TOKYO (The Japan News/ANN) - Five guidelines have been compiled by the government with which it plans to strengthen regulations on big technology companies.
The government on Tuesday compiled five guidelines with which it plans to strengthen regulations on big technology companies, the main one being the establishment of a new law that will require IT firms to regularly report on the status of their transactions in order to improve transparency.
The government has also proposed guidelines to enable the Antimonopoly Law to be applied more effectively.
“With discussions on the issue intensifying around the world, we have proposed a way to establish new rules for the digital market, ” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday at a meeting of the council on digital market competition, which he chairs.
The government has in mind U.S. technology giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.com, as well as companies including Japan’s Rakuten and Yahoo, which operate online shopping platforms and a range of popular apps.
The new law will require tech giants to disclose the terms and conditions of contracts with business partners and to notify the government in advance of any changes. It will also ask companies to provide the government with regular information disclosure reports.
If a company does not disclose information, the government will make its name public and recommend corrective measures or issue an order demanding improvements be made. The move is designed to prevent leading tech companies from imposing unfavorable conditions on their business partners, such as small and midsize companies or sole proprietors.
The council also approved a revision of the Law on the Protection of Personal Information aimed at making companies comply with requests from users to stop using their personal data, even if the companies concerned are based overseas.
The bills for the new law and the revised law will be submitted to the ordinary Diet session next year.
The government has also proposed two guidelines related to the Antimonopoly Law so that it can be more effectively used to crack down on problematic behavior by major tech companies: Prohibiting companies from abusing their superior bargaining position in consumer transactions, a ban that currently only applies to transactions among business operators; and conducting thorough assessments of mergers and acquisition involving tech giants.
The government also announced a plan to compile an interim report on a fact-finding survey of the digital advertising market on the internet next spring.
