Amazon Claims It Isn't a 'Very Large Online Platform' To Evade EU Rules (arstechnica.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon doesn't want to comply with Europe's Digital Services Act, and to avoid the rules the company is arguing that it doesn't meet the definition of a Very Large Online Platform under EU law. Amazon filed an appeal at the EU General Court to challenge the European Commission decision that Amazon meets the criteria and must comply with the new regulations. "We agree with the EC's objective and are committed to protecting customers from illegal products and content, but Amazon doesn't fit this description of a 'Very Large Online Platform' (VLOP) under the DSA and therefore should not be designated as such," Amazon said in a statement provided to Ars today.
The Digital Services Act includes content moderation requirements, transparency rules, and protections for minors. Targeted advertising based on profiling toward children will no longer be permitted, for example. Amazon argued that the new law is supposed to "address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information," and not businesses that are primarily retail-based. "The vast majority of our revenue comes from our retail business," Amazon said. Amazon also claims it's unfair that some retailers with larger businesses in individual countries weren't on the list of 19 companies that must comply with the Digital Services Act. The rules only designate platforms with over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17.
Amazon said it is "not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries where we operate, and none of these largest retailers in each European country has been designated as a VLOP. If the VLOP designation were to be applied to Amazon and not to other large retailers across the EU, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers." Those other companies Amazon referred to include Poland's Allegro or the Dutch Bol.com, according to a Bloomberg report. Neither of those platforms appears to have at least 45 million active users. A summary of the appeal provided by Amazon claimed the designation "is based on a discriminatory criterion and disproportionately violates the principle of equal treatment and the applicant's fundamental rights." In response, the EC said that "it would defend its position in court and added that Amazon still must comply with the rules by end of August, regardless of the appeal," Bloomberg wrote.
"The scope of the DSA is very clear and is defined to cover all platforms that expose their users to content, including the sale of products or services, which can be illegal," the commission said in statement reported by Bloomberg. "For marketplaces as for social networks, very wide user reach increases the risks and the platforms' responsibilities to address them."
The Digital Services Act includes content moderation requirements, transparency rules, and protections for minors. Targeted advertising based on profiling toward children will no longer be permitted, for example. Amazon argued that the new law is supposed to "address systemic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information," and not businesses that are primarily retail-based. "The vast majority of our revenue comes from our retail business," Amazon said. Amazon also claims it's unfair that some retailers with larger businesses in individual countries weren't on the list of 19 companies that must comply with the Digital Services Act. The rules only designate platforms with over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17.
Amazon said it is "not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries where we operate, and none of these largest retailers in each European country has been designated as a VLOP. If the VLOP designation were to be applied to Amazon and not to other large retailers across the EU, Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers." Those other companies Amazon referred to include Poland's Allegro or the Dutch Bol.com, according to a Bloomberg report. Neither of those platforms appears to have at least 45 million active users. A summary of the appeal provided by Amazon claimed the designation "is based on a discriminatory criterion and disproportionately violates the principle of equal treatment and the applicant's fundamental rights." In response, the EC said that "it would defend its position in court and added that Amazon still must comply with the rules by end of August, regardless of the appeal," Bloomberg wrote.
"The scope of the DSA is very clear and is defined to cover all platforms that expose their users to content, including the sale of products or services, which can be illegal," the commission said in statement reported by Bloomberg. "For marketplaces as for social networks, very wide user reach increases the risks and the platforms' responsibilities to address them."
Insulting the judges may not be a smart strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
Because this claim is basically an accusation of extreme stupidity. If Amazon is lucky, they will just get laughed out of the room.
Re:Insulting the judges may not be a smart strateg (Score:4, Interesting)
What about an alternate solution: if Amazon likes being a small platform, it can be made one.
Re:Insulting the judges may not be a smart strateg (Score:5, Funny)
I like it. Maybe restrict it to selling books?
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"... specific elements of the company."
I don't care if you call it a department, a division, or an element, they all belong to Amazon, the single entity.
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Well, given the definition of a VLOP, this is possibly an even more hilariously bizarre claim.
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Wasn't the definition "You are either facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple"?
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Wasn't the definition "You are either facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple"?
