DNPA Backs Proposed Regulations To Curb Unethical Practices Against Digital News Publishers

DNPA members and news publishers are grappling with a substantial decline in business revenues because of the dominance of big-tech entities. The proposed framework is likely to ease this pain.

The Committee on the Digital Competition Law has proposed a regulatory framework to prevent abuse of dominance and other unethical practices in the digital content world.

Source : Representative pic: Getty Images

The Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) has backed the report released by the Committee on Digital Competition Law on Addressing Anti-Competitive Practices in India's Digital Economy. DNPA finds the proposed enactment of a Digital Competition Act (DCA), based on the existing Competition Act, to tackle certain anti-competitive behaviours of major technology corporations, particularly the ‘Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises (SSDEs)’ and their ‘Associate Digital Enterprises (ADEs)’, “highly commendable”, and says the move underscores the persistent challenges highlighted by the DNPA.

Members of DNPA and news publishers alike have been grappling with a substantial decline in business revenues because of the dominance of big-tech entities and the opacity surrounding the distribution of advertising revenues related to content produced by DNPA News Publishers.

What The Committee Proposed

The Committee on the Digital Competition Law under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MoCA) has proposed a regulatory framework to prevent abuse of dominance and other unethical practices in the digital world. The proposed regulations would give the CCI the power to check such unethical practices, particularly by the big tech firms.

What's significant is the fact that the proposed regulations are ex-post, compared to ex-ante, which would involve appeals, review, penalisation (or not), and follow-up actions.   

The proposed regulations involve a penalty amounting to 10% of the global turnover of the law-violating entity.  

DNPA Hails Move To Boost CCI

A DNPA statement read the inclusion of regulations that discourage anti-competitive practices, alongside threshold assessments to identify major anti-trust entities as a well-balanced approach by the MoCA. The DNPA lauded the proposal's intention to boost the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in this aspect.

The preliminary proposal lays out a clear roadmap towards fostering fairness in competition. Once enacted, these regulations are poised to enhance transparency in competition matters and provide essential guidelines for equitable ex-ante negotiations. The committee's recommendation to establish dedicated benches to expedite the hearing of appeals was also hailed by the umbrella association of news publishers.

The DNPA in the statement further reiterated its stance of not being averse to any big-tech company or other organisation. The Association further called for efforts for all stakeholders to grow and thrive collectively.