By Drew Johnson
As Silicon Valley pours hundreds of billions of dollars into an artificial intelligence arms race, a parallel battle is unfolding over something far less visible but just as consequential: Netflix and a legion of tech giants — such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google — are quietly collaborating to seize control of the technologies behind video streaming.
This erosion of a competitive marketplace will inevitably lead to stagnant innovation, subpar consumer electronics, and a shrinking job market for the American workforce.
As a career-long supporter of the small business sector, I have witnessed firsthand how agile innovators can disrupt the status quo and eventually take the lead. However, once these startups become the establishment, they frequently succumb to the temptation of protecting their territory. Instead of out-innovating the next generation, they attempt to paralyze them.
This impulse is particularly aggressive within the tech sector.
Look no further than the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), a group spearheaded by heavyweights like Google, Amazon, and Apple.
AOM pitches its software as “open” and “royalty-free,” but there is a significant caveat. Any firm wishing to use these tools must surrender its intellectual property rights to AOM members without compensation. For trillion-dollar tech giants, this is a winning trade: they gain access to a library of tech while losing only a negligible amount of licensing profit.
However, for specialized, research-focused firms, these conditions are a death sentence. Their entire business model rests on the ability to license their inventions. If they refuse AOM’s terms, they are forced to compete against a “free” alternative heavily subsidized by the world’s wealthiest corporations.
Using their vast reach, Big Tech can mandate AOM protocols as the industry default, effectively erasing alternatives. When a dominant platform funnels users toward its own internal solutions, independent innovators get erased from the market.
Essentially, Big Tech uses the AOM framework to harvest other firms’ inventions for free, cementing its own tech as the only game in town.
Furthermore, once the competition has been cleared away, the “free” terms are likely to vanish. We have seen this “bait and switch” across the digital landscape, from app marketplaces to social networks. Large firms entice users and creators with open access, only to hike prices or tighten restrictions once the ecosystem is totally dependent on them.
There is hope, however, as oversight bodies are taking notice. The Trump administration’s antitrust leaders have cautioned that agreements marketed as “royalty-free” can actually serve to anchor monopolies and push smaller rivals into the shadows.
The fix is straightforward. We already possess a proven alternative: international standards-setting bodies. It is a system in which the strongest ideas prevail, inventors are fairly compensated, and consumers are protected by a level playing field. We must continue to champion it.
Ultimately, defending the rights of small inventors to patent and license their work is the most effective way to safeguard the consumer. We cannot be lured by the deceptive promise of “free” software if it means handing Big Tech total control over our screens through AOM.
Drew Johnson is a tech and budget policy analyst, government watchdog, and political columnist. He is currently a candidate for Nevada State Treasurer.
