Name: Interoperability Gains Support at House Hearing on Big Tech Competition
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Interoperability Gains Support at House Hearing on Big Tech Competition

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Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItWith a new year and a new Congress, the House of Representatives’ subcommittee covering antitrust has turned its attention to “reviving competition.” On Thursday, the first in a series of hearings was held, focusing on how to help small businesses challenge Big Tech. One very good idea kept coming up, backed by both parties. And it is one EFF also considers essential: interoperability.This was the first hearing since the House Judiciary Committee issued its from its investigation into the business practices of Big Tech companies. was exclusively focused on how to re-enable small businesses to disrupt the dominance of Big Tech. A critical aspect of the Internet EFF calls the has vanished from the Internet as small new entrants no longer seek (nor could even if they tried) to displace well-established giants, but rather seek to be acquired by them.Across the committee Members of Congress appeared to agree that some means of requiring Big Tech to grant access to competitors through interoperability will be an essential piece of the competition puzzle. The need is straightforward, the larger these networks became, the more their value rose, making it harder for a new business to enter into direct competition. One expert witness, Public Knowledge’s Competition Policy Director Charlotte Slaiman, that these “network effects” meant that one company with double the network size as a competitor wasn’t twice as attractive, it was exponentially more attractive to users.But even in cases where you have large competitors with sizeable networks, Big Tech companies are using their dominance in other markets as a means to push out existing competitors. One of the most powerful testimonies in favor of interoperability provided to Congress was by the who detailed how Google is leveraging its dominance in search to exert dominance in Google Maps. Specifically, Google through a colorful trademark “brand confusion” contract term requires developers who wish to use Google Search to only integrate their products with Google Maps. Mr. Gunderson made clear that this tying of products that really do not need to be tied together at all is not only foreclosing on market opportunities for Mapbox, but it is also forcing their existing clients to abandon doing anything that doesn’t use Google Maps outright.The solution to this type of corporate incumbent anticompetitive behavior is not revolutionary and has deep roots in tech history. As Ranking Member Ken Buck (R-CO) stated, “interoperability is a time-honored practice in the tech industry that allows competing technologies to speak to one another so that consumers can make a choice without being locked into any one technology.” We at EFF have will be essential to reopening the Internet market to vibrant competition and recently . Seeing growing consensus from Congress is encouraging, but doing it right will require careful calibration in policy.Share ItIn response to the very real pressures that online news outlets are facing, Congress continues to believe the very flawed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is a magic solution. It is not. In fact, it is actively dangerous. And there’s a available....In May, Senators Mike Lee, Amy Klobuchar, Ted Cruz, and Richard Blumenthal introduced the “.” The bill, also called the “Digital Advertising Act” or just “DAA” for short, is an ambitious attempt to regulate, and even break up, the biggest online advertising companies...Westlaw, the world’s largest legal research service, is very likely to face antitrust liability. A federal court has ruled that ROSS Intelligence, a tiny rival offering new research tools (which Westlaw forced out of business with a copyright infringement suit) could proceed with claims that Westlaw uses exclusionary and anticompetitive...In December, 2020, Apple did something insanely great. They changed how iOS, their mobile operating system, handled users’ privacy preferences, so that owners of iPhones and other iOS devices could indicate that they don’t want to be tracked by any of the apps on their devices. If they did, Apple...The California Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee will soon be the first to consider new and terrible amendments to Assemblymember Quirk-Silva’s A.B. 2749—which is backed by AT&amp;T and other telecommunications interests. The legislation would prohibit the state from implementing affordable broadband rules for broadband companies receiving state subsidies as...The state of California is primed to bring 21st-century fiber access at affordable rates to every Californian. Last year’s means every California community has the resources available to chart a long-term course toward building fiber networks. The Department...There is a lot to appreciate in the recently published “Notice of Funding Opportunity” (NOFO) by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA). It is arguably the first federal government proposal that seeks to promote infrastructure policies focused on the future, rather than the usual subsidizing “good enough...Imagine if your boss made up hundreds of petty rules and refused to disclose them, but every week, your pay was docked based on how many of those rules you broke. When you’re an online creator and your “boss” is a giant social media platform, that’s exactly how your compensation...The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a proposal for bringing competition and fairness back to online platform markets. It just cleared a major hurdle on the way to becoming law in the EU as the European Parliament and the Council, representing the member states, reached a ...The European Union’s (DMA) allows new messaging services to demand interoperability (the ability to exchange messages) from the internet's largest messaging services (like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage). Interoperability is an to promote competition and prevent monopolists from shutting down user-empowering innovation. But...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItWith a new year and a new Congress, the House of Representatives’ subcommittee covering antitrust has turned its attention to “reviving competition.” On Thursday, the first in a series of hearings was held, focusing on how to help small businesses challenge Big Tech. One very good idea kept coming up, backed by both parties. And it is one EFF also considers essential: interoperability.This was the first hearing since the House Judiciary Committee issued its from its investigation into the business practices of Big...

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Interoperability Gains Support at House Hearing on Big Tech Competition

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