GoKawiilAfter a bipartisan group of senators reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) today, reviving an effort that could have major implications for Big Tech if enacted into law, Apple issued a strong rebuttal of the proposal. Here are the details.
AICOA is back
Earlier today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced, or rather, reintroduced a bill proposal that seeks to “restore online competition and affordability by preventing the world’s largest digital platforms from abusing their market power to stifle competition, undercut online businesses and raise prices for American consumers.”
The AICOA was immediately endorsed by companies such as Mozilla, Y Combinator, Proton, Yelp, DuckDuckGo, Replit, and others, as well as by several antitrust scholars, advocates, and organizations.
In a nutshell, AICOA would apply to “platforms that have at least $175 billion in average annual gross revenue and reach at least 34% of U.S. subscriber households or 34% of U.S. monthly active users over the age of 12.”
In practice, if enacted, it would prohibit covered platforms from:
Unfairly favoring their own products or services.
Misusing nonpublic business-user data to copy and compete against small businesses.
Unfairly limiting competitors’ access to key platform features.
Blocking business users from accessing or moving their own data from one digital platform to another.
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