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Over the last twenty years, the digital economy – driven primarily through large digital platforms that have been mostly unregulated to date – has brought enormous economic and societal benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend by making digital platforms central to the global economy and society and by highlighting further opportunities, but, importantly too, risks and threats. Digital platforms, representing the increasingly important and maturing online platform economy, are now being described as critical infrastructure and even utilities. Digital platform policy, particularly the future regulation of the large far-reaching dominant platforms, is a major focus of the European Union (EU) as part of its response to the COVID-19 crisis. The literature on platform regulation highlights two major themes that emerge concerning digital platform regulation, and that are consequently the focus of future regulation: competition and online content. This article presents research findings in these areas through a critical analysis of and reflection on emerging digital platform regulatory practices which are being progressed under the groundbreaking EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act package. This includes assessing implications for national implementation, regulatory enforcement, and governance. A particular emphasis is placed on the Digital Services Act where there is less literature, knowledge, and experience on how to best regulate online content. In this context, the paper provides insights into how Ireland, where many of the large platforms are established and so is their de-facto regulator, is dealing with regulatory implementation issues driven by the EU.

Over the last twenty years, the digital economy – driven primarily through large digital platforms that have been mostly unregulated to date – has brought enormous economic and societal benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend by making digital platforms central to the global economy and society and by highlighting further opportunities, but, importantly too, risks and threats. Digital platforms, representing the increasingly important and maturing online platform economy, are now being described as critical infrastructure and even utilities. Digital platform policy, particularly the future regulation of the large far-reaching dominant platforms, is a major focus of the European Union (EU) as part of its response to the COVID-19 crisis. The literature on platform regulation highlights two major themes that emerge concerning digital platform regulation, and that are consequently the focus of future regulation: competition and online content. This article presents research findings in these areas through a critical analysis of and reflection on emerging digital platform regulatory practices which are being progressed under the groundbreaking EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act package. This includes assessing implications for national implementation, regulatory enforcement, and governance. A particular emphasis is placed on the Digital Services Act where there is less literature, knowledge, and experience on how to best regulate online content. In this context, the paper provides insights into how Ireland, where many of the large platforms are established and so is their de-facto regulator, is dealing with regulatory implementation issues driven by the EU.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(2), 405-410 | European Forum Highlight of 26 July 2023 | (Abstract) The Digital Markets Act (DMA) intends to ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital sector through the introduction of obligations for “gatekeepers”. This term represents a legal innovation. No mention of gatekeepers can be retrieved in the case law regarding digital platforms, and the origins of the nomenclature cannot be ascribed to competition law. The concept can, however, be linked to information studies: its adoption in the DMA reflects the centrality of information control for contestability and fairness. A look at the DMA treatment of gatekeepers reveals that, on the one hand, it is coherent with an information-based approach, while on the other it is not devoid of elements typical of a competition law approach. Only the future interpretation of the DMA will show whether the Regulation is an attempt to inform competition policy with notions fit for the data economy or if it is bound to depart from a competition-based reading.

PurposeInformation Systems (IS) research has built up a considerable understanding of digital platform ecosystems, while policymakers worldwide are aiming to introduce platform regulations that seek to erode fundamental mechanisms of digital platforms. This viewpoint article provides an introduction to how platform regulation affects our current understanding of digital platform ecosystems and suggests opportunities for future research.Design/methodology/approachA detailed analysis of the effects of the European Union (EU) Digital Markets Act (DMA) on current findings of organizational, technical and economic IS platform research.FindingsGovernment regulations of digital platforms such as the DMA likely affect the central mode of operation of platforms in the scope of the regulation. The authors preconceive a major impact on platform openness, governance, steering the platform supply-side, modularity, nestedness, network effects, pricing and single-/multi-homing. In addition, the authors present opportunities for future research in each of these IS platform research streams.Originality/valueLandmark regulations implemented in the past, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), caused paradigm changes that fertilized research opportunities in IS and beyond. This viewpoint article aims to nudge studies that examine the changed mode of operation of platforms following platform regulation.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(1), 17-23 | European Forum Highlight of 12 April 2023 | (Abstract) This Highlight proposes an interpretation of the notion of “fairness” in the context of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), and explores whether it could become an evaluative principle for gatekeeper compliance with Articles 5 and 6 of the Act. There are good reasons to believe that fairness refers to equity, i.e. a distribution of legal entitlements that takes into account individual characteristics of the subjects. Gatekeepers have different obligations compared to non-gatekeepers. By imposing that discrimination, the legislator aims for a different allocation of economic rents and opportunities in the platform economy. But apart from the DMA’s vague reference to a “significant disequilibrium in rights and obligations” in certain relationships with platforms, there is no concrete understanding of a fair or equitable distribution. Fairness, as presented in the DMA, is inherently indeterminate. It is not a legal standard, but a “gut feeling”. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The fairness language simply confers power from economists to lawyers in competition agencies and courts, who will be required to find an elusive “disequilibrium in rights and obligations”. Fairness leaves a certain margin of appreciation to any enforcer responsible for deciding the scope of gatekeeper obligations.