Here is the initial list: https://ec.europa.eu/commissio... [europa.eu]
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The full list [europa.eu] is 17 Very Large Online Platforms: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, Zalando; and 2 Very Large Online Search Engines: Bing, Google Search. I may have missed some mergers, but I'm not aware that all of those are owned by Meta, Alphabet, Amazon or Apple.
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Well, given the definition of a VLOP, this is possibly an even more hilariously bizarre claim.
Is it? Because the referenced "Digital Services Act" [europa.eu] defines "Online Platform" as:
a hosting service that, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates information to the public, unless that activity is a minor and purely ancillary feature of another service or a minor functionality of the principal service and, for objective and technical reasons, cannot be used without that other service, and the integration of the feature or functionality into the other service is not a means to circumvent the applicability of this Regulation;
I think Amazon has a good argument that this does not include them, depending on how you construe AWS (presumably their argument is that AWS isn't "disseminating information," its merely providing cloud infrastructure. Its customers may well be standing up "online platforms" on top of that infrastructure, but Amazon has nothing to do with that). Its online reviews "disseminate information" but that's an "ancillary feature o
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There does seem to be room for argument.
I've got to disagree with your assessment of
Its online reviews "disseminate information" but that's an "ancillary feature of another service or a minor functionality of a principal service" (i.e. "selling stuff") that "cannot be used without the other service."
I use Amazon reviews without using Amazon purchasing all the time, and I really doubt I'm alone considering that Amazon reviews are very often some of the first results provided when searching online for product reviews.
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That's a fair enough disagreement. My counterpoint would be that you can't use those reviews without going to Amazon's store (or to someone who scrapes the site, like Google, at which point they become the "online platform.") You don't have to buy anything in the store, but I don't believe there is e.g. a reviews.amazon.com you can visit that does not try to sell you something and instead only presents product reviews. I think the DSA agrees with my assessment:
For example, the comments section in an online newspaper could constitute such a feature, where it is clear that it is ancillary to the main service represented by the publication of news under the editorial responsibility of the publisher. In contrast, the storage of comments in a social network should be considered an online platform service where it is clear that it is not a minor feature of the service offered, even if it is ancillary to publishing the posts of recipients of the service.
Reviews are more akin to the former than the
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It can't have anything to do with the size, because the regulations for the designation say that the figures should be provided by the company itself. The argument must be that Amazon (or, specifically, Amazon Store, since that's the designated VLOP) isn't an "online platform".
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ha ha ha (Score:3)
Oh, wait... you were serious. Let me laugh harder.
HA HA HA HA
Yes, I read TFA in ars and ElReg (Score:5, Insightful)
And from what I undestood, Amazon allegues that the EU's VLOP is meant for content and publicity sites, and not retail goods sites.
There is no denying that Amazon as a whole is a large platfrom, but as a content and/or publicity provider is miniscule compared to other companies that got the EU's VLOP label.
And that's all. another clickbaity headline causing a storm in a teacup...
Re:Yes, I read TFA in ars and ElReg (Score:5, Informative)
And from what I undestood, Amazon allegues that the EU's VLOP is meant for content and publicity sites, and not retail goods sites.
There is no denying that Amazon as a whole is a large platfrom, but as a content and/or publicity provider is miniscule compared to other companies that got the EU's VLOP label.
Amazon is the world's largest eBook distributor, and a rather sizable percentage of that content (as a percentage of titles) comes from individual authors, not major publishers, which makes it UGC. If that doesn't make Amazon a content platform, I can't imagine what would.
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Yeah, but you have to pay for those ebooks, making them a retail product, not stuff like posting on slashdot. If you want to buy a copy of Mein Kampf or other nazi literature(the rights for MK are "complicated", especially in Europe), you can.
Remember, legalistic reading is the purview of lawyers and the courts, and even before you involve different legal traditions, it isn't the same as normal readings.
So it'd get very complex with legalstic readings of any definitions used for things like "online platfor
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Yeah, but you have to pay for those ebooks, making them a retail product, not stuff like posting on slashdot.
Lots of them are free [amazon.com]. So not necessarily.
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Most of those are only "free" with kindle unlimited, where you're explicitly paying for 'unlimited' rentals during the period. Much like netflix, but for books. You're very much paying, thus making you the customer, not the product.*
The remaining ones are often clearly just "loss leaders" - I actually saw this a few times back in the day, bookstores would actually give away a "book" that was actually like the first 1/4 of a rather popular book series.
