The EU’s Article 11 and Article 13 have been approved, and critics say they will be catastrophic.

The fallout from this decision will be far-reaching, and take a long time to settle. The directive itself still faces a final vote in January 2019 (although experts say it’s unlikely it will be rejected). After that it will need to be implemented by individual EU member states, who could very well vary significantly in how they choose to interpret the directive’s text.

What I find particularly concerning is something called a “link tax.”  It means there could be a fee on sharing hyperlinks to various news articles online. This is targeted at news aggregators (mainly Google News) because it links to stories with snippets. TechDirt has more information, and there’s a website called SaveTheLink to sign a petition.

I’ve been seeing reports and reading peoples’ experiences today complaining about disappearing iTunes Movies. The reason? The studio behind them is removing them from the Canadian version of the iTunes Store.

As da Silva and others have pointed out before, the “Buy” button in digital stores is, at best, mislabeled. You cannot truly buy any digital thing online; you can only rent it, and any online video store is little more than an expensive, glorified, extremely convenient Blockbuster. In conclusion, let’s go back to DVDs. We have requested comment from Apple and will update if we hear back.

The problem is that digital ownership isn’t the same as physical ownership. Despite using a “Buy” button, it can still be argued that you’re renting it. They can remove your iTunes Movies, but not your physical DVDs.

Under Tim Cook’s leadership, privacy is Apple’s best product.

In 2018, no issue is more important than user privacy–or the lack of it. We’re tracked by private industry on an unprecedented scale…If you want to be part of this world, designed by advertisers and tech giants, you must relinquish your right to privacy…Well, unless you use Apple’s products.

I’ve been Apple is pushing privacy as a feature for a while now. Privacy is the main differentiator between Apple and its competitors. Non-tech people who hold an iPhone Xs and an Android flagship aren’t going to notice differences in screen, CPU speed, camera specs, etc. But if you tell them that Apple products are more private, then you may have sold a product.