One of the most profound aspects of Europe’s new Digital Markets Act is that it’s the first antitrust law to try to ward off future abuses by Big Tech, rather than limiting enforcers to punishing companies for abuses that they’ve already perpetrated.
Identifying potential miscreants and giving them clear ground rules, with swift comeback when those rules are broken, is an approach born of the frustrations that regulators have experienced when scrambling to keep up with the sector’s move-fast-and-break-things approach. And now India—the world’s most populous nation—may take much the same approach thanks to a recently proposed government bill.
Big Tech, understandably, doesn’t want this to happen. Reuters today reported on a letter sent by the U.S.-India Business Council to the Indian government, arguing that “targeted companies are likely to reduce investment in India, pass on increased prices for digital services, and reduce the range of services” in the country, should the Indian Digital Competition Bill come to pass.
A government panel proposed the bill in March and the consultation period just closed; the U.S.-India Business Council, whose board includes representatives of Google and Meta, submitted its comments at the last moment. Like the EU law, the Indian proposal would see Big Tech firms face fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue for sins like using personal data from one of the company’s services in another, or self-preferencing one’s own services in search results. Apple would be forced to allow third-party app stores in India, like it’s had to do in Europe.
The council isn’t the only lobbying group to come out swinging for the likes of Google, Apple, and Amazon. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a U.S. think tank that’s funded by Big Tech and reliably speaks out in its interests, also responded to the Indian consultation with arguments against the new bill—this time in publicly released comments, unlike those submitted by the U.S.-India Business Council.
ITIF’s take was that switching to so-called ex-ante (i.e. before the event) antitrust regulation could only be justified when the market has failed, and “market failure does not appear to exist in India’s digital markets.” The think tank also warned of “deleterious effects on innovation” that could “stifle” India’s economic aspirations.
However, Indian startups have quite a different take, with dozens coming out in support of the bill. “We see it as a catalyst for creating a fairer and more competitive digital ecosystem in the country, one that allows startups to thrive,” they told the government.
It’s not clear what the Indian government will do next, now that the responses to its consultation are in, but if it pushes ahead with the bill, that will be a major endorsement of the new European approach to regulating Big Tech. And as for the levels of the fines that could be involved, up to 10% of global revenue is bad enough if you’re receiving such a fine in one place, but extremely damaging if different countries join in the fun.
More news below.
David Meyer
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NEWSWORTHY
OpenAI safety. Following a string of high-profile departures by employees who were concerned about OpenAI’s rush to release potentially unsafe AI technologies, and the company’s disbanding of its internal safety team, OpenAI has set up a board committee to evaluate safety and security, Bloomberg reports. CEO Sam Altman is on the committee, as are board members Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, and Nicole Seligman. Meanwhile, TechCrunch reports that EU privacy regulators remain undecided about OpenAI’s compliance with European data-protection law.
Social media “dictators.” Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American-Filipina journalist, has accused Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk of being “the largest dictators” in the way they run their social networks. According to the Guardian, Ressa said people around the world are “all being manipulated the same way” by platforms such as Facebook and X. She recommended shielding kids from social media, and overturning U.S. legislation that shields platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content.
Christie’s cyberattack. A group called RansomHub is threatening to soon publish the personal information of wealthy clients of the auction house Christie’s, from which it claims to have taken the data. As Bloomberg reports, Christie’s admits that some client information was taken in an attack earlier this month—which took the art-world titan’s website offline for 10 days—but says there’s no evidence of financial or transactional records having been purloined.
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
52%
—The year-on-year increase in iPhone shipments in China last month, indicating a reversal of fortunes after Apple’s dismal start to the year in that country.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Beijing answers Biden’s CHIPS Act with the $47.5 billion Big Fund III—China’s largest-ever semiconductor investment fund, by Bloomberg
Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6 billion from Sequoia, Andreessen, and Saudi royals as it hails ‘significant strides’ in AI research, by the Associated Press
Top VC Kai-Fu Lee says his prediction that AI will displace 50% of jobs by 2027 is ‘uncannily accurate’, by Jason Ma
T-Mobile will buy almost all of U.S Cellular in $4.4 billion deal, by the Associated Press
Families of slain Uvalde victims sue Meta, ‘Call of Duty’ maker, and gun manufacturer: ‘This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon’, by the Associated Press
BEFORE YOU GO
The legal team that Twitter built. The New York Times has a lovely article on New York lawyer Akiva Cohen and the legal team he assembled on the basis of their hilarious and astute legal tweeting. They bonded while piling into the dubious defamation claims made by the lawyer of a voiceover artist—a moment on Twitter that came to be known as Threadnought—and now work together at Cohen’s law firm. What's more, the team is taking on X owner Elon Musk by representing over 200 former Twitter employees who didn’t get the severance they were owed.
