Financial Times, 2 January 2026

Some quotes below:

Europe is so far behind the US in digital infrastructure it has “lost the internet”, a top European cyber enforcer has warned.

Miguel De Bruycker, director of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB), told the Financial Times that it was “currently impossible” to store data fully in Europe because US companies dominate digital infrastructure.

“We’ve lost the whole cloud. We have lost the internet, let’s be honest,” De Bruycker said. “If I want my information 100 per cent in the EU . . . keep on dreaming,” he added. “You’re setting an objective that is not realistic.”

The Belgian official warned that Europe’s cyber defences depended on the co-operation of private companies, most of which are American. “In cyber space, everything is commercial. Everything is privately owned,” he said.

[…]

Europe needed to build its own capabilities to strengthen innovation and security, said De Bruycker, adding that legislation such as the EU’s AI Act, which regulates the development of the fast-developing technology, was “blocking” innovation.

He suggested that EU governments should support private initiatives to build scale in areas such as cloud computing or digital identification technologies.

It could be similar to when European countries jointly set up the planemaker Airbus, he said: “Everybody was supporting the Airbus initiatives decades ago. We need the same initiative on [an] EU level in the cyber domain.”

      • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
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        22 days ago

        I did. They copied Facebook without permissions. The alternative Reddit clients have them so it is not the same.

        • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          22 days ago

          That’s not quite what the judgment was about. Anyway, I don’t understand what point you are trying to make.

          • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
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            22 days ago

            There are legal clients for Reddit from third parties. Building another client cannot be prevented from Reddit.

            Adding comments from other social networks would be the only difference that is needed for the initially suggested mixing of social networks. I don’t think that Reddit has the right to prevent that.

            So a new network that also shows Reddit comments is possible.

            • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
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              22 days ago

              There are legal clients for Reddit from third parties. Building another client cannot be prevented from Reddit.

              If you need Reddit’s permission to connect to Reddit, then Reddit can grant or deny permission under the condition that you only use approved clients.

              Adding comments from other social networks would be the only difference that is needed for the initially suggested mixing of social networks. I don’t think that Reddit has the right to prevent that.

              It very much has that right in the EU. First, there’s copyright. The US has Fair Use, the EU doesn’t. The EU has a database right, a kind of intellectual property which does not exist in the US. There’s also contract law, ie what it says in the TOS. In the US, you can’t use contract law to override Fair Use. Then there’s the GDPR, which is always a tough call. It might be legal enough for most purposes.

              • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
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                22 days ago

                The Reddit migration to Lemmy happened because they introduced a paid API for clients. How could Reddit prevent another paying client?

                  • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
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                    22 days ago

                    Because a client could establish their own social network, bootstrapped with Reddit comments.