Give away book one, charge for books 2-10.
*It might be
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Libraries have a lot of free books under that standard. Do they need to be regulated more?
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the idea of equating free book distribution with "distribution of speech and information" borders on the far fetched
Why, because books are not free speech and information?
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Yeah, but you have to pay for those ebooks, making them a retail product
If Wikipedia has to be classified as a VLOP, which they are [europa.eu], then there's no way Amazon should get out of this. This new Big brother act has little concern about what their business is -- all that matters is they have a high readership for their site; which subjects them to many expensive compliance requirements - including a mandatory 4 months timeframe for full implementation of all requirements (Which include being required to re
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Yeah, but you have to pay for those ebooks, making them a retail product, not stuff like posting on slashdot
havent you been in all these posts about reddit arguing users should be paid for using reddit? why not pay people for posting on slashdot? surely they deserve it? its just as inane an argument as paying reddit mods
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Amazon is the world's largest eBook distributor,
Amazon is also a hosting provider under the DSA, because they run AWS, and AWS is a hosting service; They are an online platform in several ways - just not a social media platform. While they might like the definition of "Online Platform" to be narrow: it's actually not that limited -- Just because they think a regulation is irrelevent to your business doesn't excuse them from it (?).. What kind of excuse could a company of that size have anyway, su
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And that is not even counting Audible another Amazon product that has close to a monopoly on audiobooks, one they get by only charging 50% instead of 70% of revenue on exclusives.
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Let me rephrase that. Their monopoly on audiobooks is strong enough they can charge 70% of revenue from authors, and are still trying to strengthen their monopoly further..
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Plus they own Audible, the largest audio book platform, and they have Amazon Prime TV or whatever it's called, and the Freevee streaming service. They own Twitch too.
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In 2022 Amazon made $38 billion dollars in advertising revenue. I don't know about you, but $38B isn't a mom and pop web site.
And not to mention that's $38B dollars it basically extorted from its vendors. "Yep. We'll sell your product for a 50% commission. Now, how much more are you willing to pay us so we don't advertise the Amazon Basic version over yours???"
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In 2022 Amazon made $38 billion dollars in advertising revenue. I don't know about you, but $38B isn't a mom and pop web site.
And not to mention that's $38B dollars it basically extorted from its vendors. "Yep. We'll sell your product for a 50% commission. Now, how much more are you willing to pay us so we don't advertise the Amazon Basic version over yours???"
How does that U$D 38milliards compare to the advertising revenue that the other heavy hitters dubbed a VLOP pull in?
I mean, Google was cited. how does Google's publicity revenue (224.47) compares with Amazon's U$D 38Milliards?
But You remember is not only advertising. Right? Is also media.
For Google the commision also cited Youtube and Google Play, Apple was there due to apple app store and (to a lesser extent) AppleTV+. Can we trust you to google the figures to compare to Amazon's app store and PrimeTV+Fre
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Ahahahahahaha (Score:1)
Now what did they actually say? No kidding around, okay?
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"We're big, but we're mostly retail, and that definition doesn't apply to retail. If you feel that we still qualify, why do these other companies not qualify as well?"
Hmmm .... (Score:1)
Amazon Claims It Isn't a 'Very Large Online Platform' To Evade EU Rules
Amazon Lawyer: Well your honour, ... eh ... you see, ... it's like this. Amaszon may have 1,541,000 employees world wide and it may have had a net income of $4.294B during the twelve months prior to March 31, 2023 but Amazon identifies as a very small family run business.
Judge: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
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Sheer arrogance (Score:2)
Of course not (Score:2)
They are exactly 0.00000000000001% smaller than the EU definition of a "large online platform." What else did the EU regulators expect?
Sure, Amazon... (Score:1)
They have a point (Score:2)
The main summary is that making them comply with these regulations but not making their competitors comply is unfair and unequal treatment.
One may be able to argue that this is necessary, that these other companies need or deserve this competitive advantage, but I would argue that if it is good for Amazon, it should be good for other large competitors in EU countries. So, a compromise would be to enforce these rules fairly.