In the anti-trust battle against Big Tech, one group in Congress believes Big Tech is too big for the good of our society and it needs to be broken up or regulated. Another group, leftists, will let the companies off for a quid pro quo.
Big Tech is very powerful with a budget bigger than the economy of some countries. They also seem to believe they are important enough to choose who will be allowed to speak and who will not. Often, their allegiance seems to be with Maoist China.
THE BILL TO STOP THEM FROM KILLING OFF COMPETITION?
A Senate panel, the Senate Judiciary Committee, voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to advance the Open App Markets Act, an antitrust bill that targets big tech.
The legislation prevents companies like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Google and others from ‘favoring their products and services over competitors’.’ It prevents the companies from ranking their apps above a competitor’s app on their own mobile app stores.
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There still are concerns among small business owners who worry the influence of corporations and their lobbying efforts may lead to an amended final version of the bill.
The anti-trust legislation will now have to acquire the support of 60 senators to pass its ‘next legislative step.’
House Bill 5017 is identical:
This bill establishes rules related to the operation of an app store by a covered company (i.e., the owner or controller of an app store with more than 50 million U.S. users).
An app is a software application or electronic service that may be run or directed by a user on a computer or mobile device. An app store is a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic services that distributes apps from third-party developers to users.
The bill prohibits a covered company from (1) requiring developers to use an in-app payment system owned or controlled by the company as a condition of distribution or accessibility, (2) requiring that pricing or conditions of sale be equal to or more favorable on its app store than another app store, or (3) taking punitive action against a developer for using or offering different pricing terms or conditions of sale through another in-app payment system or on another app store.
A covered company may not interfere with legitimate business communications between developers and users, use non-public business information from a third-party app to compete with the app, or unreasonably prefer or rank its own apps (or those of its business partners) over other apps.
The bill provides for enforcement of its provisions by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, as well as through suits brought by developers that are injured by reason of anything forbidden under the bill.
The bipartisan bill is sponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal, Amy Klobuchar, and Marsha Blackburn. Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis were the only dissenting votes on the committee.
Google and Apple in particular have used their power to censor alternative media from Tumblr, Telegram, to Parler, Gab, and Infowars.
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