
A European Commission proposal to create a single market in data - ckcheng
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-data-exclusive/exclusive-europe-wants-single-data-market-to-break-us-tech-giants-dominance-idUSKBN1ZS32E
======
mrweasel
How about we try something a little simpler first. A single market for movies,
series, and music. Ensuring that companies can create streaming services that
can be accessed by all 500 million EU citizens without a needless negotiation
in all member states for the rights.

I say we try that first and see how effectively the EU can actually create a
single market, before we try something as fluffy as "data".

~~~
pergadad
This is actually not simpler as it's governed by a billion different licensing
agreements, rules etc.

To give one example: These are nationally negotiated because languages vary.
One key and for once reasonable argument for why you need national licenses is
the language issue: if you allow more easy transfer across borders the market
for translated versions will basically crash as may don't need them - at the
same time a number of people to depend on them, and for any smaller country
(say: Estonia, Malta, Czechia, even Greece) there simply won't be any more
dubbed versions if the English version is more easily available.

Another reason is the chance for local players to do anything at all. If you
give single licenses basically all the small local players (say a Latvian TV
station) will have to pay the same as someone streaming across Europe, and
basically anything from football league matches to Hollywood movies will end
up locked into the big channels like RTL and Sky.

~~~
Double_a_92
> Another reason is the chance for local players to do anything at all.

How does this work in the US or other big countries with a single market? Does
a small radio station get (and pay) the licence to broadcast some song
nationwide?

~~~
imustbeevil
There are large blanket licenses that professional broadcasters can acquire.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-radio-station-able-to-
play-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-radio-station-able-to-play-songs-
without-violating-copyrights)

~~~
Double_a_92
But how does that solve the problem that the poster above me mentioned?

Why would it be harder or more expensive for a small European radio station,
compared to small US radio station?

------
Silhouette
It's difficult to know what this means since the original document isn't shown
so all we have is some quotes that read like political sound bites with little
real substance.

If it means the EU leadership is finally noticing that it's not creating a
particularly business-friendly environment, particularly in the tech sector,
then at least that's something, even if it's a decade or two late to the
party.

On the other hand, if this is just setting up an excuse for the new Commission
to wade in with yet more well-intentioned but horribly implemented regulation,
I'm afraid that's not going to have the outcome the bureaucrats are hoping
for. You can't keep making heavyweight, often ambiguous regulations with
disproportionate penalty regimes attached and not expect that to have a
chilling effect on entrepreneurialism and investment.

~~~
0xfaded
The US has google, Russia has yandex, China has baidu. Europe is the only
major economic area that has failed to create a tech giant, and I tell people
here in Europe that if this plan to create a common data market "works",
instead of wasting €10b, I'll stop complaining about the European innovation
environment.

While regulation is a problem, I think the European public innovation funding
system through government grants is a bigger problem. Almost any R&D is
partially funded by grants, which means any innovation idea also has to be
sold to a board of bureaucrats. There will also be rules affecting things like
the maximum salary they will reimburse per employee, which means businesses
won't pay for top level talent. Finally, the whole process is a huge waste of
human resources on both the companies' and government's side, to the extent
that it has spawned a cottage industry of professional proposal writers who
take sizeable commission.

~~~
zhdc1
I would say they're late to the game, but I wouldn't entirely discount the EU
tech scene.

The EU is doing very well in Fintech, for instance:
[https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-unicorns-break-
out...](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-unicorns-break-out-in-2019/)

Also keep in mind that a lot of European startups migrate over to the states
or split offices for financing & legal reasons, so there are several American
companies that are, for all intents and purposes, based in the EU.

~~~
0xfaded
Given that successful companies will need to travel to the US for funding
anyway, I wonder how long before the standard vehicle for a EU startup becomes
a Delaware LLC.

Regarding FinTech, you have a strong point there.

~~~
zhdc1
I think they're part of the way there, at least for companies looking to do a
series a or more.

