Competition/Antitrust

The House of Representatives passed four bipartisan communications and technology bills on October 20:

European Union countries will delay a key target of finalizing new rules hitting tech platforms by the spring of 2022, now saying they aim to reach a deal “as soon as possible” ahead of a leaders’ summit on October 21. The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are two heavily debated pieces of legislation unveiled in 2020 by the European Commission that seek to curb the power of Big Tech. The Digital Markets Act seeks to curb anti-competitive behavior, while the Digital Services Act would regulate online content.

States have been the primary actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. That is starting to change, as a handful of large technology companies rival them for geopolitical influence. Nonstate actors are increasingly shaping geopolitics, with technology companies in the lead. And although Europe wants to play, its companies do not have the size or geopolitical influence to compete with their American and Chinese counterparts. Most of the analysis of US-Chinese technological competition, however, is stuck in a statist paradigm.

Google, Amazon and Microsoft have donated tens of thousands of dollars to key members of the Senate over the past three months. Some of the most significant conversations about the future of tech regulation are moving to the upper chamber, with Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) negotiating with bipartisan lawmakers over tech antitrust legislation and senators considering how to respond to the Senate Commerce Committee’s explosive hearing with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in October 2021.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the North Carolina Department of Justice are weighing in on a court case that they say uses Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — the law shielding the tech industry from liability for what users post — to skirt around other laws. Consumers filed a lawsuit over inaccurate information on publicdata.com, a website that gathers public information to compile and sell background check reports and is operated by a company called Source for Public Data.

Sen Mike Lee (R-UT), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary antitrust panel, is nowhere to be found on the list of senators sponsoring the bipartisan antitrust bill slated to be introduced next week. The effort, led by Senate Judiciary antitrust Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Senate Judiciary ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), is the latest move in Congress’ efforts to rein in the tech giants.

According to advocates of the Convergence Apocalypse theory, telecommunications companies’ increasingly ambitious fiber deployments pose a big threat to major cable companies at the same time that cable companies’ increasing success in offering mobile service poses a big threat to the major telcos. Both threats are real, researchers argue, but they don’t see the threats as symmetrical. Instead, they see cable companies having the advantage. MoffettNathanson offers several data points to illustrate the threat that telco fiber deployments pose to cable companies.

Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that they will introduce bipartisan legislation to restore competition online by establishing commonsense rules of the road for dominant digital platforms to prevent them from abusing their market power to harm competition, online businesses, and consumers. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act will:

Once a glimmer in the eyes of executives from Shenzhen to Silicon Valley, 5G now dominates a broad swath of the global supply chain—and the competition to control different parts of it is heating up. Equipment makers, smartphone sellers and chip designers are all vying for control of machines and services that use the fifth-generation wireless standard, which is becoming easier to find across parts of Asia, Europe and North America.

Frances Haugen, the (hopefully first of many) Facebook whistleblower, made one thing abundantly clear in both her 60 Minutes interview and her Senate Hearing: The United States needs a specialized agency to oversee digital platforms. Antitrust enforcement alone is not enough.