Data and Competition Law: Introducing Data As Non-Monetary Consideration and Competition Concerns in Data-Driven Online Platforms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umar Javeed
Keyword(s):  
Competition Law ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Online Platforms

Digital Markets and Online Platforms: New Perspectives on Regulation and Competition Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kraemer ◽  
Marc Bourreau ◽  
Sally Broughton Micova ◽  
Alexandre de Streel ◽  
Richard Feasey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Competition Law ◽  
Online Platforms

News

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
José van
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Public Values ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
News Industry

This chapter examines how the advent of data-driven publishers, such as BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, as well as the rise of the Big Five platforms, have shaken the news sector’s economic, technical, and social foundations. The proliferation of online audience metrics and algorithmic filtering, promoting the personalization of news and advertisements, has fundamentally transformed how news is produced, circulated, and monetized. The triangular content–audiences–advertising configuration that constituted the legacy news industry is unbundled and rebundled through online platforms. As a consequence, the professional practices and institutional standards once set by legacy news organizations are seriously challenged. Key public values, such as journalistic independence and the trustworthiness of news, have come under scrutiny as new online players in this sector reconfigure the conditions of production and distribution.

scholarly journals Digital Economy, Big Data and Competition Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-89
Author(s):  
Roberto Augusto Castellanos Pfeiffer
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Abuse Of Dominant Position

Big data has a very important role in the digital economy, because firms have accurate tools to collect, store, analyse, treat, monetise and disseminate voluminous amounts of data. Companies have been improving their revenues with information about the behaviour, preferences, needs, expectations, desires and evaluations of their consumers. In this sense, data could be considered as a productive input. The article focuses on the current discussion regarding the possible use of competition law and policy to address privacy concerns related to big data companies. The most traditional and powerful tool to deal with privacy concerns is personal data protection law. Notwithstanding, the article examines whether competition law should play an important role in data-driven markets where privacy is a key factor. The article suggests a new approach to the following antitrust concepts in cases related to big data platforms: assessment of market power, merger notification thresholds, measurement of merger effects on consumer privacy, and investigation of abuse of dominant position. In this context, the article analyses decisions of competition agencies which reviewed mergers in big data-driven markets, such as Google/DoubleClick, Facebook/ WhatsApp and Microsoft/LinkedIn. It also reviews investigations of alleged abuse of dominant position associated with big data, in particular the proceeding opened by the Bundeskartellamt against Facebook, in which the German antitrust authority prohibited the data processing policy imposed by Facebook on its users. The article concludes that it is important to harmonise the enforcement of competition, consumer and data protection polices in order to choose the proper way to protect the users of dominant platforms, maximising the benefits of the data-driven economy.

Exploitative abuses in digital markets: between competition law and data protection law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Caroline Buiten
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Data Protection Law ◽  
Collection Practices ◽  
Abuse Of Dominance

Abstract Online platforms increasingly offer consumers services ‘for free’, in exchange for collecting consumers’ personal data. This business model is highly successful, leading some online platforms to gain substantial market power. This market power can cause consumer harm—not through higher prices, but in the form of privacy harm. This article considers what role competition law and data protection law can play in mitigating this harm to privacy. The article considers how we can conceptualize exploitative abuse of dominance cases in zero-price markets. The article calls into question if data protection laws should play a role in antitrust abuse assessments, against the background of the Bundeskartellamt antitrust investigation into Facebook’s data collection practices. The article argues that, even in digital markets that unequivocally link market power with data privacy concerns, competition law and data protection law have complementary but distinct roles to play.

scholarly journals Marketplaces Restrictions and Selective Distribution after Coty Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 241-284
Author(s):  
Patrycja Szot ◽  
Ana Amza
Keyword(s):  
Competition Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Luxury Good ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Selective Distribution ◽  
Price Comparison ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Eu Competition Law ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Eu

This article discusses the framework of selective distribution agreements within EU competition law following the Coty Germany case and the EU Commission’s 2017 E-commerce report. It argues that the judgment removed, in essence, the limitation of sales via online platforms from the ‘by object box’. In respect of luxury goods, the ban is considered not to infringe competition law at all. In this context, the article addresses one of the judgment’s key points: what constitutes a ‘luxury good’ and evaluates to what an extent this definition can be practically applied. The authors also embark on the conditions under which the restriction is considered proportionate (when applied to non-luxury goods) and point to the risk of divergent interpretations of platform bans across member states. To illustrate the latter, several examples are given from national case-law. The considerations are completed with a brief look at problematic restrictions on the use of price comparison tools.

Putting trust into antitrust? Competition policy and data-driven platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110283
Author(s):  
Stefan Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Competition Policy ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Data Handling ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Platform Governance ◽  
Consumer Autonomy ◽  
The Relationship

Anti-competitive notions, it seems, are increasingly informing the critical debate on a data-driven economy organised into scalable digital platforms. Issues of market definitions, how to value personal data on multisided platforms, and how to detect and regulate misuses of dominant positions have become key nomenclature on the battlefield of addressing fairness in our contemporary digital societies. This article looks at the central themes for this special issue on governing trust in European platform societies through the lens of contemporary developments in the field of competition law. Three main questions are addressed: (1) To what extent are the platforms’ own abilities to govern their infrastructures, that is, to be de facto regulators over both human behaviour and market circumstances, a challenge for contemporary competition regulation? (2) In what way is the collection, aggregation, or handling of consumers’ data of relevance for competition? (3) How can the particular European challenges of governing US-based digital platforms more broadly be understood in terms of the relationship between transparency and public trust? Of particular relevance – and challenge – here are the platforms’ abilities to govern their infrastructures, albeit through automated moderation, pricing or scalable data handling. It is argued that this aspect of coded, and possibly autonomously adapting, intra-platform governance, poses significant anti-competitive challenges for supervisory authorities, with possible negative implications for consumer autonomy and wellbeing as well as platform-dependent other companies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document