54,600
app stores will not be available on ios you have in order for smaller um uh app stores to be available

379
00:34:54,649 --> 00:35:00,840
have to provide a letter of credits of one billion euro you know uh and for an example you covered

380
00:35:00,860 --> 00:35:07,680
fdroid uh right and then fdroid can google can say can start saying we will not allow

381
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:13,740
sideloading anymore although i know that they mitigated this policy a little bit but they started

382
00:35:13,830 --> 00:35:21,440
to be uh nitty-peaky on the interoperability so interoperability is a can opener so it allows

383
00:35:21,820 --> 00:35:29,660
smaller companies in smaller players to interact on a level playing field um services with the larger

384
00:35:29,660 --> 00:35:35,180
platforms. Beautifully stated. Thank you. I actually just put out today how WhatsApp

385
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:41,440
just launched interoperability. And so there are already two live clients. I forgot what they're

386
00:35:41,500 --> 00:35:45,580
called. You might know them. But they are now interoperable with WhatsApp. So you can just

387
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:50,080
contact the WhatsApp person without even technically needing a WhatsApp account. And

388
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:56,320
it's pretty awesome because for someone like Signal, this is pretty big for them. And it opens up a big

389
00:35:56,340 --> 00:36:01,680
use case for signal. And now, you know, instead of just ignoring people or forcing them to move to

390
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:06,420
signal, which I guess it does kind of suck because it loses one of the main selling points of like,

391
00:36:06,540 --> 00:36:11,000
well, you should move completely to signal, but it still allows you to message them and you don't

392
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:16,140
have to create a WhatsApp account. Some people were complaining that this is, they don't want to talk

393
00:36:16,220 --> 00:36:19,740
with WhatsApp people, but I think they're kind of missing the broader point here. So I think he said

394
00:36:19,740 --> 00:36:25,160
it very well. So that's one part of the DMA, the scan opener. You have, you know, interoperability.

395
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,640
I cut you off, so please go ahead and continue what else you're kind of chasing after with the DMA.

396
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:33,280
Yes.

397
00:36:33,450 --> 00:36:47,180
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.

398
00:36:47,720 --> 00:36:53,240
Your example of WhatsApp is a perfect example of horizontal interoperability,

399
00:36:53,500 --> 00:36:59,260
where two types of services that are the same messaging type of services,

400
00:36:59,700 --> 00:37:01,320
they should interact with one another.

401
00:37:01,540 --> 00:37:04,180
So this is called horizontal interoperability.

402
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:08,580
But also there is this vertical interoperability when, you know,

403
00:37:09,780 --> 00:37:12,960
two types of services need to interact in order to communicate.

404
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:19,420
For example, you want your payment system to access the NFC chip of your device.

405
00:37:20,100 --> 00:37:29,360
Or you want your messaging app to access the camera function on your device when you do a live call, for example.

406
00:37:30,839 --> 00:37:34,080
And then depending on the incentives, it's all about incentives.

407
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:37,840
The company can limit the type of interoperability.

408
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:47,540
So we had in the past Apple blocking access to NFC chip, to blocking software interoperability,

409
00:37:47,620 --> 00:37:54,460
for example, to the term functions controlled by iOS that they don't want others to access.

410
00:37:55,820 --> 00:37:57,400
So this is very important.

411
00:37:58,580 --> 00:38:00,240
Last but not least, the DMA.

412
00:38:00,980 --> 00:38:08,580
It's about also, it's a huge law, you know, and not everything is relevant for free software,

413
00:38:08,780 --> 00:38:08,880
right?

414
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,460
Because there are a lot of things regarding social media.

415
00:38:12,820 --> 00:38:20,760
There are things regarding, you know, anti-steering provisions, search engines, how search should

416
00:38:20,900 --> 00:38:21,560
be located.

417
00:38:21,860 --> 00:38:27,200
So there's a huge group of obligations.

418
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:40,460
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.

419
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:45,080
These are the bulk of obligations that are interesting for us.

420
00:38:46,660 --> 00:38:52,800
Got it. And so now the great question is, what parts of the DMA do you guys disagree with?

421
00:38:53,140 --> 00:38:56,600
What do you think is not good and you're fighting to make it better?

422
00:38:57,300 --> 00:39:00,000
And then, of course, you know, what is good?

423
00:39:00,050 --> 00:39:03,480
What are you guys really, like, hugely in support of and why?

424
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:14,780
The whole debate of the DMA in the beginnings in 2021, and even today, it's pretty much oriented towards industry.

425
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:19,680
Larger industry, not big tech, but larger industry.

426
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:26,580
So when you interact with decision makers, be it the European Parliament or the European Commission,

427
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:34,300
they come already with a mindset, more or less, that the solutions that the DNA should provide

428
00:39:35,060 --> 00:39:37,560
is for big industry.

429
00:39:37,790 --> 00:39:45,340
Not big tech, like the size or scale of Google or Apple, but, you know, a large industry,

430
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:55,620
know, a large company with hundreds of employees. And here, this is our first disagreement with the

431
00:39:55,700 --> 00:40:01,780
DMA, because we do believe that the DMA should treat also smaller players, individual developers,

432
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:10,920
non-profits, SMEs, startups, with the same level of respect, if you will, with the big industry.

433
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:18,940
Because in the end, software industry in Europe, and I would like to stress this, is small tech.

434
00:40:19,980 --> 00:40:32,980
There was a research in 2022 when there was also a very big law recently that this law also

435
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:38,140
catch the attention of the free software community, which was the Cyber Resilience Act,

436
00:40:38,620 --> 00:40:40,300
which impose differently from the DMA.

437
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:44,980
The DMA does not impose any type of obligations on smaller providers.

438
00:40:45,540 --> 00:40:48,780
But the CRA, there were some obligations that also,

439
00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:53,580
cyber security obligations that are imposed on smaller providers.

440
00:40:54,620 --> 00:40:58,240
And in this law, there was a research involved in this, a big research,

441
00:40:58,900 --> 00:41:07,100
that 94% of the software industry in the EU is done by SMEs with less than nine employees.

442
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:13,440
So, software is developed by small tech in Europe.

443
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:15,640
This is a fact.

444
00:41:16,140 --> 00:41:19,380
It's a plethora of small organizations,

445
00:41:20,460 --> 00:41:22,320
groups of people, individual developers

446
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:23,880
that are developing software.

447
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:25,400
So, in this sense,

448
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,160
our first disagreement some years ago with the DMA

449
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:32,059
was not to include on the text of the law

450
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:39,080
even more, you know, stronger interoperability obligations

451
00:41:39,340 --> 00:41:41,700
that would contemplate these smaller players.

452
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:44,540
I'll give a very concrete example.

453
00:41:45,380 --> 00:41:52,000
When the DMA establish an obligation for an interoperability solution,

454
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:58,240
the providers, for example, WhatsApp for messaging apps

455
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,280
or Google for Android or Apple for App Store,

456
00:42:01,460 --> 00:42:04,840
they are not obliged to use open standards.

