All-Night Antitrust Debate Moves Big Tech Bills Forward (bloomberg.com) 30
The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to prevent companies like Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet's Google from favoring their own products, a measure that critics warned could complicate the use of Apple's own apps on its iPhone or shopping on Amazon. From a report: The legislation was the fifth bill out of six being taken up by the committee in a session that ran for nearly 20 hours into early Thursday morning, before breaking until later in the day. The measure, sponsored by antitrust subcommittee Chair David Cicilline, advanced on a narrowly bipartisan 24-20 vote. The marathon session featured recurring clashes over whether software giant Microsoft would be subject to the committee's four bills focused on the biggest tech companies. The criteria for a "covered platform" in those proposals are based on market capitalization, monthly users and whether other businesses depend on the company's services. The extensive back and forth featured debate about antitrust principles, content moderation, freedom of speech and even how legislation should define a foreign adversary. These discussions didn't fall along party lines, and in some cases showed disagreement among Democrats and found Republicans pitted against each other.
What are they running on? (Score:2)
All night debate at the average critter's age? What drugs are they on to stay up and function all night?
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If Hank Johnson is any indication, I'd say mescaline.
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Most likely hot air...
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Healthy Debate = Democracy (Score:1)
Will need to wait a bit and see what happens in the senate.
Solutions will need to be global.
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they don't need to be global as the EU has demonstrated: if you're a big enough share of some company's market you can impose essentially global rules. They will suck it up in the US just like they will suck it up inn the EU, because both markets are far far too valuable to leave.
And as for the principle of the thing? Well for these companies the principle is money so they'll be staying around in principle.
Across party lines (Score:2)
These discussions didn't fall along party lines, and in some cases showed disagreement among Democrats and found Republicans pitted against each other.
Mainly determined by whether the tech companies had sufficiently funded the representatives.
Surely not... (Score:3)
How can you suggest such things about our honourable representatives. i'm shocked, shocked ;)
Few areas where we are allowed to talk about. (Score:2)
The GOP has been distressingly united about stupid things. This is one of the few areas that the established GOP has not created a set in stone position and required everyone to follow it.
As such, there are sane opinions not ordered by doctrine.
This allows an opening to actually get work done.
In part this is because we realize that the tech industry has been acting irresponsibly. We may disagree about which act was irresponsible (such as some thinking allowing Trump to lie vs others thinking allowing
Antitrust: back to basics (Score:5, Informative)
Antitrust enforcement has become wothless. A functioning capitalist society requires it, yet politicians act like breaking up monopolies is some kind of anti-capitalistic action. Telephone wire companies should not make, sell, or distribute telephones. OS vendors should not make application software. Music labels should not own radio stations. Electric power line companies should not own power plants. Broadband internet providers should not own TV networks. Internet search engines should not own fiber networks. It was out-of-hand 15 years ago, now antitrust is just a joke.
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OS vendors should not make application software.
Where does the distinction between OS and application software come. is 'cat' application software, or part of the OS? Do we need to break up GNU/Linux distributions?
But the inability to define everything does not mean that nothing should be done!
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The problem with this is that the machine out of the box would be useless for many users who don't know much about computers, specifically how to choose and download basic applications for e-mail and web. What would likely happen is that application vendors would pay for the privilege of being bundled, perhaps with only either crippled or trial versions of applications. IMHO, you'd need to make exceptions for e-mail and web applications.
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Nope. I know such users personally.
Half-assed Distraction (Score:2)
"prevent companies like Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet's Google from favoring their own products..."
You missed your warm milk and cookie and were up all night, for THAT?!? Telling the largest monopolies on the planet they're not allowed to self-promote?
What's next, telling Purina execs they're not allowed to serve their own dog food to their dogs?
Psst. Hey there "Representative". You're supposed to be breaking monopolies up, remember? Not sure who you're fooling with this bullshit that will go nowhere. You're distracting the masses with this grandstanding shit. The question is, what are we supposed
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Re: Half-assed Distraction (Score:2)
Company 1: AWS (cloud computing)
Company 2: Amazon.com (store front)
Company 3: Amazon Home (consumer goods)
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Re: Half-assed Distraction (Score:2)
There's no reason to favor Amazon Home products on amazon.com. If they're broken up, then there's no profit motive. In any case, a judgement can enforce that no special privileges are offered to avoid investor workarounds.
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Ok, but (Score:2)
While you are at it, please bring back...
Net Neutrality, so that Comcast cannot punish Netflix users for not subscribing to Peacock+ instead
Separation of studios, networks, and cable providers, so that Comcast/NBC/Universal does not happen in the first place
Separation of retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, so that supermarkets do not fill their shelves with generic brands
These anti-bundling rules used to be a thing, but are no longer enforced, for "synergy". Having shows compete for TV time, and TV
Generic brands (Score:2)
'Separation of retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, so that supermarkets do not fill their shelves with generic brands'
Huh? What am I missing here? Deep discounters like Aldi get food manufacturers to provide only generic brands. That challenge to the established supermarkets is dragging prices down across the UK; I hope the US enjoys a similar effect. But that doesn't have anything to do with the ownership of those manufacturers by Aldi et al, does it?
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Hardware/Software separation: If you make hardware, you should not be allowed to make software for it.
OS/Software Seperation: If you make an operating system, you cannot bundle or make software for said OS
Storefront separation: If you run a storefront, you a) Cannot make hardware it runs on and b) cannot make software to sell in the store.
2001 called, wants "Internet Explorer" re-banned (Score:1)
The issue is not that the favor their own apps. It's that they:
- ban apps
- ban products
- ban customers
- ban links, websites, ideas, and viewpoints
- force apps in the app store or websites in search to ban their own customers, ideas, or products in their own comment sections or else get banned entirely
- threaten to do these things to create a chilling effect
- tamper with ranking and spam algorithms to do these things and then pretend it was mysterious
they SHOULD favor their own products ! (Score:2)
Most restaurants don't bring you food from other stores.
That's what they SHOULD be doing !
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And if there was one store because of unfair practices?
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If the prices are unfair open your own store.
Some positive news ... (Score:2)
My takeaway is this:
These discussions didn't fall along party lines, and in some cases showed disagreement among Democrats and found Republicans pitted against each other.
That's statesmanship.