The Big Story: House panel examines big tech's impact on small businesses. The House Small Business Committee held a hearing yesterday to examine big tech’s impact on small businesses, with lawmakers bringing in witnesses from large tech companies, small retailers, and nonprofit organizations to discuss the benefits and challenges of large online platforms. 

TLDR: Startups are keeping a close watch as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. Access to talent is vital to the success of startups, and numerous studies have shown that immigrants make important contributions to the entrepreneurial community. Policies and decisions that suggest the U.S. is a bad place for immigrants—like a ruling against the DACA policy—would be bad for the startup community.    

The Big Story: Lawmakers scrutinize Chinese social media app TikTok. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism held a hearing on Tuesday to examine how technology companies might be exposing user data to “criminals, China, and other bad actors,” with lawmakers spending much of the time lambasting popular social media app TikTok for not sending a representative to testify before the panel.

Mozilla asked leaders of a powerful House panel to investigate the data collection practices of Internet service providers after several large ISPs were found to be lobbying against the non-profit’s plan to encrypt users’ browsing data. 

The Big Story: The importance of small business exports. A new study released this week highlighted how American small businesses have successfully leveraged the explosive growth of the digital economy over the past several decades to make significant contributions to the U.S. economy.  

Although entrepreneurs are responsible for nearly all net new job creation, policymakers have frequently prioritized big business over new business.  That’s why entrepreneurship champions across the country have joined together to form the Start Us Up coalition to urge policymakers to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship. 

The Big Story: House passes troubling copyright bill. The House this week voted in favor of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act), legislation that would create an extra-judicial Copyright Claims Board within the U.S. Copyright Office to adjudicate “small-claim” copyright infringement claims.  

As conversations swirl around the use of non-compete agreements in the labor market, it is important that lawmakers consider the effects of these agreements on startup formation and talent acquisition. Instead of protecting legitimate business interests, non-compete agreements are often used to block competition, prohibiting talented Americans from starting their own innovative ventures and from hiring the talent they need to succeed and to be competitive.

The Big Story: Keeping U.S. cryptocurrency globally competitive. Ahead of next week's hearing featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing cryptocurrency, another Facebook official warned this week that China will be at an advantage if U.S. policymakers fail to come up with a system to regulate cryptocurrencies like Facebook's Libra. 

As a House panel this morning prepares to discuss the merits of critical intermediary liability protections for online platforms, it’s important for lawmakers to understand the positive impact that these rules have had on Internet platforms of all sizes, particularly startups. 

The Big Story: U.S. acts on Chinese firms. The U.S. Commerce Department added eight Chinese artificial intelligence companies to its trade blacklist this week, even as reports emerged that the Trump administration plans to issue licenses to allow some U.S. companies to continue supplying nonsensitive products to Chinese telecoms firm Huawei. The decisions both came as the U.S. and China resumed discussions this week to resolve their ongoing trade dispute.

The FTC is reviewing potential updates to a children’s privacy law to determine whether changes need to be made to the law to account for “evolving business practices.” While protecting children’s privacy online is a shared goal of the FTC and the tech community, some potential changes to the rules under the law could impact platforms across the Internet, especially startups.

The Big Story: Federal court issues ruling on net neutrality.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit this week upheld parts of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 repeal of the popular net neutrality rules, although the court struck down a portion of the agency’s order that kept states from enacting their own net neutrality regulations.

Encryption is back in the news this week with a major piece in the New York Times blaming the spread of child exploitation material in part on encryption and an upcoming Justice Department event on encryption’s “impact on child exploitation cases.” But proposals to undermine strong encryption could undermine the way startups and tech companies ensure their users’ privacy and security.

As congressional leaders continue to explore ways of addressing online disinformation ahead of the 2020 elections, it’s important that policymakers understand the difficulties digital platforms already face before impulsively moving forward with flawed legislation that would roll back critical liability protections.  

TLDR: California lawmakers have run out of time to fix problems in the state’s sweeping privacy law before it goes into effect next year, leaving startups hoping that Congress will step in and create a strong, uniform federal privacy law that protects consumers without creating unnecessary and costly burdens. If other states move forward with privacy legislation mirroring California's law, it will create a patchwork of requirements that will have an outsized impact on smaller companies hoping to operate across state lines.