Decker: New bill would open your smartphone to special inter…
Rep. Kat Cammack (R‑FL) has some explaining to do in her district following the release of her “App Store Freedom Act.”
Cammack and her fellow supporters want you to believe their congressional phone lines are ringing off the hook with constituents begging to have the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store removed from their devices — even if it means putting their security and personal data at risk.
Think about your own smartphone experience and ask yourself: Does what Cammack is selling make any sense? Or is it more plausible a coalition of privileged app developers is using the government to muscle their way into your phone — without paying for that which allowed them to exist in the first place?
If you haven’t personally felt the urge to call Congress and demand they delete your app store, you already know the answer.
Cammack and special interest groups like the so-called “Coalition for App Fairness” are trying to force smartphone manufacturers to make their competitors’ software available on devices without any terms or restrictions. Applied to the physical world, this is akin to a gas station being forced to sell a competitor’s gasoline without making any profit on the sale, while also being denied any compensation for the cost of building and maintaining the storage tanks and pumps. It’s no surprise, then, that the ‘Coalition for App Fairness,’ is made up of app developers including Epic Games, which has long argued, in essence, it should be afforded access to digital shelf space, as well as all accompanying, underlying intellectual property, for free (or at minimum, at a level dictated by them.)
What’s particularly egregious about the not-so epic game they are playing is just how much these developers have benefited from incumbent app stores. In addition to creating the market that allowed apps to exist, these platforms have invested tens of billions of dollars into high-speed, secure, digital ecosystems. That requires constant upkeep to defend against ever-growing threats; last year alone, the Apple App Store blocked nearly 2 million risky submissions and saved the economy billions in fraud.
