Is it time for our anti-trust laws to separate platform and content?
This is clearly anti-trust, yet it happens over and over. Google/Android. Amazon's store vs amazon's own products. Microsoft/Xbox, and so forth. Even historically this is the heart of what's defined previous monopolies -- like when the movie studios had to sell off the theaters in the mid-20th century, for the same reason.
It'd be a really clean fix if it was clarified in our legislation that if you provide a platform which allows other companies to add content into (i.e. an operating system, or ecosystem like iphone, xbox, playstation), AND you also provide content for that platform (applications/games), that you have to maintain separation and openness -- your platform cannot provide any advantage to your applications over others, and CONVERSELY that your content producers (studios) cannot be exclusive.
In the latest deal with Microsoft -- they shouldn't be buying studios to provide content to their xbox platform and ALSO making them exclusive xbox.
Is clarification like this even possible with our legislation?
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