- Ministry of Corporate Affairs had constituted CDCL on the recommendations of report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on the subject ‘Anti- Competitive Practices by Big Tech Companies’
- CDCL report lists 9 Anti-Competitive Practices (ACPs) by Big Tech Companies:
- Anti- Steering Provisions: Exclusionary behaviour hindering users from switching to third party service providers.
- Platform neutrality: According favourable treatment to own products/platform.
- Adjacency/ Bundling and Tying: Forcing consumers to buy related services.
- Data Usage: Using personal data for consumer profiling.
- Other ACPs include Pricing/ Deep Discounting, Exclusive tie-ups, Restricting third-party applications, Advertising policies, Search and ranking preferencing.
- CDCL’s Recommendations:
- Introduction of a Digital Competition Act with ex-ante (before the event) measures to ensure that Competition Commission of India intervenes before instances of ACPs.
- Regulation of “Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises” (SSDEs), which have ability to influence Indian digital market.
- Thresholds and criteria for designation as SSDEs:
- Significant financial strength comprising turnover, market capitalization, etc.
- Significant spread of enterprise in Core Digital Services.
- Monetary penalty for non-compliance with ex-ante obligations restricted to maximum 10% of global turnover of SSDE.