457
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,440
If they wanted to use their own standards,

458
00:42:08,530 --> 00:42:10,080
they can do so under the condition

459
00:42:10,300 --> 00:42:14,560
that it should be under fair and reasonable terms, right?

460
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:19,400
But there is no obligation proposing open standards.

461
00:42:20,939 --> 00:42:22,880
And I'm sad about this

462
00:42:23,290 --> 00:42:26,120
because I do think it was a great opportunity,

463
00:42:26,310 --> 00:42:29,859
a missed opportunity for us to implement a tech

464
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:31,940
that is interpellable by design

465
00:42:32,720 --> 00:42:33,960
when we have open standards,

466
00:42:34,260 --> 00:42:36,280
when we don't have copyrights,

467
00:42:36,490 --> 00:42:38,220
patents in the way to impose

468
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:40,100
and to create a new tech

469
00:42:40,260 --> 00:42:41,800
that is more democratic, distributed,

470
00:42:42,180 --> 00:42:43,680
that is aligned with the principles

471
00:42:43,830 --> 00:42:44,520
of free and open source.

472
00:42:45,260 --> 00:42:47,500
So every time that we need to propose

473
00:42:48,170 --> 00:42:50,460
a solution when we are engaging the DMA,

474
00:42:50,820 --> 00:42:51,880
we need to remember this

475
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:54,440
and we need to remind the policymakers

476
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,380
that, look, when we establish a solution,

477
00:42:57,540 --> 00:42:58,780
it's not only for big players.

478
00:42:59,020 --> 00:43:01,100
And I will give a very concrete example for you.

479
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:11,020
Last year, we were involved in the discussion about enabling alternative app stores in iOS.

480
00:43:11,710 --> 00:43:20,480
You know, until now, until today, there is no independent app store in iOS.

481
00:43:21,300 --> 00:43:22,100
There is Outdoor.

482
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,140
Everybody knows and loves Outdoor.

483
00:43:24,250 --> 00:43:27,100
They are great guys, but they are still not independent.

484
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:34,040
Apple still controls how you sideload, how you install apps on iOS.

485
00:43:35,260 --> 00:43:41,720
You know, they imposed via notarization, it's called notarization, this process of app review.

486
00:43:42,210 --> 00:43:47,620
The entire review of apps are not done independently, like in Google, for example, right?

487
00:43:48,460 --> 00:43:48,920
It's done.

488
00:43:49,180 --> 00:43:49,660
Or even macOS.

489
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:52,460
Or in macOS, perfectly.

490
00:43:53,240 --> 00:43:53,720
Perfectly.

491
00:43:54,620 --> 00:43:55,420
This is crazy, right?

492
00:43:55,500 --> 00:44:12,380
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.

493
00:44:13,380 --> 00:44:20,480
When we were fighting about this, we told the European Commission that, look, we needed to

494
00:44:20,740 --> 00:44:24,620
contemplate smaller, you know, developers like F-Droid.

495
00:44:26,359 --> 00:44:31,640
Because the bigger app stores, the bigger commercial proprietary app stores in Europe,

496
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:37,740
they would be okay in just paying less fees for Apple.

497
00:44:38,500 --> 00:44:43,040
And, you know, if Apple could also retain the control,

498
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,920
but just for them to pay lower fees, that would be okay.

499
00:44:47,620 --> 00:44:50,200
But we went further, much further,

500
00:44:50,900 --> 00:44:54,340
saying, look, only paying lower fees is not good for us.

501
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:54,960
It's not good.

502
00:44:55,260 --> 00:44:56,860
If this is good for our industry,

503
00:44:57,180 --> 00:44:58,680
this is not good for civil society.

504
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,640
This is not good for smaller free and open source projects.

505
00:45:01,700 --> 00:45:12,640
We really need to disentangle the control from site loading, the control for enabling independent app stores in iOS and Android.

506
00:45:13,820 --> 00:45:16,960
So this is an example that things that we don't like too much in the DMA.

507
00:45:17,140 --> 00:45:18,560
It's oriented to our industries.

508
00:45:18,770 --> 00:45:24,520
And then when there is a solution, you know, may I give another example?

509
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:25,880
Of course.

510
00:45:27,090 --> 00:45:27,860
The examples are good.

511
00:45:27,870 --> 00:45:28,800
They make it a lot more tangible.

512
00:45:29,700 --> 00:45:29,800
Yeah.

513
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,980
So in the beginning of this year, we criticized also.

514
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:39,060
We work very close with the commission and we are very appreciated that they hear our positions.

515
00:45:39,900 --> 00:45:43,560
But we put ourselves also in the position of a watchdog.

516
00:45:44,060 --> 00:45:47,660
Like, as I said, there is good and bad regulation.

517
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:50,640
When the regulation is good, we applaud.

518
00:45:50,820 --> 00:45:54,140
But when the regulation is not good, we complain.

519
00:45:55,260 --> 00:46:00,100
So in the beginning of this year, we were involved in an investigation.

520
00:46:02,060 --> 00:46:04,920
Well, the term is not investigation, but a specification.

521
00:46:06,650 --> 00:46:20,500
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.

522
00:46:21,260 --> 00:46:24,320
And they opened two specification procedures,

523
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:26,700
well, basically regulatory procedures

524
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:28,160
against Apple for hardware

525
00:46:28,220 --> 00:46:29,860
and software interoperability, right?

526
00:46:31,540 --> 00:46:33,500
And we took part

527
00:46:33,500 --> 00:46:35,420
on the software interoperability one.

528
00:46:36,780 --> 00:46:38,400
Other guys took part also

529
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,180
in the hardware interoperability.

530
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:44,260
But we worked with the commission

531
00:46:44,500 --> 00:46:46,640
on the software interoperability.

532
00:46:48,420 --> 00:46:53,080
we urge the commission to establish interoperability by design.

533
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:56,060
So, I would say this is a great opportunity

534
00:46:57,060 --> 00:46:59,840
to impose interoperability by design in Apple.

535
00:46:59,860 --> 00:47:02,560
So, what do we do mean by interoperability by design?

536
00:47:03,540 --> 00:47:04,660
Unfactoried side loading.

537
00:47:05,180 --> 00:47:07,520
You know, let's make iOS as macOS.

538
00:47:07,900 --> 00:47:10,440
People can just download things from the internet,

539
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:13,280
install alternative operating systems.

540
00:47:13,980 --> 00:47:16,340
You know, no need to this app review.

541
00:47:16,700 --> 00:47:22,180
course if Apple wants to retain control on App Store, fine, it's their right, it's their App Store,

542
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:28,580
they can do so, but if end users want to install an alternative App Store, then like F-Droid, they

543
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:35,220
can do so, distribute security checks over different App Stores, right? So this would be

544
00:47:35,580 --> 00:47:41,559
some of examples of interoperability by design, when some, you know, Apple should use the same APIs

545
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:48,280
or provide the same internal APIs that they use and they should document this publicly, you know.

