[HN Gopher] S.1024 - The Bust Up Big Tech Act [pdf]
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S.1024 - The Bust Up Big Tech Act [pdf]
Author : jasonhansel
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-04-20 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hawley.senate.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hawley.senate.gov)
| mmastrac wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| What'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 wrote:
| There is a little more to it, but more than $1.5b in revenue is
| a requirement to be a covered company
| WalterBright wrote:
| Any 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| the-dude wrote:
| Does this stand a chance?
| lizhang wrote:
| Not in its current form
| paulgb wrote:
| Among 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 wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but I think that the phrase "covered person"
| refers to corporations, not their employees. (Legally
| corporations are "persons.")
| paulgb wrote:
| Ah, that would explain why "covered person" and "covered
| company" are used seemingly interchangeably without "covered
| company" ever being defined.
| synack wrote:
| The post title is incorrect, the bill was introduced as S.1204
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/120...
| rubiquity wrote:
| Look, some of us prefer the base 2, ok?
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| > 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.
| SllX wrote:
| Apple must divest iCloud; Amazon must divest AWS; Microsoft
| must divest Azure, etc. I guess alternatively they could divest
| their marketplace, exchange and search engine components
| instead of their backend components.
|
| The goal here seems to be to run up a ton of forced divestures
| in a "here's what I want you to do, you figure out how to do
| it" way.
| paulgb wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| A "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 wrote:
| Adding 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 wrote:
| For 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.
| akersten wrote:
| It doesn't make sense, it's word salad like the rest of the
| bill. It's specifically intended to get a rise out of his
| constituents.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| You have to realise this is not English but legal English
| hn8788 wrote:
| I'm just guessing, but it seems like the point of that part is
| to keep big tech companies from being able to effectively kill
| off competition by also owning the platforms that competitors
| would build on.
| kokanator wrote:
| This seems like the best translation.
|
| If you control your competitors infrastructure, you have a
| unique power position and the ability to shut off hosting at
| any moment.
|
| Sure the tenant could fight in court but by that time their
| business is dead.
| synack wrote:
| If 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.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| If 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.
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