French court slashes Apple's €1.1b fine to pocket change The record-setting €1.1 billion fine levied against Apple by French authorities has been cut by two-thirds to just €372 million ($363 million) – an even more paltry sum for the world's first company to surpass $3 trillion in market valuation. The three-comma invoice was submitted to the iPhone giant in 2020 by France's …
What's happened to El Reg?
Nothing.
A slip up, no big deal.
Although slowly becoming frequent, it can be easily fixed.
But today is Friday and that's not the problem.
The problem is that governing/regulatory bodies either have no teeth, are so tame that they have no interest in governing or regulating or as this case clearly shows, money talks much louder than the law.
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"... would like to reaffirm our desire to guarantee the dissuasive nature of our penalties ..."
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Indeed.
If penalties are not of a dissuasive nature, they are clearly not penalties.
They are just a bad joke and a slap in the face of the law.
How many cases have we seen here at ElReg where hundreds of thousands countless millions of persons have seen their data (ahem) stolen due to (ahem) the severe carelesness of those who had to guard it/make sure it was safe and unavailable to miscreants?
How many cases have we seen here at ElReg where hundreds of thousands countless millions have been bombarded with spam/cold calls, or otherwise abused by marketing delinquents and the fines applied were a ridiculously tiny fraction of the money the AHs made with their marketing ploys?
This is not only a European issue, it is rampant all over the world and the common aspect of the problem is that big money/corporations is behind it all.
So yes, the Autorité is quite right.
And the appeals court is in Apple's pocket, which is very, very deep.
Any doubt about that?
ie: not asking about how deep Apple's pockets are.
O.
"By my current calculation, that's £327 million. What's happened to El Reg?"
Yes, it's all well and good going with a North American style, but with the € and $ almost at parity, about 3% different, why even bother with a conversion? The £ was nearly at parity with both for a short while last week but is currently about 10% different so would be more useful to show.
Does Apple have to actually do business in France?
France has to let the free flow of goods from other members. So if Apple closed its retail stores in France and French consumers just bought their iPhones from apple.be and all the appStore sales happen in Luxembourg anyway - would France have any power over Apple?
Could this be extended to all the US tech giants just moving to 'accommodating' regulatory regimes in Eire, Luxembourg, Malta etc and tell the various governments to swivel ?
Given the complexities of writing laws that keep 27 very different countries happy (or, at least, equally unhappy) there are undoubtedly dozens of such clauses all covering slightly different situations and all carefully & ambiguously worded. That's why these issues end up in court, over and over again.
This argument has been repeated so many times...
Yes, it would. The business happens where the /customer/ is, not the /seller/.
The article even reminds you that Apple got a 13 billion fine in Eire, that was handed down against the wish of the Irish government. That's precisely because one of roles of the EU is to ensure not only the free flow of stuff, but also a level playing field.
Another example was 10 years ago, when DVDs sent from the UK to the continental EU made a quick stop in the Channel islands, out of the EU, so the VAT would vanish on the way. That didn't fly, either.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/15/vat-loophole-on-cds-closed
>Yes, it would. The business happens where the /customer/ is, not the /seller/.
Although Google's none of our 10,000 sales staff int he UK make any sales, it's all the 3 people in Ireland. Or Apple's that sale in an Apple store on Oxford St actually happened in Ireland - would disagree.
IIRC the fine was for Ireland agreeing to make Apple essentially tax free, which gave the <cough> Irish company <cough> an unfair advantage over other European makes of smart phones.
The 13 billion euros wasn't a fine, it was 'unpaid' taxes the EU said Apple owed Ireland since the EU said they charged too low of a rate.
Ireland didn't want the extra money because they wanted to keep their attractive tax rates in place, Apple didn't particularly care because foreign tax payments are a direct credit against their US tax bill so it wouldn't affect their bottom line either way.
I'm so unhappy with our judicial systems. Appeal courts too often break first decision for the powerful and the wealthy ones. First judgments are for communication, for the public display. After a few months (or years, the system is sooo slow), appeal courts change them discreetly to fit the interests of the big ones.
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