546
00:47:49,010 --> 00:47:55,900
So they use the same type of APIs that third parties can also use. They should document their

547
00:47:56,420 --> 00:48:02,780
APIs, they should document how access is provided for cameras, for NFC chips and etc.

548
00:48:03,340 --> 00:48:11,300
right basically how this is also done uh in android and and this is key uh and that

549
00:48:12,330 --> 00:48:17,020
they do not need necessarily to give away their intellectual property you know they can

550
00:48:18,020 --> 00:48:23,500
um develop interoperability solutions that they do not necessarily to give away their

551
00:48:24,060 --> 00:48:29,639
intellectual property it is completely possible to do via open standards for an example right well

552
00:48:30,540 --> 00:48:37,780
uh that's all good and dandy uh but then when the commission finalized the decision they didn't

553
00:48:37,810 --> 00:48:43,700
impose this on apple they didn't impose interoperability by design instead they they agreed

554
00:48:43,790 --> 00:48:51,720
with apple that apple has a very complex system for requiring interoperability so the the developer

555
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:57,639
should enter should create an account with apple pay 99 euros uh for uh the development account

556
00:48:58,300 --> 00:49:00,500
and then they should submit their request.

557
00:49:00,780 --> 00:49:04,720
Their request should be like literally a bureaucratic process.

558
00:49:04,820 --> 00:49:05,780
They should write everything.

559
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:09,760
Then there is a committee from Apple that will decide on this.

560
00:49:10,140 --> 00:49:14,580
And then if the committee doesn't agree, there is a second instance,

561
00:49:14,980 --> 00:49:17,240
and then the developer goes to the second instance.

562
00:49:17,340 --> 00:49:19,640
And then if the second instance also disagrees,

563
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:25,580
there is a conciliation procedure where a third party comes.

564
00:49:26,540 --> 00:49:28,940
Very bureaucratic, very bureaucratic, you know.

565
00:49:29,820 --> 00:49:34,240
And but for industry, they are accustomed to this, the big industry, you know, and they

566
00:49:34,250 --> 00:49:35,480
have resources to do this.

567
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:39,160
Startups, SMEs, individual developers, they don't have this.

568
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:40,740
So we criticized this.

569
00:49:40,790 --> 00:49:42,260
We were not happy with that, you know.

570
00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:51,040
So on a general level now, because just to summarize this very long answer, and I apologize

571
00:49:51,260 --> 00:49:54,980
for this, you said, what is the stance of the DMA, right?

572
00:49:55,660 --> 00:50:04,280
I remain optimistic because I do think that we are moving towards more open kind of tech,

573
00:50:04,600 --> 00:50:05,360
more interoperable.

574
00:50:05,900 --> 00:50:07,260
There are these hiccups.

575
00:50:07,580 --> 00:50:09,740
Yes, I just mentioned some of them.

576
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:13,940
No open standards, some bureaucratic process to get interoperability.

577
00:50:14,700 --> 00:50:22,060
Yeah, but this is normal because, you know, big tech is fighting seriously against the DMA.

578
00:50:22,220 --> 00:50:26,380
So compromises are a natural process in democracy.

579
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:35,480
But in general, I do think that the DMA has a huge potential to grow and to make tech more

580
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:37,240
interoperable by design and more open.

581
00:50:37,660 --> 00:50:42,100
So the first thing, first, okay, actually, before I ask this question, USB-C on iPhones.

582
00:50:42,820 --> 00:50:45,480
Apple will never admit this, ever, ever, ever, ever.

583
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:53,160
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.

584
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:59,220
Because this was an EU mandate, and I don't think Apple wanted to deal with shipping two different versions of iPhones.

585
00:50:59,350 --> 00:51:04,060
But now they kind of are with the whole SIM thing, because you guys still require physical SIM cards.

586
00:51:04,420 --> 00:51:05,200
The U.S. does not.

587
00:51:05,660 --> 00:51:07,260
So Apple's completely dropped SIM cards.

588
00:51:07,290 --> 00:51:08,720
Now we have two different versions of iPhones.

589
00:51:10,300 --> 00:51:12,740
Is the USB-C thing part of anything we're talking about?

590
00:51:15,820 --> 00:51:16,080
I mean

591
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:16,760
Or is it different?

592
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:19,980
No, no, it is part

593
00:51:20,340 --> 00:51:22,640
But the only difference here is on the time frame

594
00:51:22,980 --> 00:51:26,240
The OSBC was a little bit earlier than the DMA

595
00:51:27,180 --> 00:51:30,160
But the type of discussion on OSBC

596
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,640
Is precisely the type of hardware interoperability

597
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:34,500
That we are talking about

598
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:38,220
Was this the DMA?

599
00:51:38,260 --> 00:51:39,820
Was it the DSA?

600
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:40,220
What?

601
00:51:42,160 --> 00:51:46,160
No, it was not the DMA.

602
00:51:47,490 --> 00:51:50,100
Oh, my God, I was involved with this several years ago,

603
00:51:50,300 --> 00:51:51,820
but my memory is killing me.

604
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:58,520
It was a directive that intended to regulate chargers in the U.S.

605
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:00,140
I'm sorry, in the EU, you know.

606
00:52:00,530 --> 00:52:02,680
So it was around 2021.

607
00:52:03,490 --> 00:52:07,320
So it was before the DMA to come into force.

608
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:10,940
But the spirit of this

609
00:52:13,099 --> 00:52:14,300
padronization, standardization

610
00:52:14,820 --> 00:52:17,300
is more or less found as well in the DMA.

611
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:19,840
There is this hardware

612
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:24,740
interoperability. Now people are talking about

613
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:28,600
earbuds, interaction with AI translation

614
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:32,140
things on earbuds in Apple. I'm not following this

615
00:52:32,620 --> 00:52:36,319
debate too much because this is a more hardware thingy. But on the hardware

616
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:38,440
side. We are, again, discussing

617
00:52:38,740 --> 00:52:40,500
side loading. We are discussing enabling

618
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:42,260
app stores, enabling alternative

619
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:44,560
browsers, access

620
00:52:45,720 --> 00:52:46,080
in

621
00:52:46,860 --> 00:52:48,280
operating systems. So

622
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:50,520
this is what is happening more or less on the software side.

623
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:52,500
Got it. And then

624
00:52:52,860 --> 00:52:54,320
so going back to a bit of the negatives

625
00:52:54,620 --> 00:52:56,420
and how Apple is fighting tooth and

626
00:52:56,540 --> 00:52:58,440
nail, and this has been the pattern, is Apple

627
00:52:58,620 --> 00:53:00,320
has fought almost

628
00:53:00,700 --> 00:53:02,360
everything about the DMA as far as I've been able

629
00:53:02,390 --> 00:53:04,559
to see. So there's a lot

630
00:53:04,580 --> 00:53:10,400
of malicious compliance. That's kind of the word I've been seeing a lot kind of define what Apple

631
00:53:10,540 --> 00:53:16,080
is doing here. Where is this shortcoming coming from? Do you see this as a natural part? You

632
00:53:16,230 --> 00:53:20,600
mentioned that there are some natural things that happen of this process. Is that just kind of the

633
00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:26,000
expected role that Apple has to play? Does it mean that the DMA is too aggressive? Does it mean the

634
00:53:26,100 --> 00:53:31,379
DMA isn't aggressive enough? Just kind of what are your views on Apple's malicious compliance approach

635
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:32,820
to everything that's been imposed on them.

