; and (B) any State law, rule, or regulation that prohibits or penalizes the conduct described in, or is otherwise inconsistent with, subsection (b) of this section. (4) The term negotiation period means the period of time beginning on the date this Act goes into effect and ending 48 months later. (b) Limitation of liability A news content creator shall not be held liable under the antitrust laws for engaging in negotiations with other news content creators during the negotiation period to collectively withhold content from, or negotiate with, an Online Content Distributor regarding the terms on which the news content creators’ news content may be distributed by the Online Content Distributor, if— (1) the negotiations with the Online Content Distributor— (A) are not limited to price and are nondiscriminatory as to similarly situated news content creators, and directly relate to the quality, accuracy, attribution or branding, and interoperability of news; and (B) pertain to terms that would be available to all news content creators; (2) the coordination among the news content creators is directly related to and reasonably necessary for negotiations with an Online Content Distributor that are otherwise consistent with this Act; and (3) the negotiations do not involve any person that is not a news content creator or an Online Content Distributor. (c) Rule of construction Except as provided in this Act, this Act shall not be construed to modify, impair, or supersede the operation of the antitrust laws.