CEI Joins HJC Letter Opposing Cicilline Jayapal Bills
Dear Members of the House Judiciary Committee:
At a time when voters are looking to Congress to address the country’s most pressing challenges, it seems hard to believe that Congress is instead on the verge of banning Amazon Prime and Amazon Basics; banning the preinstallation of iMessage and FaceTime on iPhones; and banning Google from including Google Maps in its search results.
We share your goal of promoting competition online and protecting consumers, but legislation proposed by Reps. David Cicilline and Pramila Jayapal would dramatically degrade services which hundreds of millions of Americans use every day.
Both Rep. Cicilline’s “American Innovation and Choice Online Act” and Rep. Jayapal’s “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” would prevent Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft from offering integrated tech conveniences to consumers.
In addition to the impacts above, Rep. Cicilline’s bill would ban Google from displaying YouTube videos in search results; ban Alexa users from ordering goods from Amazon; block Apple from preinstalling “Find My Phone” and iCloud on the iPhone; ban Xbox’s Games Store from coming with the Xbox; and ban Instagram stories from Facebook’s news feed.
Rep. Jayapal’s bill would force free apps like Google Maps, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, iMessage, and FaceTime to be divested from their parent companies, putting at risk these free services and making them less accessible to the public.
We believe that voters want Congress to fix things that are broken — not break or ban things that they feel are working well. We strongly encourage you to reject these proposals.
Sincerely,
Americans for Prosperity
Chamber of Progress Computer and Communications
Industry Association
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Connected Commerce Council
Consumer Technology Association
Developers Alliance
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
NetChoice
R Street Institute
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
TechFreedom
TechNet