636
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,140
Yes, I heard this term malicious compliance as well.

637
00:53:36,720 --> 00:53:41,420
I'm not sure if I agree 100% with this

638
00:53:41,570 --> 00:53:44,600
because, well, this is the problem.

639
00:53:44,780 --> 00:53:46,840
When we have compliance, we have compliance, right?

640
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:49,440
But this is a different topic

641
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:50,920
and I don't think this, yeah.

642
00:53:52,660 --> 00:53:55,700
So to answer precisely your question,

643
00:53:55,980 --> 00:53:57,460
I'm a lawyer as education.

644
00:53:58,480 --> 00:53:59,560
I study in Brazil.

645
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:00,520
I'm a lawyer in Brazil.

646
00:54:00,940 --> 00:54:05,140
And here in Europe, I'm an academic and also I work for the FSFE.

647
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:10,800
But my mindset, the way that I see the world is more or less like the lawyers see the world.

648
00:54:11,660 --> 00:54:13,580
And there are always two versions, right?

649
00:54:13,960 --> 00:54:15,220
There are always two versions.

650
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:19,240
So when we are applying a law, you know, think about family law.

651
00:54:19,300 --> 00:54:21,360
There are always the version of the husband.

652
00:54:21,540 --> 00:54:23,240
There are always the version of the wife.

653
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:25,260
There is the version of the kid, right?

654
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:29,200
This is the beauty of the law, but this is also the shortcomings of the law.

655
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:30,980
You know, this is...

656
00:54:32,180 --> 00:54:34,020
And if you ask me,

657
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:36,640
as a representative of the Free Software Foundation Europe,

658
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,660
how I interpret Article 6.7 of the DMA,

659
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:41,040
I will give you an interpretation.

660
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:44,620
Now, if you invite Apple's lawyer,

661
00:54:45,180 --> 00:54:49,440
you know, they're based in Dublin, I think,

662
00:54:49,900 --> 00:54:50,760
you'll call them and say,

663
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:52,740
look, can you give me an interpretation

664
00:54:53,060 --> 00:54:54,640
of Article 6.7 of the DMA?

665
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:56,980
They will give a completely different interpretation.

666
00:54:58,060 --> 00:55:01,120
You know, because this is how law works, right?

667
00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:08,160
And therefore, when commission asks or imposes an obligation to Apple,

668
00:55:08,980 --> 00:55:10,980
Apple will comply as they see fit.

669
00:55:11,580 --> 00:55:13,980
And they say, look, this is my way of doing compliance.

670
00:55:15,180 --> 00:55:19,840
Now, it's the role of the regulators, it's the role of civil society,

671
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:26,760
it's the role of competitors to say, look, the way that Apple is complying is really bad.

672
00:55:26,940 --> 00:55:27,760
It's malicious compliance.

673
00:55:28,820 --> 00:55:30,140
We should not comply this way.

674
00:55:31,020 --> 00:55:34,180
In the end, then the regulator or the court has to say,

675
00:55:34,370 --> 00:55:35,780
yes, indeed, Apple was wrong.

676
00:55:37,420 --> 00:55:42,000
So this dialectical process is a natural phenomenon.

677
00:55:42,180 --> 00:55:44,140
That's why I said, while we are in a democracy,

678
00:55:44,710 --> 00:55:47,960
we have to deal with this dialectics of law.

679
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:53,099
The problem with when we have monopolies in the market

680
00:55:53,100 --> 00:55:57,120
is that, well, in a sense, compliance becomes easier

681
00:55:57,270 --> 00:55:59,520
because then we have just one view of the law.

682
00:56:00,060 --> 00:56:02,360
But then the problem of monopolies in the law

683
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:04,940
is more or less non-democratic societies.

684
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:07,860
In non-democratic societies, we have just the view of the government.

685
00:56:08,260 --> 00:56:09,700
With a monopoly in the digital markets,

686
00:56:09,810 --> 00:56:12,280
we have just the view of one corporation.

687
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:14,000
Both are corporations.

688
00:56:14,940 --> 00:56:16,040
Governance or a corporation.

689
00:56:16,700 --> 00:56:20,260
So when we are coming into a democratic process

690
00:56:20,460 --> 00:56:21,960
that we need to comply with the law,

691
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:24,320
Then Apple will come and say, this is my interpretation.

692
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,860
And then the FSFE as a civil society will come and say, this is our interpretation.

693
00:56:28,240 --> 00:56:30,200
And the commission should come with a solution.

694
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:40,000
We complain when the commission takes Apple's view more correctly, if we will, than ours.

695
00:56:40,140 --> 00:56:45,700
Then we say, no, look, there's this reason that you should reconsider, right?

696
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:48,780
But when they accept our vision, then we're happy.

697
00:56:50,660 --> 00:56:50,800
Perfect.

698
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:55,760
Yeah, so now I kind of want to zoom out a little bit here. And I apologize if you're going to have

699
00:56:55,770 --> 00:57:03,380
to explain some basic, you know, perhaps elementary school, middle school EU stuff here. But it's kind

700
00:57:03,380 --> 00:57:08,100
of funny, you know, when you're based in the US, it seems like a lot of the world has kind of been

701
00:57:08,300 --> 00:57:12,160
imposed. There's this expectation that if you're outside the US, there's some basic things about the

702
00:57:12,340 --> 00:57:16,939
US you have to know. But if you live in the US, it doesn't go back the other way. So I still have

703
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:21,720
some confusion, but I know a lot of people in the U.S. have some confusion over what is the EU as a

704
00:57:21,720 --> 00:57:27,080
whole, right? And it can be kind of confusing to outsiders because we have things like the DMA that

705
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:33,080
can be seen as a big win for digital rights. I know not everything's quite positive about it,

706
00:57:33,090 --> 00:57:39,540
like we talked about, but we also see chat control come out of the EU. And I know that's

707
00:57:39,700 --> 00:57:44,659
kind of tapered down a little bit. It seems like it's at least temporarily paused, but we also see

708
00:57:44,680 --> 00:57:51,400
this omnibus happening tomorrow. They're releasing the paperwork for it, and we're kind of waiting to

709
00:57:51,520 --> 00:57:57,780
see if it's good, bad, etc. But overall, the draft that was leaked was very negative,

710
00:57:59,300 --> 00:58:05,800
because it'll weaken GDPR a bit. But then we have great things like the DMA. So can you just briefly

711
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:13,699
explain how the government is structured, where the regulation comes from, and just general explain

712
00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:18,060
it like I'm five to someone who's outside of the EU, so they can kind of understand the

713
00:58:18,620 --> 00:58:21,360
political nuances here of what is the EU.

