Interaction between Information Law and Competition Law: Organizing Regulatory Perspectives on Platform Businesses

This study attempts to organize the regulatory perspective on the interaction between information law and competition law, especially for platform businesses. An online platform is an entity that mediates multiple groups of users, such as providers and users of products, services, and information, and has an indirect network effect as a two-sided market. The study illustrates the actions taken by online platforms, indicates attendant problems, and suggests responses to these. Four aspects of the competition policy issues related to online platforms are analyzed and discussed: data collection, data enclosure, data acquisition, and algorithmic transparency. The study considers essential online platform issues, such as promoting competition policy and fairness in information law application, to expand the discussion. Although fairness is important, there is a risk that the analysis of the effects of reducing competition is neglected and that interpreting fairness might increase the concern regarding over-execution. Having dis-aggregated the elements of fairness, the study suggests the need to establish specific standards.