A US parliamentary committee on Wednesday and Thursday approved a series of bills aimed directly at Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, and would have the potential to transform the internet shaped by these big companies if they take effect.
At the end of a marathon session lasting nearly 24 hours in all, elected officials recommended 6 measures to the House of Representatives, from ownership of user data to means of fostering competition.
“Let them follow the same rules as everyone else”
“This is a huge victory for consumers, workers and SMEs,” said Democrat David Cicilline, chairman of the sub-committee on antitrust, on Twitter. These reforms should make it possible to “build a stronger digital economy by finally making the all-powerful tech monopolies accountable and ensuring that they respect the same rules of the game as everyone else,” he said on Tuesday.
“Irreconcilable conflicts of interest”
The latest text adopted on Thursday tackles a fundamental problem: it intends to limit the control exercised by these companies over their sales platforms, where they are both judges and parties. Amazon, for example, markets its own products on its e-commerce site, where it also sets the rules for other businesses that sell goods there. Apple is also concerned because of the App Store, its essential iPhone application store for third-party app publishers.
“The dual role of dominant platforms creates irreconcilable conflicts of interest,” said David Cicilline. The bill “would solve the problem by forcing them to choose between being a platform or marketing products and services on a platform.”
The measure potentially paves the way for dismantling: Amazon could have to separate from its home products division, or Apple from its music streaming service.
Strong measures
The judicial commission also approved a proposal which will impose the “portability” of data and the “interoperability” of services, to facilitate the procedures of users wishing to leave Facebook, for example. “If you cannot move your information, you are a prisoner of the platform,” Democrat Zoe Lofgren argued on Wednesday.
The commission also passed a bill to prohibit tech giants from acquiring competitors to preserve their market power. And elected officials gave the green light to the project which would prohibit platforms from favoring their own products – Google could no longer display its own services at the top of search results on the internet, for example.
After years of reprimands, a few fines, and mainly European offensives, these American politicians have decided to do battle. Lawsuits have been launched in recent months, notably against Google and Facebook, for infringement of competition law.
“America has had enough,” David Cicilline said in the introduction Wednesday morning, after 15 months of investigations and hearings on the powers accumulated by the Gafa. “Is the future of our economy going to be defined by the success of the best companies with the best ideas, or just the biggest companies with the biggest lobbying budgets?” He asked.
Head of the House of Representatives and the Senate
Once adopted at the level of the judicial commission, the legislative proposals will have to go through the House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, then through the Senate, where their fate is more uncertain.
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House, said Thursday that she spoke with Apple boss Tim Cook, warning him that parliamentarians would move forward despite lobbying from Silicon Valley. “There are concerns on the right and on the left about the consolidation of the power of technology firms and this legislation aims to address them,” she said. But for Republican Darrell Issa, these “radical” proposals risk going “to die in the Senate if ever they escape the House.”
The giants targeted defend themselves
Many policies and target firms point to the risk of unintended consequences on services used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Apple has insisted on the security dangers it believes would pose opening iPhones to apps downloaded outside of its well-controlled circuit.
Regulating platforms “would have significant negative effects for the hundreds of thousands of US SMEs that sell products through our store,” said Brian Huseman, a vice president of Amazon.
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