714
00:58:23,540 --> 00:58:23,700
Yes.

715
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:24,240
All right.

716
00:58:24,260 --> 00:58:29,700
So before we enter a little bit into the structure of the EU so we can understand how the legislative

717
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:37,919
process happened, it's a little bit hard, just as a very zoom out, very zoom out, you

718
00:58:37,940 --> 00:58:46,540
perspective to have a general moral uh judgment on the eu itself uh it's very hard uh to say look

719
00:58:46,820 --> 00:58:53,940
uh yeah sometimes the you have bad regulations sometimes have good regulation this is normal to

720
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:59,680
at least in my humble perspective to any government you know and that's why we have the shift of

721
00:58:59,960 --> 00:59:06,359
governments uh five four years you know because it's good for governments to change so we have some

722
00:59:06,380 --> 00:59:13,040
fresh air coming sometimes, right? You gave two examples, chat control, a bad thing, you know. So

723
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:20,380
and even before chat control, we had already some other type of regulations that were really,

724
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:26,720
really bad. You know, I would say that one of the first regulations to tackle copyright in the first

725
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:32,339
place back in the 90s, I don't think that it was a very good, wise decision to start regulating

726
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:39,640
digital with copyright, but this is a topic perhaps for another meeting. Very shortly about the EU.

727
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:46,460
The EU is a form of government. There are some countries which the government is a king,

728
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:55,000
like in the UK, or a queen, I'm sorry, right? So basically they have the monarchy, right?

729
00:59:55,620 --> 01:00:00,360
In other countries, well, they have a president, right? Which is democratic elected.

730
01:00:02,020 --> 01:00:07,960
In other countries, they have a dictator, which is not democratically elected, but is there.

731
01:00:08,660 --> 01:00:12,260
The guy or the woman is governing, right?

732
01:00:13,260 --> 01:00:15,600
And the EU is also a form of government.

733
01:00:16,300 --> 01:00:21,360
And it was achieved because the European countries, after World War II, they said,

734
01:00:21,420 --> 01:00:28,380
look, perhaps we need to put our differences aside, and perhaps we need to work together to a common goal.

735
01:00:29,380 --> 01:00:35,900
The origins of the EU, it's very beautiful, because then it was France and Germany coming together

736
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:44,020
and to make peace and say, look, what we need to avoid two world wars.

737
01:00:44,900 --> 01:00:48,720
The first world war, the second war, because they were deeply involved in this, right?

738
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:54,640
And they came with an idea to say, look, perhaps we need to share our most important resources.

739
01:00:54,840 --> 01:00:57,420
the resources that we use to build weapons.

740
01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:00,640
It is coal and steel.

741
01:01:01,440 --> 01:01:05,800
And then they created an organization to use commonly,

742
01:01:05,900 --> 01:01:08,380
to share coal and steel.

743
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:14,480
And there it was the infancy, the emergence of the European Union.

744
01:01:14,980 --> 01:01:20,840
And then it was increasing the type of organization that it became,

745
01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:26,820
I'm sorry, it started with this cooperation in the area of coal and steel, right?

746
01:01:27,260 --> 01:01:35,660
But it started to grow and grow to the extent that basically all types of industry are now regulated

747
01:01:36,080 --> 01:01:42,620
and several other elements are being regulated in what we call a supranational government.

748
01:01:42,840 --> 01:01:44,480
So there are two levels of government.

749
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:54,000
There is the Union level, European Union level, but also there is the level of governments,

750
01:01:54,700 --> 01:01:58,400
government of France, government of Germany, government of Portugal, government of Ireland,

751
01:01:59,120 --> 01:01:59,240
right?

752
01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:04,900
But in the term cases, they come together and they agree and they say, look, this should

753
01:02:05,100 --> 01:02:06,140
apply to everyone.

754
01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:10,380
And then when they agree, there is a regulation or there is a directive.

755
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:11,980
Yeah, I think that's a really good overview.

756
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:18,560
And then do you mind explaining, you know, the EU commission versus some of the other organizations that kind of make up the EU?

757
01:02:18,580 --> 01:02:26,800
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.

758
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:37,060
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.

759
01:02:37,740 --> 01:02:49,520
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.

760
01:02:49,630 --> 01:03:00,960
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.

761
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:06,780
And they said, look, perhaps we need to think about a republic, a more, you know, democratic view.

762
01:03:07,140 --> 01:03:16,460
And they came, there are several philosophers, you know, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and several of these very non-philosophers,

763
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:22,100
which, I'm sorry, thought that, okay, how we should organize this government?

764
01:03:22,200 --> 01:03:30,340
I told you that the European Union is a government, as in the U.S., we have a presidential type of government, right?

765
01:03:30,680 --> 01:03:33,620
In the U., we also have a government here.

766
01:03:34,340 --> 01:03:43,560
But 300 years ago, some guys in France thought how we should organize government, how we should,

767
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:48,440
you know, empower people in a democratic way.

768
01:03:48,830 --> 01:03:51,920
And then they came with the idea of branches, as you just mentioned, right?

769
01:03:52,340 --> 01:03:56,000
They think, OK, so we need someone to produce the law.

770
01:03:56,510 --> 01:03:58,140
So they should write the law.

771
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:02,180
And this would be the Congress, the legislative branch of the power.

772
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:03,460
OK, good.

773
01:04:04,100 --> 01:04:08,540
then we need someone to apply this law, but this should not be the same person, right?

774
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:12,760
Okay, so when the law is ready, we need to give this law to another person.

775
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:15,460
And this person is the executive branch.

776
01:04:15,620 --> 01:04:19,220
They want to execute the law, the president, right?

777
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:23,460
And then in the end, when someone has a problem with the law itself,

778
01:04:24,660 --> 01:04:27,480
perhaps we need a third person to decide on the law.

779
01:04:27,660 --> 01:04:28,560
And this is the judiciary.

780
01:04:29,120 --> 01:04:30,560
These are the courts, right?

781
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:32,780
So in the US, we have the Supreme Court.

782
01:04:33,080 --> 01:04:37,460
We have, well, the executive branch, and then we have also the Congress.

783
01:04:37,960 --> 01:04:40,460
In the EU, it's the same, absolutely the same.

784
01:04:41,020 --> 01:04:45,440
We have the European Commission, which is the branch, the executive branch.

785
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:51,100
We don't have a president, but we have a commission, a commissioner from the Lion.

786
01:04:51,420 --> 01:04:53,620
The name is different, but it's more or less the same.

787
01:04:53,860 --> 01:04:59,680
We have the European Parliament, which is, again, as the U.S. Congress, you know.

788
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:03,260
And there we have parties and we have representatives.