The new Digital Market Act (DMA) of the European Union imposes stricter rules on gatekeeper platforms. While this affects only a few very large platforms, the discussion surrounding the implementation of the DMA offers valuable insights into the strategic behaviors of those gatekeeper platforms. A gatekeeper platform, for example, may enter its platform as a supplier, which may hurt existing third-party suppliers and restrict fair competition on the platform. This paper flips the academic discussion on whether marketplace owners should be allowed to sell on their marketplaces. It illustrates why this behavior is profitable for gatekeepers and how marketplace owners can apply this knowledge to improve their business models. The paper identifies five situations in which becoming a supplier in one’s marketplace can be profitable, but it also proposes alternative solutions to entering the market.

The digital landscape is characterized by the concentration of power in the hands of a few “gatekeepers.” Europe’s legal answer, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), constitutes a new legal approach. It aims at restricting this power and ensuring “fairness and contestability.” Traditionally, the tools of competition law were used to set the basic rules of how to operate in markets. The shift to a different technique, regulatory law, prompts three questions: First, why is it necessary to deviate from the path set in competition law? Second, what are the differences between the competition law approach and the regulatory approach of the DMA? Third, what are key decisions to be taken within the new regulatory framework? At the outset, the DMA is presented.

The European Union’s (EU’s) Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a milestone in the entangled path of regulating the increasing economic power of gatekeepers (e.g. Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft); however, it poses blind spots about its effectiveness with reference to two aspects. The first blind spot consists of not considering that the economic power of gatekeepers comes from multiple sources involving different levels of competition (i.e. within and between platforms). The second blind spot descends from the first one; each source of gatekeepers’ economic power is linked to rents of a different nature: monopolistic, Ricardian or Schumpeterian. However, the DMA does not distinguish the different natures of rents, instead treating all rents extracted by gatekeepers as homogeneous. These intertwined blind spots may provoke paradoxical effects on the main goal pursued by the DMA itself—namely, promoting contestable, fair and innovative digital markets. In contrast with works emphasising the strengths of the DMA in protecting competition in digital markets, the present research unveils these two blind spots affecting the DMA. First, this research analyses the different sources of economic power wielded by gatekeepers and the respective levels of competition to which the DMA refers. Second, it adopts the theoretical lens of the nature of rents to assess the effects of the DMA’s obligations on the effectiveness of its principles: contestability, fairness and innovativeness. Third, it provides implications for policymakers and theoretical insights for investigating the gap between the DMA’s intentions and results.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(3), 1113-1119 | European Forum Highlight of 31 January 2023 | (Abstract) This Highlight provides an overview of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) from the perspective of consumer protection. The DMA constitutes a part of a long-anticipated digital package of cross-cutting legislation proposed by the European Commission in 2020. The DMA entered into force in 2022 with the objective of ensuring a safe, fair, and contestable digital market. Besides the influx of legislative acts in digital law, the year 2022 was also marked by the 50th anniversary of EU consumer protection. The author takes advantage of this moment to reflect on how the DMA fits in the broader regulatory context of consumer protection and investigate what improvements the DMA brings for consumers. The main problem with the Regulation lies in the ambiguity of its goals, and its approach to the notion of \"fairness\" in particular. On the one hand, the DMA improves consumer rights through multiple provisions which contribute to increasing interoperability in the market, ensuring easy uninstallation, subscription cancellation, data portability and data transfer, as well as eliminating unfair market practices such as self-preferencing, tying, and tracking users without their proper consent. On the other hand, the DMA treats consumers merely as passive end users in the digital market and it does not engage them fully in the introduced institutional and procedural proceedings. The DMA also misses the opportunity to provide the long-anticipated updated definition of \"consumer\", which could lead to a recalibration of the EU consumer protection law, and it does not exploit fully the potential of consumer protection.

Nowadays, the use of digital services is indispensable to the daily activity of businesses or end users. Digital services and online platforms contribute to the internal market by opening new business opportunities, increasing industry competitiveness, and widening consumer choice. While digital services have contributed to boosting innovation and developing new business models, a few online platforms act as gatekeepers by controlling a large digital market, likely leading to unfair practices and conditions for business users and end users. Against this background, this paper discusses the rationale and the necessity for regulating digital technology development in the digital market. It analyses the EU’s approach to adapting competition policy for the digital age. This paper argues that the Digital Markets Act will undoubtedly impact business models in the digital market and regulatory framework at the national level. However, its fundamental success will depend on whether the Commission has the appropriate tools to address the development of new technologies.