[In-Depth Review] News Monopoly by Platforms and Solutions

▲Sang-geun Lee, Director of the Game & Lifelong Education Center at Sogang University

A service that connects suppliers and consumers online is called a platform. In other words, many people use search engines where some supply information and others consume it. The same applies to news. The issue here is the toll fee, that is, the news usage fee. This issue has been discussed several times in the past, but media companies have been powerless against Naver's overwhelming market dominance. It is not an exaggeration to say that Naver currently holds a monopoly over the press.

Discussions on regulating platforms began in France. Following the adoption of the European Union (EU) copyright directive in 2018, France passed a law in 2019. In April 2020, the French Competition Authority sided with media companies including 'Le Monde.' Google agreed to pay approximately 83.8 billion KRW in copyright fees over three years to various media outlets and news agencies based on daily circulation, monthly internet traffic, and contributions to political and general information.

In the case of South Korea, according to a report by the Korea Press Foundation, "Although discussions on imposing news usage fees on digital platforms have not yet taken place in our country, the cases of Australia and France are likely to influence us as well."

Recently, the work ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’ written in 2017 by Lina Khan, a U.S. legal scholar and current chair of the Federal Trade Commission, has been receiving renewed attention. Antitrust laws are designed to prohibit monopolies. In other words, the legislature created these laws to control the tyranny of monopoly companies, distribute power, and ensure market diversity and accessibility. The fundamental purpose is to prevent concentration of power and abuse.

To address the problem of monopolies, Khan proposed two solutions. The first method is to strengthen competition to prevent any one platform from monopolizing the market. This involves tightening merger reviews or regulating so that market share does not exceed a certain level. Controlling market share in the digital economy is by no means easy. However, in South Korea, regulations exist to control excessive market share held by one of the three major telecommunications companies.

The second method is to acknowledge monopoly platforms but manage their power through appropriate regulations. Examples include public utility regulations and imposing public service obligations. Public utility regulation involves regulating prices to ensure that essential public industries such as railroads and electricity provide services to the public at reasonable prices. Another approach is to designate infrastructure as essential facilities and impose public service obligations on operators. In other words, the platform is open to all businesses and provides fair access opportunities, while the platform company receives maintenance and management fees.

It is often the case that regulations cannot keep pace with technological advancements. Especially in the digital age, the speed of technological progress is incomparable to the analog era. When problems arise, institutional procedures must be restructured to resolve them as quickly as possible. Both deregulation and regulation must be handled agilely in accordance with the spirit of the times.