789
01:05:04,180 --> 01:05:08,220
In the US, in the Congress, we have representatives of the state, right?

790
01:05:09,300 --> 01:05:11,500
In the US, we have representatives of the countries.

791
01:05:12,180 --> 01:05:13,860
But the system is the same, more or less.

792
01:05:14,020 --> 01:05:14,920
The principles are the same.

793
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:18,080
And then, last but not least, we have the Supreme Court in the US

794
01:05:18,620 --> 01:05:21,420
and we have here the European Court of Justice.

795
01:05:22,160 --> 01:05:24,800
To give a concrete example, how the DMA works on this.

796
01:05:25,820 --> 01:05:31,380
So in 2020, in the end of 2020, the European Parliament came with the law.

797
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:34,040
Said, look, we need to start approving this law.

798
01:05:34,500 --> 01:05:36,400
Then it took some time.

799
01:05:36,960 --> 01:05:42,120
And now I don't remember precisely when the law was passed into law.

800
01:05:42,220 --> 01:05:43,820
I think it was the end of 2022.

801
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:48,460
But then there was a period for the law to apply, to start being applied.

802
01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:52,080
It was at the beginning of 2024.

803
01:05:53,280 --> 01:05:58,000
Then it means like now the European Commission can start applying the law, right?

804
01:05:58,240 --> 01:06:01,960
So the European Commission started these investigations and it started putting fines.

805
01:06:02,420 --> 01:06:06,500
But this law was prepared, was written by the European Parliament, right?

806
01:06:08,359 --> 01:06:15,460
Now, one of the first things that, well, the European Commission did was to call Apple and say,

807
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,580
Apple, now the DMA will start applying to you.

808
01:06:18,940 --> 01:06:21,260
And what Apple did, I don't agree.

809
01:06:21,700 --> 01:06:24,200
And then Apple went to the European Court of Justice.

810
01:06:24,820 --> 01:06:25,740
So the third branch.

811
01:06:25,780 --> 01:06:32,100
And they say, look, we are against this law when we don't agree with the opinion of the European Commission.

812
01:06:32,820 --> 01:06:38,000
And they started to litigate against the European Commission in the judiciary branch.

813
01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:40,680
So, yeah, this is more or less how this works.

814
01:06:41,640 --> 01:06:42,480
Perfect. Thank you so much.

815
01:06:42,620 --> 01:06:51,260
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.

816
01:06:51,460 --> 01:06:52,380
including myself as well.

817
01:06:52,710 --> 01:06:54,700
So the last thing I want to ask you

818
01:06:54,770 --> 01:06:55,940
before I kind of just open it up

819
01:06:56,060 --> 01:06:57,600
to anything that you think we may have missed.

820
01:06:58,580 --> 01:06:59,920
I've been seeing a lot of similar things

821
01:07:00,020 --> 01:07:02,180
to the DMA start to pop up around the world.

822
01:07:02,210 --> 01:07:04,140
Do you want to speak to maybe the global influence

823
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:06,560
that the DMA has, that you've seen it having?

824
01:07:08,020 --> 01:07:08,180
Yes.

825
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:12,420
So I think the moment that we are living now

826
01:07:12,470 --> 01:07:15,920
with the DMA is like a historical spiral,

827
01:07:16,380 --> 01:07:19,400
you know, that we saw in the end of the 70s.

828
01:07:20,260 --> 01:07:24,940
Today, everybody, literally, in the EU is talking about digital sovereignty.

829
01:07:25,620 --> 01:07:31,060
You know, as something that is modern and something that has emerged.

830
01:07:31,600 --> 01:07:34,940
People are talking about digital sovereignty since 2018 here in Europe.

831
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:42,240
But I would like to have a historical detour a little bit in the end of the 70s.

832
01:07:42,780 --> 01:07:46,840
In the end of the 70s, a lot of people were discussing data sovereignty.

833
01:07:47,060 --> 01:07:49,120
And who are these a lot of people?

834
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:57,140
basically countries in Africa, in Latin America and South-West Asia that they were just leaving

835
01:07:57,860 --> 01:08:03,920
colonization because European countries they had colonies. Portugal had colonies, France had colonies,

836
01:08:04,220 --> 01:08:10,900
Belgium had colonies, the Netherlands had colonies all over the world and after World War II when

837
01:08:11,280 --> 01:08:17,939
there was this process of decolonization especially in Africa and South-West Asia, remember Vietnam

838
01:08:17,940 --> 01:08:24,240
was a colony of France. Angola was a colony of Portugal, Mozambique as well, right? And when

839
01:08:24,279 --> 01:08:31,259
these countries started to become independent and they started thinking about organizing the

840
01:08:31,440 --> 01:08:38,060
government, just like we just said, 300 years ago, it was France thinking about organizing the

841
01:08:38,279 --> 01:08:44,359
government. And I'm sorry, I forgot to mention what France thought and started to implement with

842
01:08:44,380 --> 01:08:50,740
Napoleon was consolidated in the US with the founding fathers, right? So the US has a very

843
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:57,819
important history in democracy in Rome because they consolidated this, right? Fast forward in

844
01:08:57,980 --> 01:09:04,880
300 years forward. In the 70s, these countries, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, you

845
01:09:04,900 --> 01:09:09,618
know, and many, many others, many, many others, they were thinking how we should organize our

846
01:09:09,640 --> 01:09:15,700
countries. And then they realized that the communications infrastructure that they had in

847
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:22,500
place, you know, the antennas, the channels in TV, the channels in radio, they were dominated by

848
01:09:22,950 --> 01:09:28,080
these companies from the colonies themselves. So they said, how should we enforce sovereignty

849
01:09:28,259 --> 01:09:34,099
in our country when our whole communications infrastructure is being detained by foreign

850
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:40,319
companies and they started to think about sovereignty in relation to data sovereignty you

851
01:09:40,319 --> 01:09:47,520
know well nowadays we are thinking about digital sovereignty and well and this is more or less

852
01:09:47,770 --> 01:09:54,840
what is happening in europe but this process although we are very eu focused this is a natural

853
01:09:55,090 --> 01:10:02,819
process happening elsewhere and i give several examples japan just passed a very similar legislation

854
01:10:03,960 --> 01:10:05,080
like the DMA.

855
01:10:05,780 --> 01:10:06,480
South Korea

856
01:10:07,700 --> 01:10:08,700
passed a legislation

857
01:10:08,830 --> 01:10:10,500
that is also similar to DMA.

858
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:12,520
Australia has started

859
01:10:12,850 --> 01:10:14,660
to reform its competition law

860
01:10:15,080 --> 01:10:16,180
with similarities,

861
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:18,440
to incorporate some similarities

862
01:10:18,650 --> 01:10:19,660
of the DMA.

863
01:10:20,360 --> 01:10:20,980
South Africa,

864
01:10:21,820 --> 01:10:24,020
South Africa and also Japan

865
01:10:24,420 --> 01:10:25,980
contacted Daphidroid, for example,

866
01:10:26,680 --> 01:10:28,540
on their views on alternative app stores.

