Google and Amazon Face Tough Rules
With a lot of talk about data privacy doing
rounds across the world, India has also started emphasizing more than before on
the data privacy policy. In the latest draft of e-commerce policy in India
would impose a govt. Oversight as to how these companies operate and handle
data. This could also help local startups. The policy has been in the works or
under development for the past 2 years amidst the calls that asked for a
reduction in the dominance of the global giants like Google, Amazon, and
Facebook.
To ensure the industry is competitive with
broad access to information resources, the govt. plans to appoint an e-commerce
regulator. The 15-page draft was prepared by the Ministry of Commerce’s
Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade was seen by
Bloomberg. The draft would also mandate the companies to give access to the
govt. To all their source codes and algorithms. This would help the govt. That
there are no digitally induced biases by the competitors.
India’s growing digital economy already has
half a billion users and is still growing. There have been intense battles for
users on all fronts from online retail to digital streaming to making digital
payments. The draft also talks about where the companies store their data and
leaves open a question about which e-commerce platform would have to store
their data locally. Hosting the data on overseas servers has been a sticking
point in the previous drafts and this brought criticism along with it since the
govt. was insensitive towards the local startups at the expense of others. It
said, that if required, the companies will have to provide the required data to
the govt. within a span of 72 hours for matters related to national security,
taxation, and law and order.
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