The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee formally approved a report that accuses big tech companies, including Apple, of either buying or crushing smaller rivals, Reuters reported. The extensive document offers various options for changing antitrust law.
The more than 400-page staff report will become an official committee report, and the blueprint for legislation to rein in the market power of the likes of Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Facebook (FB.O). The report was approved by a 24-17 vote that split along party lines. The companies have denied any wrongdoing. The report first released in October – the first such congressional review of the tech industry – suggested extensive changes to antitrust law and described dozens of instances where it said the companies had misused their power.
Check It Out: U.S. House Committee Approve Big Tech Report
Charlotte:
Of all the big tech problems to focus on, the US Congress, bless their hearts, have chosen to address a threat the least related to national security, and the serial appropriation of user data without verifiable informed consent or compensation and those data being subsequently and repeatedly leaked to bad guys, including state actors, hell-bent upon wreaking havoc, when not crippling the nation’s infrastructure or interfering with governance and the peaceful transfer of power.
To be sure, antitrust and other anti-competitive behaviour and the hobbling of the independent emergence of novel technologies and solutions are serious threats to innovation, and thus indirectly to national security, but given the repeated revelations involving compromised data, both private and public, one would think that legislators would apply evidence-based prioritisation in problem solving.
That assumes, of course, that elected legislators intend to solve problems, rather than to proliferate and propagate them; and there is that bit of folk wisdom about the word ‘ass-u-me’.