867
01:10:29,160 --> 01:10:30,680
Brazil, just recently,

868
01:10:30,900 --> 01:10:32,320
really recently, last month,

869
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:40,000
started also to have a law to regulate internet platforms in the content layer and also in the

870
01:10:40,180 --> 01:10:48,380
infrastructure layer. So Canada is also thinking about this as well. And the United States is also

871
01:10:48,540 --> 01:10:55,240
not an exception. And in 2016, 2018, there were also some movements in order to start thinking

872
01:10:55,320 --> 01:11:03,620
about regulating big tech. You know, Professor Tim Wu, Lina Han, there were some names that were

873
01:11:04,020 --> 01:11:11,140
involved in this process in the United States as well. So this is the type of, that's why I said

874
01:11:11,400 --> 01:11:18,580
this is a historical spiral, right? Because then we had this in the 70s, then in the middle of the

875
01:11:18,600 --> 01:11:25,300
90s and now it's coming back now in the 2020s as well a natural process when

876
01:11:25,580 --> 01:11:29,820
think people start thinking about monopolies at that time in the 70s it

877
01:11:29,980 --> 01:11:33,740
was telecommunications monopolies monopolies over the TV channel monopolies

878
01:11:33,780 --> 01:11:38,020
over the radio spectrum today we have monopolies in the digital sphere you know

879
01:11:38,100 --> 01:11:44,320
it's natural for people to start thinking it in Europe or elsewhere very very

880
01:11:44,340 --> 01:11:46,040
Very nice global view on things.

881
01:11:47,680 --> 01:11:49,720
And I really appreciate the insight on that.

882
01:11:49,960 --> 01:11:56,380
Do you feel like there's something that I haven't touched on in this interview that is important to mention to our audience?

883
01:11:57,160 --> 01:12:07,220
I just wanted to say that I didn't give too much concrete examples on these interpretations of the law from Big Tech.

884
01:12:07,280 --> 01:12:14,280
I gave some examples, but I would like to expand this a little bit just to give a little bit more context

885
01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:19,840
also to how other companies, not only Apple, are dealing with this.

886
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:22,620
Recently, the FSFU was involved.

887
01:12:23,140 --> 01:12:23,740
Let's start with Google.

888
01:12:24,260 --> 01:12:27,120
Recently, the FSFU was involved in a formal complaint against Google

889
01:12:27,760 --> 01:12:34,740
because Google has a different interpretation of the word uninstalling software on their devices.

890
01:12:34,820 --> 01:12:41,700
If you have an Android device yourself, and it's not the Googleized, you have a stock Android,

891
01:12:42,380 --> 01:12:45,380
you're going to see that there's a lot of pre-installed apps, right?

892
01:12:45,640 --> 01:12:48,060
There's this suite of apps that are pre-installed.

893
01:12:48,820 --> 01:12:56,440
And according to the DMA, there are some dispositions there that end users should uninstall software,

894
01:12:56,820 --> 01:13:00,040
and they can back to default settings.

895
01:13:00,980 --> 01:13:06,160
Well, Google came with different interpretations of the meaning uninstalling.

896
01:13:06,340 --> 01:13:10,300
Sometimes it's disabling, sometimes it's deleting, sometimes it's uninstalling.

897
01:13:10,880 --> 01:13:16,500
So we feel the formal complaint asking that uninstalling should be deleting.

898
01:13:16,960 --> 01:13:20,840
So we want to remove the app from our devices.

899
01:13:21,600 --> 01:13:26,520
You said you covered the FDroid case about the app certification.

900
01:13:28,060 --> 01:13:46,020
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?

901
01:13:46,400 --> 01:13:54,240
So when they started to provide device trees, the drivers with the release of Android 16 source code, right?

902
01:13:54,900 --> 01:13:59,600
And we also think that some of these restrictions are not compliant with the DMA.

903
01:13:59,780 --> 01:14:04,060
And we are going to Brussels tomorrow and to discuss with the European Commission

904
01:14:04,660 --> 01:14:09,860
that the release of device trees, the release of drivers for pixels devices

905
01:14:09,930 --> 01:14:13,360
is very important to this ecosystem around Android.

906
01:14:13,440 --> 01:14:20,060
There are millions of people, literally millions of people using Lineage OS, AOS, Graphene OS,

907
01:14:20,580 --> 01:14:26,580
you know, and they depend on this privacy and security oriented alternative drones for the

908
01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:26,840
work.

909
01:14:27,000 --> 01:14:27,740
Think about journalists.

910
01:14:28,200 --> 01:14:31,800
Think about people involved with protection of human rights.

911
01:14:32,140 --> 01:14:36,460
They need to have a secure phone and they don't have the money to buy Apple, you know.

912
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:39,460
Apple is very expensive, so they buy an authorized phone.

913
01:14:39,460 --> 01:14:45,240
And when they have the possibility to install an alternative ROM, this is crucial for them,

914
01:14:45,470 --> 01:14:49,080
you know, to have more secure and more privacy-oriented solutions.

915
01:14:49,820 --> 01:14:54,360
So we think that alternative ROMs play a very important role in the digital ecosystem.

916
01:14:54,880 --> 01:14:58,740
And we are going there to say that Google is not complying with interoperability obligations

917
01:14:58,830 --> 01:14:59,400
of the DMA.

918
01:14:59,880 --> 01:15:02,540
So this is also for Google, right?

919
01:15:03,540 --> 01:15:09,380
Regarding Apple, we talk a lot about app stores, but the FSFE is also involved in strategy.

920
01:15:09,440 --> 01:15:15,500
litigation against Apple. And we are helping the European Commission because I gave this example of

921
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:21,100
the commission calling Apple saying, the GMA will apply to you. And then Apple said, we don't agree,

922
01:15:21,180 --> 01:15:26,720
we go to the court. And they went to the court, you know, and I'll give what they are claiming in

923
01:15:26,720 --> 01:15:33,700
the court. They say that the commission was wrong to designate their app store because they don't

924
01:15:33,780 --> 01:15:38,060
have one app store. They have five app stores, Apple is saying. They have an app store for iOS,

925
01:15:38,360 --> 01:15:41,280
for iPadOS, for MacOS, for Apple TV,

926
01:15:42,500 --> 01:15:46,740
and for, I think, for also iWatch, I think.

927
01:15:48,300 --> 01:15:51,840
So, yeah, and they go to the court

928
01:15:51,880 --> 01:15:53,260
and claim this type of things, you know,

929
01:15:53,840 --> 01:15:56,180
and then the commission has to prove that,

930
01:15:56,360 --> 01:15:59,140
no, yeah, although they have five different app stores,

931
01:15:59,900 --> 01:16:02,420
it's all one service, you know.

932
01:16:03,720 --> 01:16:05,500
So, and then we went to the court to,

933
01:16:06,580 --> 01:16:11,160
And look, this is not only thing that is being discussed on the court.

