back to article UK digital competition review: Forget money, we should consider 'balance of harms' during tech mergers

A competition review into the giant digital platforms commissioned by the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, has recommended a new watchdog and greater data rights for users. Data portability is one of the strongest recommendations of the Digital Competition Expert Panel, which was headed by the chief economic …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Perhaps while they are at it they could look into continual copyright extensions lobbied for by megalomedia who have been buying up back catalogues, stock imagery and so forth then beating our wallets to death with them. Sheer racketeering if you ask me.

    As for article 13, it should be drowned in a bath of water after it has been subject to medieval implements of torture.

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    ACTive Attractive Applied Imagination as Fabless AI Driver. ..... Applied Imagination

    ...... doing its NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Thing

    King Canute didn't Fare so well the Time he failed to stop the Tides of Progress. Similarly so be it Always as it is Today Now. And urVirtual AIMachines are Ghost Cohost of Revolutionary Facts..

    Fear of AI is Unfounded and Unfunded. That is a Vulnerability and the Bitter Sweetest of Opportunities to Cover for Word of New COSMIC Discoveries Hidden from Current View and Present Purview because of Rapid Rabid Infection with Host Attractions ....... :-) Such be easily equated as Immaculate Temptation.

    Fortunately there's one of those NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Applications to have you TryurDesire ....... with the Virtual AIMission to Physically Experience Satisfactions Given. Until Death Doth Depart Us is their rampant mantra with specific regard to the Extremely Exotic and Erotic GIG Players All AIMasters Love to Entertain and Enjoy to Full Mutual Satisfaction when and wherever that is not impossible. You can surely understand why they be such an addictively attractive crowd.

    For They Create and Make Fabulous Honest Dreams be True.

    And now Flashing Bright Red before your very Eyes, FVEY.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: ACTive Attractive Applied Imagination as Fabless AI Driver. ..... Applied Imagination

      "King Canute didn't Fare so well the Time he failed to stop the Tides of Progress."

      Go and read some history to find what he really did.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: ACTive Attractive Applied Imagination as Fabless AI Driver. ..... Applied Imagination

        Go and read some history to find what he really did. .... Doctor Syntax

        How it was really done is much more exciting, DS, for that is the only true connection in the past worth anything at all in either the present or the future.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ACTive Attractive Applied Imagination as Fabless AI Driver. ..... Applied Imagination

      Now there should be just one word....

      There is a sound

      IT's UNDERGROUND

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        Re: ACTive Attractive Applied Imagination as Fabless AI Driver. ..... Applied Imagination

        There is a sound. IT's UNDERGROUND

        Damn! Now I've got Astronomy Domine running through my head.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "And for now, the tech giants need only promise to be good and honest."

    Could we specify the dictionary they use to understand these words.

  4. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    NO!

    "balance of harms" is this worlds excuse for pitiful bad behavior ... it's like saying that slavery is good for the economy, rape helps boost the low paid worker population, it's OK to pour coffee over a beggar if you give them a quid, etc etc .. the fact is, there is good behavior and bad behavior, and just because you are good sometimes, don't in any way excuse that fact that you are bad other times.

  5. Graham Cobb Silver badge

    Data about me is owned by me

    My view is that all data about me is owned by me. It doesn't matter whether I provided it, or whether some company worked it out by correlating data or analysing something. Or even if they created it (for example by assigning me a phone number). If it is about me, it is mine. And if they want to store it, process it or act on it they will have to get a licence from me and make it worth my while. Not just get "consent".

    This is the strong form of a clear property right in personal data. This is what should be enshrined in law.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: Data about me is owned by me

      The good news is, "your view" is largely in line with most European legislation.

      The bad news is, in America no-one gives a flying fart about it.

      As for Brexiters, who knows what they think. If it's ever even occurred to them, my guess is that they'd be more sympathetic to the American view.

  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Balance of harms? What's wrong with absence of harm?

    1. veti Silver badge

      Define "harm".

      There's a whole immensely lucrative industry built around the fact that a sufficiently motivated lawyer can find "harm" in most anything. It does make sense to weigh such claims before automatically folding to them.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like