Representative Laurel Lee (R-FL) discussed the impact of the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act (OSA) and Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), along with the European Union's (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), affect Americans' free speech and innovation in a recent House Judiciary hearing.
As Rep. Lee said, these laws "empower foreign bureaucrats to label political dissent, even ordinary phrases like 'take back our country,' as hate speech, and they pressure U.S. platforms to apply those censorship rules globally."
"At the same time, the EU's Digital Markets Act and the UK DMCC deliberately single out American technology companies for punitive treatment, forcing them to share proprietary data and subsidize less innovative rivals," Rep. Lee continued. "These laws are protectionist by design, and they put American jobs, innovation, and free speech at risk."
The Florida Congresswoman then turned to hearing witness Lorcan Price, a barrister with Alliance Defending Freedom International, about the enforceability of the Online Safety Act, which requires that censorship be applied to speech that causes "non-trivial psychological or physical harm."
Price said that the terms laid out in the Act are "extremely vague" and "not appropriate, but they, in turn, certainly intend to enforce it."
Lee asked Morgan Reed, President of the App Association, about the gatekeeping nature of the Digital Markets Act, which includes regulations that "are creating an unfair competitive advantage for European and Chinese firms at the expense of American companies."
Reed suggested that "the primary problem with the way that the EU has set up the gatekeeper requirements is, it is driving the largest companies to essentially pull back on the tools that they build for my members from the frameworks they build for the small businesses."
"Ironically, oftentimes these small guys are the ones who are going to compete with them, because it allows them to say, 'Well, in order to comply with the DMA, we need to remove various functions,'" Reed continued, adding, "The irony is, of course, the small guy, not the medium-sized guy, not the billionaire, but the truly small guys that actually need that foothold to step up. And so what it creates is an environment where, sure, there will be some billionaire companies that could do well out of the DMA, but the thousands of us who are trying to get to that next level are the ones who get crushed between the two giants."
