A Study of Transparency Provisions in Digital Platform Regulations:
A Comparison of EU and Japanese Law
2021 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 145-166
Details
2021 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 145-166
This paper examines digital platform (DPF) regulation from the perspective of transparency by comparing EU law (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), P2B Regulation, Digital Services Act (DSA)) with Japanese law (Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Digital Platforms (TFDPA)) and identifying three issues.
The first issue is the absence of basic principles and general rules on transparency in APPI. GDPR states that consent is only valid if it meets strict requirements by the principle of transparency. Given that consent is used as a representative of the justification in APPI, I believe that there should be clearer rules on the validity of consent than in the GDPR and needs to establish basic principles and general rules regarding transparency.
The second issue is the transparency of the automatic algorithmic processing used in DPF. EU law requires disclosure of the main parameters that influence the decision and the reasons for their relative importance concerning the automatic algorithmic processing, while APPI does not have such a disclosure obligation itself, and TFDPA requires disclosure of the main parameters but does not require disclosure of the reasons. They need to strengthen the disclosure of key parameters and the reasons for them. In addition, to determine whether the disclosed parameters are important, requiring DPF providers to disclose their algorithms to the administrative organ should be considered in the future, considering the balance with trade secrets.
The third issue is the transparency report. While the DSA covers all DPF providers regardless of size, TFDPA stipulates that the DPF is to be covered by the cabinet order, which is expected to help maintain a balance between ensuring transparency and promoting competition. On the other hand, the DSA sets the reporting requirements according to the size of the DPF, while TFDPA sets them uniformly. If TFDPA expands the scope of regulation, it is desirable to set the reporting requirements according to the guidelines on TFDPA.
