"On July 1st, the Competition and Markets Authority, a powerful regulator, released its study of the digital advertising market. It identified problems "so wide ranging and self-reinforcing that our existing powers are not sufficient to address them". It set up a taskforce to figure out what a new regulatory framework might look like.
The big idea at the heart of the Competition and Markets Authority's work is what lawyers call "ex ante" regulation. Competition law generally works on the principle of "ex post" enforcement. Broad rules are applied across sectors; antitrust authorities investigate and fine companies that breach them. For an industry as big, rich and fast-moving as tech, this can be ineffective. It is hard to prove harm in the traditional sense, and in any case companies pay up and move on. The new regime, which complements the existing one, would make rules specific to online platforms such as Google and Facebook (and potentially Apple and Amazon). These could include forcing companies to share data with competitors, making it easier for consumers to switch platforms and mandating the separation of data from different services owned by the same firm.The government says it is "committed to making sure that digital markets work for all". What that vague aspiration means in practice will become clear once the taskforce finishes its work." [1]
1. "A world leader after all; Competition policy." The Economist, 1 Aug. 2020, p. 22(US).
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