India Proposes Digital Competition Bill, 2024 Against Tech Giants:
The government has proposed the Digital Competition Bill, 2024 taking a clue from European regulatory frameworks This draft law aims to regulate the operations of major technology firms such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, ensuring they do not misuse their dominant positions.
- This proposal seeks to prevent these corporations from favouring their services over competitors’ and misusing data to benefit their various business segments.
- The Bill introduces a proactive regulatory approach (ex-ante), which anticipates and prevents anti-competitive practices before they occur, unlike the reactive (ex post) framework under the current Competition Act, 2002.
- The Bill proposes identifying Systematically Significant Digital Enterprises (SSDEs) based on criteria like turnover, user base, and market influence. These SSDEs will be restricted from certain practices such as self-preferencing and anti-steering.
- The legislation also plans to regulate ADEs which benefit from data shared within their group companies, ensuring that their operations do not undermine competitive practices.
