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S.1024 – The Bust Up Big Tech Act [pdf]
- synack 6y agoIf I understand this correctly, the law would prohibit Amazon from selling their own brands on their marketplace and they'd have to split AWS into a separate company within a year.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago"... the law would prohibit Amazon from selling their own brands..." Nothing to stop Amazon from running a gigantic marketplace for their own brands. The bill targets middlemen. EXCEPTION. Paragraphs (1) and (2) shall not apply to the operation of an online platform for any person that exclusively sells, advertises, or otherwise promotes the goods and services of the person.
- joshuamorton 6y agoIf I'm reading correctly, this law does two things One is a clear first amendment violation, the other bans cloud hosting offerings like AWS, GCP, and Azure.
- mmastrac 6y ago"To promote competition in digital markets, and for other purposes." I think the "other purposes" is part of the key here of why a certain Mr Hawley submitted this bill. If you want to bust up big tech, just bust up the big ones.
- paulgb 6y ago> If you want to bust up big tech, just bust up the big ones. It only applies to platforms with >1.5B in global revenue, so you have to be reasonably big to be affected by it. I agree with the distrust of Hawley's motivations, though.
- kccqzy 6y agoWhat's the definition of a "covered company" here? I only saw the definition for a "covered person" in the bill. Without that, it's impossible to understand even the first prohibition: > A covered person may not sell, advertise, or otherwise promote goods and services of the covered person on an online platform owned or operated by the covered company. Are they actually the same thing? Companies can be persons, just not natural persons.
- gnopgnip 6y agoThere is a little more to it, but more than $1.5b in revenue is a requirement to be a covered company
- the-dude 6y agoDoes this stand a chance?
- hardwaregeek 6y ago> IN GENERAL. A covered person may not provide online hosting services or back-end online services to any other entity that is not owned by the covered person Huh? That doesn't seem to make sense.
- paulgb 6y agoIt means if you work for a company that runs an online marketplace/search engine of a certain size (i.e. Amazon, Microsoft, Google), you can't offer cloud compute services to other companies. I agree though, it's a mess to follow this. It takes effort to make a seven page bill so convoluted. It's the spaghetti code of law.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoA "covered person"… > means a person that is in the business of offering an online platform to connect third parties to an online marketplace, exchange, or search engine which …followed by some stipulations on users and revenue. So as I understand it, Amazon/Google/Microsoft would have to spin off AWS/GCP/Azure, etc.
- toast0 6y agoAdding those two things up, it sounds like it says A person that is in the business of offering an online platform to connect third parties to an online marketplace, exchange, or search engine may not provide online hosting services or back-end online services to any other entity that is not owned by the covered person. I don't know how you offer an online platform without providing back-end online services.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoFor example, Amazon could not simultaneously operate Amazon.com (the e-commerce website) and AWS (the cloud provider). They'd need to choose one or the other.
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- WalterBright 6y agoAny other country would sell their first born to have just one of the Big Tech companies. The US has all of them, and yet wants to break them apart and hamstring them.
- beastman82 6y agoI say this all the time to people complaining about Amazon taxes. They employ hundreds of thousands of people, and contrary to popular belief, it's not slave labor.
- tomdell 6y agoHow many jobs and how much tax revenue from places effectively put out of business by Amazon has been lost, though? It’s not as if Amazon has created these jobs and its market out of thin air.
- bcgraham 6y agohttp://bastiat.org/en/petition.html http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
- WalterBright 6y ago> It’s not as if Amazon has created these jobs and its market out of thin air. It's not zero sum. Amazon creates value out of thin air.
- granshaw 6y agoThe big tech monopoly in China is even worse - with the players owning basically all communications and payments too
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoIsn't it more of a duopoly between WeChat and AliPay? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/technology/alipay-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/technology/alipay-china.h...
- paulgb 6y agoAmong other weird things, something that sticks out is how this is worded as to make individual employees liable for civil damages for the actions of their employer (Private Right of Action on page 6/7).
- jasonhansel 6y agoNot a lawyer, but I think that the phrase "covered person" refers to corporations, not their employees. (Legally corporations are "persons.")
- paulgb 6y agoAh, that would explain why "covered person" and "covered company" are used seemingly interchangeably without "covered company" ever being defined.
- synack 6y agoThe post title is incorrect, the bill was introduced as S.1204 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1204?s=3&r=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/120...
- dominotw 6y agoIsn't big tech censorship arm of the ruling party what is the benefit for democrats voting for this. Am i missing something here?
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago"Mr Hawley introduced" aaaaand I stopped reading right there. You can assume this is partisan nonsense.