Chairman of the US House Antitrust Subcommittee, Rep. David Cicilline says that Apple is acting like a monopolist and a bully. The Lawmaker also regards Apple’s App Store fees as “highway robbery”.

“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market. It’s crushing small developers who simply can’t survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldn’t happen,” Rep Cicilline said.

This comes amid the EU announcing an antitrust investigation into the App Store. The US House Antitrust Committee, chaired by Cicilline, is also investigating the power of digital marketplaces. The committee had asked the CEOs of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple to testify as part of the investigation.  The Verge reports that most of the companies indicated an interest in participation.

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“Many people have come forward to share their experiences, who are terrified of economic retaliation, who are afraid they can’t survive the economic retaliation that these large platforms can impose because of the power that they have, and we intend to pursue those allegations very seriously.

“This is a real problem in the marketplace. This is a direct consequence of enormous market power, the fact that Apple is the gatekeeper for these developers, and we have heard many, many examples,” Cicilline told Vergecast.

Rep. David Cicilline and Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson joined The Vergecast to discuss the plight of Hey, Basecamp’s new $99-a-year premium email service. Apple had rejected the app’s updates on its App Store because it didn’t offer any way to sign up and pay in the store. Offering a way to sign up in the store would require giving Apple a 30 percent cut of the fee.

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