934
01:16:12,020 --> 01:16:14,720
Apple is also claiming that the interoperability obligations,

935
01:16:15,060 --> 01:16:18,620
that's why I mentioned that it is possible to implement interoperability

936
01:16:18,660 --> 01:16:22,200
that does not necessarily impact on intellectual property

937
01:16:22,280 --> 01:16:27,740
because Apple is claiming that interoperability expropriates their intellectual property rights.

938
01:16:27,780 --> 01:16:33,540
They say that interoperability is really, really bad for their patents and copyrights and trademarks, etc.

939
01:16:34,240 --> 01:16:36,380
And we have our lawyer.

940
01:16:36,660 --> 01:16:37,460
It's an awesome lawyer.

941
01:16:37,600 --> 01:16:39,840
He's a professor in London, Dr. Martin Ruzovic.

942
01:16:39,940 --> 01:16:42,380
He's pretty much involved with platform regulation and free software.

943
01:16:42,900 --> 01:16:44,340
And he developed a whole thesis.

944
01:16:45,020 --> 01:16:48,820
It's on our website, if your audience wanted to read about this,

945
01:16:49,360 --> 01:16:51,720
where it's a beautiful piece.

946
01:16:52,300 --> 01:16:57,560
And he says, like, as soon as society grows in complexity,

947
01:16:58,219 --> 01:17:00,340
interoperability becomes inevitable.

948
01:17:00,860 --> 01:17:07,300
And he told a very touching and moving history of a fire in Baltimore,

949
01:17:07,480 --> 01:17:10,000
if I'm not mistaken, the city in the United States,

950
01:17:10,820 --> 01:17:11,980
in the beginning of the century,

951
01:17:12,600 --> 01:17:15,180
when a fire erupted across the city,

952
01:17:15,720 --> 01:17:19,580
and the local firemen, they were not able to put out the fire,

953
01:17:19,720 --> 01:17:22,840
and they had to call fire brigades from other cities.

954
01:17:23,320 --> 01:17:27,080
And when the fire brigades from other cities arrived in Baltimore,

955
01:17:27,360 --> 01:17:32,200
they realized that the equipment was not interoperable with the waterhouses there,

956
01:17:32,640 --> 01:17:35,720
and they had to watch the city to burn in front of their eyes.

957
01:17:36,240 --> 01:17:41,480
You know, so, and he explained this in our submission to the court,

958
01:17:41,740 --> 01:17:45,680
to say, look, interoperability is really important for communication.

959
01:17:46,440 --> 01:17:50,380
Interoperability is key to enable the exchange of human knowledge,

960
01:17:50,880 --> 01:17:54,720
and therefore, we need to regulate these companies from the perspective of public interest.

961
01:17:55,440 --> 01:17:57,420
You know, public interest should be our goal.

962
01:17:57,600 --> 01:18:02,140
And therefore, we are, yeah, interacting on the court for this.

963
01:18:02,640 --> 01:18:13,560
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,

964
01:18:14,220 --> 01:18:19,080
in order to make the DMA free software developer friendly.

965
01:18:19,240 --> 01:18:22,460
So we want the DMA to be friendly to free software developers.

966
01:18:22,700 --> 01:18:23,460
This is our main goal.

967
01:18:24,900 --> 01:18:25,160
Got it.

968
01:18:25,360 --> 01:18:29,040
Well, you guys, I know it's probably a bit of a hidden battle.

969
01:18:29,530 --> 01:18:33,880
I feel like it's kept a lot from the public eye and most normal people don't know about

970
01:18:33,980 --> 01:18:34,420
what's going on.

971
01:18:34,740 --> 01:18:36,540
But I know they feel the impacts.

972
01:18:36,860 --> 01:18:40,600
And I know I can speak on behalf of a lot of people that your work is much appreciated

973
01:18:40,710 --> 01:18:41,060
on this.

974
01:18:41,620 --> 01:18:45,060
And I hope that it really pushes tech in a good direction in the coming years.

975
01:18:45,440 --> 01:18:46,860
Yeah, that's all I have for this interview.

976
01:18:47,410 --> 01:18:52,320
I especially want to thank you for your time and just being here today and talking about

977
01:18:52,320 --> 01:18:57,560
this and hopefully us talking about these issues puts it a little bit more in the public eye and

978
01:18:57,560 --> 01:19:02,020
more people who might not know what's going on or they don't know all the details got a lot more

979
01:19:02,360 --> 01:19:05,720
context today. So just thank you for your time and thank you for everything you guys are doing

980
01:19:06,200 --> 01:19:10,840
to fight for digital rights. Harry, it's a great, great pleasure. I thank you,

981
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:15,940
sincerely thank you for opening this channel. It's a great pleasure. I thank you. I thank your

982
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:23,560
audience. You do an awesome job in, you know, spreading this knowledge in YouTube platforms and

983
01:19:23,610 --> 01:19:29,100
other platforms. So this is really, really appreciate. I thank you very much. Thank you.

984
01:19:29,270 --> 01:19:34,660
Thank you, Lucas. And that is the episode. I will leave everything down in the description for you

985
01:19:34,840 --> 01:19:39,520
all to dive a little bit deeper and take some action for some of the things that Lucas has talked

986
01:19:39,720 --> 01:19:45,100
about. I know I learned a crap ton of stuff from this interview, and I know I'm not the only one.

987
01:19:45,180 --> 01:19:53,700
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.

988
01:19:53,820 --> 01:19:58,920
If you enjoy Techlore Talks, it wouldn't be possible without our amazing community members who support what we're doing.

989
01:19:59,200 --> 01:20:04,100
And I call them the Techlorians, and that's because they're out there and they're part of our exclusive communities.

990
01:20:04,380 --> 01:20:08,840
They're getting exclusive perks, and they're also making this kind of information freely available to the public.

991
01:20:09,030 --> 01:20:10,580
So we really couldn't do it without them.

992
01:20:10,740 --> 01:20:15,580
You can join yourself down in the description and that keeps us growing to reach more and

993
01:20:15,600 --> 01:20:16,060
more people.

994
01:20:16,380 --> 01:20:20,740
I also realized that Techlore Talks has a lot less ratings and kind of engagement than surveillance

995
01:20:20,940 --> 01:20:23,760
support does, even though there's still a lot of listeners on Techlore Talks.

996
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:27,620
So if you do listen to Techlore Talks, please, it's a really free and easy way to support the

997
01:20:27,820 --> 01:20:27,920
podcast.

998
01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:32,100
Leave a rating, leave a comment, share it around with people you know, just do what you can to

999
01:20:32,200 --> 01:20:32,760
engage with it.

1000
01:20:32,760 --> 01:20:34,020
It really does help reach.

1001
01:20:34,260 --> 01:20:37,320
And I'd love to see more people getting a hold of this vital information.

1002
01:20:37,880 --> 01:20:39,640
See you all next time on Techlore.