Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Peter Welch from Colorado and Vermont, respectively, introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act, a bill that would create a government body responsible for oversight over digital platforms. The bill defines the platforms this potential body would regulate as “[Any] online service that serves as an intermediary facilitating interactions between consumers, or between consumers and entities offering goods and services, including content primarily generated by algorithmic processes.”

It sounds like gaming platforms might be part of that, especially if those gaming platforms act as both storefront and launcher. But Doug, you ask, what’s to stop someone from just downloading their games before they get in trouble with the feds?

That would be a reasonable way to avoid this if the lion’s share of modern games didn’t require some form of connection to the internet and central servers in order to even work. We’ve all experienced it. We want to sit down after a long day at work and play our favorite game but —oops — it needs a 250 GB update, and no, you can’t just play while it’s downloading.

That’s where this gets to be a massive issue, because if the government can force a private entity to block access to certain individuals, you don’t have property rights anymore, you get to keep your property on the good graces of government actors. And frankly, it’s not just the government that can be bad actors.

[This has already come up in other contexts, notably electronic books. When efforts to Bowdlerize Roald Dahl began, for instance, the e-book publishers initially planned to retroactively update previous versions, not just new versions being sold afterward, until public pressure put an end to it. What’s to stop these e-book platforms from deleting your copy of a book that they later consider offensive? The convenience of these gateways may make us more efficient, but gateways have gatekeepers, and their interests may not always coincide with yours. — Ed]