The Study Of Restrictions On Competition In The It Industry

The information technology (IT) industry, including the software industry and Web services industry, is a new backbone industry. As well as the traditional industries, there are also many problems in the market of IT industry. Because of the specialties of IT industry and China's IT market, it is quite difficult to regulate the restrictions on competition, such as: product bundling, abuse of dominant position, the government restrictions on competition, restrictions on competition of public enterprises, and'piracy made'dumping effect, in IT market. To solve these problems, it is a must to proceed from its own specialties of information technology, combined with the shortcomings of the industry, drawing on experience of the existing legal system and find out where the problem lies, and then regulate the crux.This article is divided into 5 parts:The 1st part is'The Introduction'. This section describes the background of this article, the main purpose, the scope of discussion, and the framework of this paper. It paves the way for latter part of this paper.The 2nd part is'The Overview of Restrictions on Competition in the IT Industry of Our Country'. This section describes the IT industry within its own specialties and special circumstances of China's market. The study of restrictions on competition in IT industry in China faces 3 problems: 1) difficulty of defining the relevant market 2) incompatibility 3)'piracy made'dumping effect. The 3rd part is'The Analysis of Restrictions on Competition in the IT Industry'. This section discusses the problems of market definition, incompatibility, and'piracy made'dumping effect, and presents preliminary recommendations to solve the problems: 1 ) Market Definition: IT industry itself is a high-tech industry. Its high plasticity and flexibility in products, and high difference from traditional industries, make market definition becomes difficult. This article draws the U.S. experience in Microsoft antitrust case, finds out the key of market definition - needs analysis. 2) Incompatibility: Because information technology is closely related to the program code, technical standards have more restrictions than the real capacity of the law. Therefore there are many restrictions on competition caused by incompatible problems. For example, in China, a considerable number of public enterprises (including enterprises having monopolistic status according to law, such as banks), the executive branch of the service website merely supports web browsers which take Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser as the core. Unfortunately the IE browser can be supported by Microsoft Windows operating system only, and people cannot live in the information world without such sites. As a result, it is great difficult for Microsoft's rivals to survive in China's OS market and browser market. As another example, the dominant software or network enterprises may refuse to service for the users who are also using certain software in the name of incompatibility, trying to exclude the enterprise of the certain software from competition. For such problems, this paper, characteristics of the IT industry itself, the concept of the existing laws to make supplementary, near the proposed regulation on the recommendations of such issues. 3) By indulging pirated software in China's market, the dominant commercial software enterprises ( such as Microsoft ) , often intentionally or unintentionally leak its internal testing software which may make it become pirated software, and still give loose to this kind of pirated software even if itself has the technical ability to monitor and prevent such pirated software. As a result, all users are free or very low cost to use the original extremely expensive commercial software (such as Microsoft Windows). In this reason, other software products have lost the price advantage. Therefore, the enterprises which have a dominant market position must be in duty bound to monitor and prevent the pirated software, if the enterprises have the technical ability.The 4th part is'Suggestions of Improvement'. The suggestions are: 1) to employ the needs analysis as the market definition criteria; 2) to clarify the meaning of'force'in'Anti-Monopoly Law'; 3) to clarify the meaning of'justified reason'in'Anti-Monopoly Law'article XVII; 4) to monitor the public enterprises and the government offices and prevent them from setting up websites which support only one certain web browser and placating e-documents which can only be supported by certain software; 5) to prohibit excluding other competitors in the name of incompatibility; 6) to prohibit the'piracy made'dumping effect by monitoring the dominant enterprises .The 5th part is the conclusion of this article. This section summarizes the content discussed earlier, and points out the crux of regulation problems of restrictions on competition in the IT industry of our country.