DPCMO has tried mediation and arbitration with Meta and TikTok. We’re testing the Copyright Licence Tribunal against LinkedIn. We have reported Apple to the police. We are awaiting the Danish Minister for Culture in our case against OpenAI. We have pending competition claims against Meta and TikTok. We are trying to cooperate with Google – yet Google has decided to experiment with Danes and block news access for up to a year.
Our current tools are not sufficient. Litigation and regulatory enforcement are reactive, not preventive, legal processes are slow. Meta, Google and Amazon spend billions on legal teams that often outlast smaller opponents and regulators. The giants treat legal penalties as ‘the cost of doing business’ instead of changing their behaviour. It’s hard to prove harm, we experience legal fragmentation, and lawsuits can’t address public goods (like trustworthy information and digital infrastructure) or externalities (like misinformation and environmental damage). Children and young people are test subjects in big tech’s profit hunt.
That’s why we need a new approach to big tech in 2025. We need to address systemic market failures, and we should take the lead in Europe and set a global precedent for licensing, as seen in sectors such as finance and broadcasting, to ensure compliance with the public interest.
Ex-ante regulation can impose pre-emptive compliance requirements, fair competition, data and consumer protection, transparency in algorithmic decision-making. This will prevent harm before it occurs, foster competition, innovation, and ensure that big tech operates in a manner that benefits society and the economy.