Privacy & Competition: Attorney General's Insights on CCI's Role

New Delhi, May 20 (PTI) Attorney General R Venkataramani on Monday said establishing the contours of privacy from a competition perspective is important and stressed that the Competition Commission needs to always be keeping up with the times.

Amid concerns in certain quarters about data privacy and anti-competitive practices, Venkataramani, delivering the lecture at the CCI annual day, also said that all competition regulators across the world are grappling with the emerging trends in digital markets.

"By now, we have seen action taken by a number of competition regulators worldwide against these gatekeepers of data, especially in circumstances where this access point is used to their own benefit and to the detriment of consumers by stifling competition.

"The current debate on this is around the Digital Competition Bill, which is a proposed legislation that seeks to act on the learnings of competition dynamics in the internet and digital world over the last decade," he said in the national capital.

According to him, the debate is essentially one of ex-post action (investigation and sanctions) and the possibility of false negatives on the one hand versus an ex-ante action (bans and prohibitive rules) and the possibility of false positives on the other.

"The debate is also of casting a wide regulatory net, agnostic of the activity involved versus having more market-specific regulations," he said.

With an increasingly expansive recognition of privacy as a fundamental right tied with the importance of data protection laws, Venkataramani said its filtering into competition was inevitable.

While noting that the CCI is already seized of cases in this sphere, whilst constitutional cases are pending in the Supreme Court, he said establishing the contours of privacy from a competition perspective is important.

"Therefore, it is imperative that a regulator always be keeping up with the times," he noted.

Delivering the lecture at the 15th annual day of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Venkataramani noted that the CCI's market study on e-commerce in India in 2020 was a welcome step.

Such studies should be carried out with sufficient frequency to keep pace with the evolving landscape in the digital and internet markets. Also, having detailed guidelines based on such studies of the Indian market will give the market players useful signposts as to the likely proscribed conduct, he added.

"This would foster greater certainty, would empower smaller players, and caution larger ones on practices, which are harmful to competition. In other words, the CCI has to speak through more than its decisions," the Attorney General said.

Further, he mentioned that there are questions like what are the effects of competition laws on wealth distribution and whether competition law could provide a viable and effective instrument to address economic and other connected market inequalities, which are natural consequences of market growth.