The development of emerging technologies brings related application risks, especially the rise of digital two sided/multi sided platforms has created the expansion of transnational services and a large number of users. In view of the effectiveness and efficiency of law enforcement, countries around the world have recently launched the “platform accountability initiative. As platforms play a key role in many important industries, they are seen as significant control points so that governments has started to impose certain degree of obligation on these platforms for efficient regulation.
The Executive Yuan of R.O.C has enacted Draft Digital Communication Act (hereinafter ”DCA”). However, the legislative work is still an unfinished task, considering that the development of digital economy and emerging technologies have brought about impacts on the individual and social interests such as discrimination, privacy of personal information, privacy of communication, data security and consumer rights, etc. Moreover, the circulation of many illegal contents in the digital communication environment has not only brought negative impacts on the overall i internet environment, but also on the operation of democracy and politics. In addition, the taxation of large transnational platform operators and the domination of market power arising from their huge business volume or user s have caused a higher level of legal risk for the operation of the digital platform service industry.
Therefore, this study examines the digital applications, development incentives, development trends and risks of international emerging digital technologies in the field of communication. The study also collects and analyzes materials from countries ( including Taiwan, the EU, Germany, the UK, the US, Australia, Japan, Korea, and Singapore) about the issues of the data processing and application regulation s of digital platforms, the protection of consumer rights of digital platforms, the system design of platform accountability, and the competition trend and development of the communication market, with the aim of proposing recommendations for specific regulatory adjustments related to digital communication convergence.
In this study, we believe that it is necessary to reorganize the structure of the current draft of the DCA, the characterization of the regulation, and the liability regulations for providers of digital communication services, so that the regulation can be flexible and effective in dealing with illegal information on the Internet in order to actively respond to the needs of this era.
