The European Union has decreed that Apple must share information with its rivals, Alphabet and Meta, also known as Google and Facebook. The sharing is supposed to produce "interoperability" per the EU's Digital Markets Act. This helps companies that rely on the App store to distribute their products. Apple has filed an appeal. I'm sure this is all very significant though I have nothing very profound to say about it now, except that it reminds me of the US debate about "net neutrality" a few years back.
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Is it a thing? https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2019/01/athens-review-of-books-under-threat-from-politically-motivated-legal-action-1.html#more You will gather from that source that Greek courts don't seem to have an equivalent of the TIMES v. SULLIVAN rule in the US. They are open to the use of civil defamation lawsuits by butt-hurt politicians as a way of stifling free speech. The first signatory of the letter of protest is Bruce Ackerman, a professor of both law and political science at Yale University -- and someone who knows the SULLIVAN rule quite well. It is worthwhile watching as this one unfolds.
I'm working (too slowly) on a review of a book that takes an international comparative approach to copyright law. I'll record a point here that intrigues me, but that probably won't get into my review. In the European Union, it seems there is now a significant difference at law between the music that is playing in the dentist's office when patients are in the chair undergoing the rigors of examination or repair work on the one hand, and the screening of television programs in the waiting room of a rehab facility as a diversion for patients. I had never given any thought to copyright in either context before, so this is all new to me. It is not so much that there IS a difference that interests me, but how that difference is justified. As EU directives put the point, a copyright owner has a right to control when his/her/its property will be "communicated to the public." Although this is not the sole consideration, a court is more likely to find a com...