Anti-Tech Bill Carves Out Protected Industries, Harms Small Businesses
The amended American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) explicitly carves out big telecommunications, banks, and credit card companies at the expense of small businesses and consumers.
Here’s what to read to get up to speed:
1) AICOA 3.0 includes specific carve outs for telcos and financial companies, explains TechDirt blog post editor Mike Masnick while noting telecom companies are “way more of a competition problem than any online service.”
2) In a “cronyist carve out,” Sen. Klobuchar called for more antitrust enforcement in the credit card industry yet exempted the very same companies from AICOA 3.0, tweeted Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich.
3) “Unlike the big industries that were able to get carve-outs in the new S. 2992, small businesses will unfortunately still experience harmful fallout,” explains Karen Kerrigan of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.
4) AICOA 3.0’s carve outs for Visa and Mastercard mean that small businesses “will suffer” paying onerous swipe fees to payments companies while the “tech firms targeted in the bill offer numerous free or discounted services to startups and small businesses,” notes Trevor Wagener of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.
5) In Sen. Klobuchar’s AICOA 3.0, banks and credit card companies received carve outs, points out Patrick Hedger of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.