US lawmakers propose laws to limit power of big tech companies
The discussion about the power of big tech companies took another step when US lawmakers introduced five bills meant to limit the tech giants power. The bills were no surprise as they came after several hearings and a one and a half year long investigation of the power held by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google-owner Alphabet.
A Judiciary panel last in a report said Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook abuse their market power. The report was approved on a party-line vote earlier this year. Each of the five bills now presented includes a Republican co-sponsor, thehill.com reports.
To become law, the bipartisan bills have to pass several obstacles: House of Representatives, Senate and the signing of Joe Biden. Observers seemed pessimistic carefully saying they are facing dauting odds. The bills are bipartisan but there is not unanimous support for them.
The bills cover several aspects on big tech companies’ power such as mergers, data portability and limitation of competition. The ultimate conclusion of the bills is that they support those who argue in favour of forcing big tech to sell assets to break them up into smaller units that would have less power to limit competition.
They will now be sent to the House Judiciary Committee for further discussions.
The US Chamber of Commerce issued a statement saying that bills that target specific companies instead of focusing on business practices are simply bad policy and should be ruled unconstitutional.
The five bills address:
- Preventing manipulation of markets to promote big tech’s own products or services
- Preventing big tech from buying out competitors
- Preventing big tech from selling products and services on marketplaces that they control
- More resources to authorities that supervise markets to limit the power of monopolies
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