온라인 서비스 시장에서의 개인정보 보호와 경쟁법 집행 – 소비자 선택(Consumer Choice) 패러다임의 적용을 중심으로

The noticeable enforcement of competition law in the online service market, such as international investigations on the recent privacy breaches that occur frequently or leading Internet portal Google' shows how important personal information is in today's digital age. For example, Internet portal carriers such as Google are mainly largely dependent on online advertising revenue, and in such online advertising accumulated data such as personal information play an important role in improving the quality of service and accessing users more attractively. In the most of markets in today's economy as well as online advertising services market, businesses rely on vast amounts of personal information in developing their services and digitalizing personal information is constantly creating new types of business models. Personal information itself is the foundation of the service. With the development of services which are based on the personal information, it is difficult to find out how much personal information businesses collect and how they take advantage of personal information. Internet users go to Internet portals for the digital services such as e-mail or search engines provided free of charge. Why are Internet portal operators providing free online services? Individuals are providing their valuable personal data for the digital services. To consumers, personal information is the currency to be paid as consideration for the online service. Despite the fact that personal information is accepted as a very important commodities in the market and is affecting the market, competition harm or consumer interests disturbance caused thereby does not get much attention. It is two areas where competition law could intervene in relation to the handling of personal information. One is when by using anti-competitive or unfair means, online service providers try to get data or prohibit competitor from collecting data. The other is when the risk of businesses' accumulating data is considered in merger reviews. However when a series of businesses' actions of using personal information which have an anti-competitive effect, do not fit exactly into an existing type of misconduct or illegality criteria, for example, the cases where the retention of personal information could be a source of market power or the result of the recombination of the personal information is the tool competitiveness in the new business market, there is a problem to find a limit. Industrial society was the price-competing market based on the production and sale of goods, but non-price competitive market has emerged as the main stage today. As society has developed thus, new areas that were not considered as a market at all began to come into the market economy. For example there are online services based on the individual information or markets where creativity or innovation is the most important competing tool not price. As new areas where it is difficult to determine illegality with a cost-effective approach alone which is competition law illegality existing criteria, it is preferred to configure the new paradigm. It is the 'consumer choice' paradigm that arises by this need. The role of competition in the consumer choice frame is to protect the consumer's choices in the market. In other words, we need to protect array of options which are significantly important to consumers. This paper is trying to introduce 'consumer choice' paradigm as illegality criteria in collecting, using and restricting personal information that is a source of strength in the digital economy, and apply it in the competition law enforcement.