DeMint Amendment: Jail Time for Google?
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 6/21/2006 5:24:00 PM
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is proposing legislation that could land the leaders of Google in prison for operating their famous search engine (www.google.com) in a manner that gives paying advertising clients preferential treatment.
DeMint filed the amendment Tuesday as a possible addition to sweeping telecommunications legislation (S. 2686) sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). The panel is set to meet Thursday afternoon to vote on amendments.
Under the DeMint amendment, it would be unlawful to “prioritize or give preferential or discriminatory treatment in the methodology used to determine Internet-search results based on an advertising or other commercial agreement with a third party.”
Any person found in violation would face a maximum fine of $5 million or imprisonment for up to one year.
Google earns billions of dollars by selling text-based ads related to consumer search results -- a targeted business model that has proven far more lucrative than banner ads.
“There is absolutely no comparison between a search engine and Internet access. People have any number of choices in search engines but very little choice of broadband Internet provider,” said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a group that supports the application of nondiscrimination rules against cable, phone and other broadband-access providers.
Brodsky added, “We also find it curious that those who oppose big government would interfere with the details of an Internet-search engine's business plan in legislation.”
DeMint’s amendment also would appear to apply to broadband-access providers, because it would outlaw refusals “to make content, applications, or services available on nondiscriminatory terms and conditions and with equivalent quality to all end-users on the Internet free of surcharge on the basis of the broadband network used to access such content, application or service.”
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