Legal Regulation of Internet Platform Banning Behaviors

Abstract

There are frequent banning behaviors in the field of Internet platforms in China, which harm the interests of other operators, harm market innovation, and damage the rights and interests of consumers. The market self-healing function in traditional economics does not have a realistic basis and cannot play its practical effect. The regulation of the banning behavior not only will not produce economic damage, but also is conducive to reduce the damage of rights and interests in the competitive market, so it is urgent to regulate this behavior through the anti-monopoly law.The exsiting anti-monopoly law has the dilemma of insufficient explanation and limited application to the regulation of the banning behavior. It is feasible and necessary to introduce the ex ante supervision mode of the comparative law, namely the platform gatekeeper theory, which can effectively suppress the banning behavior of the platform. Therefore, the gatekeeper theory should be perfected from the aspects of gatekeeper’s definition standard, gatekeeper’s obligation and gatekeeper’s platform’s defense.This paper provides implications for improving the regulation of banning behaviors in China.

Keywords

• platform banning behavior
• platform gatekeeper theory
• anti-monopoly law
• ex-ante regulation