That said I also think they're becoming less reliant on American funding,
since it seems like the EU (or at least the German/central european)
investment scene is starting to mature.

~~~
Silhouette
There is still a long way to go before things are at all equal, though. Just
look at the difference in salaries for technical roles between the SV giants
and European businesses. There are kids right out of university with
negligible skill and experience whose _starting_ salaries in the US tech hubs
are several times what a position at the _top_ of the scale with a relatively
good employer would pay here in the UK, and even taking into account cost of
living, it's clearly a different world. The US giants can afford to do that
partly because of the huge amounts of VC funding that set them up a few years
ago.

------
unnouinceput
Not gonna put a single dent in FAANG. Humans love centralization, we don't
like to have things scattered around. It's in our nature, hence there will
always be FAANG companies that will have more data than everyone else.

Best case scenario EU will have some centralization on their own where people
will come and give data there which will achieve nothing more than having EU
joining FAANG club.

Worse case scenario? EU will implement same stuff like China with their great
firewall continuing the current trend to have Splinternet instead of Internet

~~~
leto_ii
> Humans love centralization, we don't like to have things scattered around.
> It's in our nature

Do you have any proof to back this up? And especially how a desire for
tidiness in our daily lives would translate to large scale societal
centralization?

My strong suspicion is that things are centralized because of the nature of
modern/neoliberal capitalism, not human nature. By the same token you could
say that human nature made the Soviet Union centralized - we all saw how that
went in the end...

~~~
unnouinceput
Proof? Let's see.

Didn't your grandparents kept all photos in one place? Didn't your parents
send you to same school as all other kids in your street? Didn't you went to
same dancing places like your friends when you started sniffing for girls (I'm
assuming you're male, reverse the gender otherwise)? Don't you keep your tools
in same box(es)?

Like I said, our specie love centralization. Same village priest, same
blacksmith, same doctor, same military outposts throughout centuries.

We don't keep photos separated and scattered in different rooms in our houses.
We don't school kids at home (except for very few rich who can afford). We
don't have each a dancing room in our house. We don't scatter tools throughout
the house.

Need any more proof?

~~~
leto_ii
> Need any more proof? :) yup, a lot more.

I'll address your points individually:

1\. > Didn't your grandparents kept all photos in one place?

Perhaps, but not sure how this trickles up to societal/economic
centralization.

2\. > Didn't your parents send you to same school as all other kids in your
street?

Nope, but again, this would be an instance of societal imposition of
structure, or more often due to necessity. If you live in a remote village
it's hard to attend a school other than the closest.

3\. > Didn't you went to same dancing places like your friends when you
started sniffing for girls (I'm assuming you're male, reverse the gender
otherwise)?

I did, but these places were quite dispersed in space :D. In total we had
probably a dozen or so over the years (I come from a big city though, might be
different in towns).

4\. > Don't you keep your tools in same box(es)?

Yes, but again this is an instance of tidiness in daily life, not of societal
centralization.

To sum up, I think that it can be said that our species prefers order of some
kind to pure chaos - this I agree with.

I also agree that there are social network effects that cause
clustering/centralization of some sort to emerge.

I however don't agree that the extreme centralization that we see in the
tech/internet space is inevitable or desirable. I also don't see how the
natural forces we discussed can lead to such extreme centralization. FB for
example built its monopoly by often acquiring/copying its competition. If this
had been prevented I think people would have gladly used a broader range of
social networks.

~~~
unnouinceput
OK smarty-pants, answer me this. How many e-mail addresses do you use to
communicate with your social circle?

Me, personally, as inherent human being, I use just one. I switched in past 2
years, slowly, from yahoo to protonmail. Do you use currently 10 at least so
you can safely say you do not centralize your life too?

~~~
leto_ii
Well, it happens that I use 3 addresses currently :)) But I agree that this is
uncommon.

However, again, don't see how this relates to the point.

The fact that a given person will likely use a single email address doesn't
mean that we all have to use the same email provider. As a matter of fact we
don't. Gmail is the largest, but there are many alternatives out there. Unlike
for social networks for example.

