Time for Global Digital Governance

Context:

• India’s G20 presidency is a chance to propose a global governance framework that brings together common challenges of regulating Big Tech.

Need for a Policy roadmap:

• Absence of well-placed legislation: In the past few years, policies and regulations in India have been tweaked and amended to expand their scope and bring within their ambit internet companies, especially Big Tech.
• Need for Digital India Act: A Digital India Act that was being prepared to replace the Information Technology Act, 2000, encompassing regulatory challenges facing the digital economy including anti-trust, data governance, intermediary liabilities, consumer protection, and the ethical use of technologies.
• Need for Future-proof regulations: Digital platforms have now become our gateway to the internet. We need regulations that are future-proofed, essentially providing a method to carry out anti-trust investigations.

The Trendsetters:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): The European Union led the way on privacy with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) followed, more recently, by the Digital Services and Digital Market Acts.
• US and Austral, also catching up: The US and Australian initiatives are still brewing, as are those in several other parts of the world. The principles of regulation are mostly aligned, reflecting their unease with the inconceivable growth and influence of Big Tech.