One of the most significant aspects of Europe's new Digital Markets Act is that it is the first antitrust law that goes beyond allowing enforcers to penalize wrongdoing that companies have already committed, and instead seeks to deter future wrongdoing by big tech companies.
Identifying potential violators, giving them clear ground rules, and then swiftly striking back when those rules are broken is an approach born out of the frustration regulators experienced as they struggled to keep up with the industry's “move fast and break things” approach. And now, India, the world's most populous country, may take much the same approach, thanks to a recently proposed government bill.
Naturally, big tech companies don't want that: Reuters reported today on a letter sent to the Indian government by the U.S.-India Business Council, arguing that if India's Digital Competition Bill becomes law, “targeted companies will likely reduce investments in India, pass on higher prices for digital services, and reduce the reach of their services in India.”
A government committee proposed the bill in March, and a consultation period has just ended, with the US-India Business Council, which includes representatives from Google and Meta, making last-minute comments. Similar to the EU law, the Indian proposal would fine big tech companies up to 10% of their annual global revenue for violations such as using personal data from one service in another or prioritizing their own services in search results. Apple would be forced to allow third-party app stores in India, just as it is required to do in Europe.
The council is not the only lobbying group to step up on behalf of companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon: The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a US think tank that receives funding from and reliably speaks for the interests of big tech companies, also responded to the Indian consultations in opposition to the new bill, this time in the form of publicly released comments unlike those submitted by the US-India Business Council.
ITIF's view was that a switch to so-called ex ante (i.e. upfront) antitrust regulation would only be justified in cases of market dysfunction, and “market dysfunction does not appear to exist in India's digital markets.” The think tank also warned of “detrimental effects on innovation” that could “stifle” India's economic ambitions.
But Indian startups take an entirely different view, with dozens of them backing the bill. “We believe this bill will be a catalyst for creating a fairer and more competitive digital ecosystem in the country where startups can thrive,” they told the government.
Now that the consultation has been responded to, it is unclear what the Indian government will do next, but if it does go ahead with the bill, it would be a major endorsement of the new European approach to regulating Big Tech. And as for the size of the fines that could be imposed, a maximum of 10% of global revenue is bad enough if such fines are imposed in one place, but if multiple countries join in, it becomes extremely damaging.
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David Meyer
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Newsworthy
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Social media “dictators”. Maria Ressa, an American-Filipino journalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize, accused Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk of being the “biggest dictators” in how social networks are run. According to The Guardian, Ressa said people around the world are “being manipulated in the same way” by platforms like Facebook and X. She recommended overturning U.S. laws that protect children from social media and shield platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content.
Cyber ​​attack on Christie's. A group calling itself Ransomhub is threatening to soon release personal information of wealthy clients of the auction house Christie's, from whom it claims to have stolen data. As Bloomberg reports, Christie's has acknowledged that some of its clients' information was stolen in an attack earlier this month. The attack took the art giant's website offline for 10 days, but there is no evidence that any financial or transactional records were stolen.
Key figures
52%
–iPhone shipments in China increased year-over-year last month, marking a turnaround for Apple after a lackluster start to the year in the country.
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Before you leave
The legal team Twitter built. The New York Times has a great article about New York lawyer Akiva Cohen and the legal team he assembled around his hilarious and savvy legal tweets. They bonded as they were swarmed with dubious defamation claims by the narrator's lawyers and now work together at Cohen's law firm. Additionally, the team is taking on X owner Elon Musk on behalf of over 200 former Twitter employees who didn't receive the severance pay they were due.
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