------
kachurovskiy
Did someone read the actual proposal? Article doesn't make sense: free access
to some data sets and remove competition rules to improve competition? Hope
it's not another incumbent lobby group carving I better deal for themselves.

~~~
thepangolino
The more time goes, the more I’m disappointed at how out of touch with reality
EU legislation is when it comes to technology related issues. I still don’t
get why the EU Cookie law put the burden on websites instead of forcing
browsers to offer better, more accessible cookie management.

~~~
tomatocracy
The same is true for other non-tech fields. For example, MiFID 2.

------
lifeisstillgood
>>> Competitors such as China and the U.S. are already innovating quickly and
projecting their concepts of data access and use across the globe,” it said.

Wait what? The EU's GDPR is seen as a globally leading "concept of data access
and use". Several US states are putting something like it into place, and
hoping to get Federal buy in. China, yeah DGAF, but saying "we are behind
other governments on data and privacy" seems ... odd.

What do they mean then? Is this just a "single market or bust" thing?

------
jorblumesea
It feels like Europe tries to regulate their way out of their problems, but
the instruments of government are too slow compared to the rapid pace of
innovation in China and the US.

~~~
mrtksn
Bureaucrats don’t make the innovations, you cannot innovate fast by having a
“fast” government. Dictatorships are very fast, not necessarily very
successful.

Regulation don’t really matter that much, the US states operate under the same
regulations but you don’t have a silicon valley in every state.

What EU can do is to enable scale by having a level playing field and market
access but even that won’t do anything about the language barriers, so the
more successful innovators in EU are those who have good language
education(alongside with good science education).

~~~
zhdc1
They can do a good job at cutting down on open corruption though, which is a
large part of why EU grants have such a large effort overhead.

The EU in large part is trying to bring up the quality of life in
eastern/newer member states. Making sure that grant participants from (insert
state here) don't steal a large part of the grant award is a very real
challenge.

------
jowday
Their use of the word "data" seems incredibly vague.

------
djdule
This text references external document ("The 25-page document also underlined
the urgency of the task ahead. "). Is there a link to that document ?

------
perceptronas
As an european it is hard to read.

Government to offer policies to current businesses `to ensure that markets
stay open and fair`. Can there be something more evil than this proposal?
There cannot be anything more fair than a free market because it allows
competition and is voluntary. Laws described are exactly what makes markets
unfair

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_There cannot be anything more fair than a free market because it allows
competition and is voluntary._

Not when it leads to a monopoly.

~~~
perceptronas
If there are no government laws preventing from competition popping up - it
cannot lead to a monopoly. (I assume monopoly means certain business can sell
their goods priced highly and competition cannot enter with lower prices)

~~~
Barrin92
>If there are no government laws preventing from competition popping up - it
cannot lead to a monopoly.

Yes, it can. It is called a natural monopoly and it occurs when cost of entry
and effects of scale are so large that the most efficient provider of a good
or service is a single supplier. Not only do quite a lot of them exist,
they're actually the desirable form of business in those cases as they provide
goods at the lowest unit cost to the consumer. They need however to be
regulated so that they cannot abuse their market power.

~~~
perceptronas
Excuse my bad definition, I was referring to 'non-natural' monopolies. On the
other note, as a consumer I prefer these natural monopolies exist over that
they don't. I would rather have an expensive railway than to not have any
railway at all. Obviously investors will want their return on investment.
Alternatives with lower capital requirements to setup businesses always exist
(rail -> bus/trucks, electricity -> solar panels, internet -> 4G or similar
solution, and so on.)

~~~
modo_mario
Those railways wouldn't exist without the monopoly of the state bringing em
about and we've seen how they operate if privatised in the UK and that's still
regulated and not even a monopoly. It's shit. Similarly I don't want to see
roads privatised because it leads to incredible inefficiency and the open
access to the roads provides immense value to the rest of the free market.

