Join Anush and Kena as they welcome Dr Magali Eben from the University of Glasgow School of Law for a discussion on digital platform regulation. The conversation begins with press publisher rights in the digital age, examining whether digital markets legislation can effectively address the challenges facing publishers or if more comprehensive interventions are needed beyond competition policy frameworks.
The discussion then explores the UK's CMA's growth agenda and provides a comparative analysis of the DMCCA and DMA, examining their key differences in approach. Magali offers insights into how the UK's distinctive regulatory path compares with the EU's framework and what these divergent approaches mean for competition law enforcement in digital markets.
The episode concludes with insights into Magali's influential research on market definition for online services that has shaped regulatory debates in digital markets, drawing on her expertise as Subject Lead for the International Competition Law and Policy LLM at Glasgow and Vice-President of ASCOLA.
Join hosts Anush and Kena as they speak with Dr Sangyun Lee, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Kyoto University, about South Korea's evolving approach to digital platform regulation.
Sangyun traces his journey from Korea University through multiple Korean regulatory agencies to his currentresearch position, exploring why economic dependence on platform giants has shaped Korea's cautious regulatory stance. The conversation examines the Korea Fair Trade Commission's (KFTC) proposed shift from DMA-style ex-ante rulestoward a flexible, rebuttable presumptions framework and whether this "middle path" represents pragmatic adaptation or regulatory hesitation.
The discussion covers Korea's ‘enlightening the ignorant’ strategy of expert-led policymaking, the wholesale adoption of the EU's Platforms-to-Business Regulation, and the controversial Korea Communications Commission app market legislation. Sangyun offers critical insights into whether Korea's platform market genuinely lacks the evidence for strongerintervention, and what lessons Korea's experience holds for other jurisdictions navigating platform regulation
In this episode, Anush and Kena are joined by Madhavi Singh, Deputy Director of the Thurman Arnold Project and Resident Fellow at Yale Law School, as they explore the collision between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and competition law. This episode examines the Stargate Project (a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Arm) and asks whether such massive-scale AI partnerships raise unique competition concerns for regulators.
The discussion ranges from Google's evolving role in search markets (has it "broken its original bargain" by shifting from indexing to AI model training?) to the practical challenges of transatlantic regulatory divergence. Madhavi draws on her research to contrast the EU's early-mover approach to platform regulation with the US approach, examining whether the DMA's swift action on AI Overviews offers a template for addressing publisher concerns, or whether both jurisdictions risk stifling innovation at a critical moment in AI development.
Whether you're tracking how competition authorities assess AI investments, curious about the evidence on AI features affecting publisher traffic, or interested in why the same regulatory questions produce different answers across the Atlantic, this conversation offers grounded analysis on where antitrust law meets the digital age.
In this episode, Anush and Kena were joined by Professor Shilpi Bhattacharya, Professor of Competition Law at O.P. Jindal Global University, India, and a leading scholar at the intersection of competition law, behavioral economics, and digital markets. With a PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam and extensive practice experience, she brings a uniquely global perspective to understanding India's rapidly evolving digital economy and has become one of the foremost voices on Indian competition law.
The conversation explores India's emergence as a fascinating laboratory for digital competition issues, from WhatsApp's privacy policy controversies to e-commerce platform regulations. Shilpi shares insights on the Draft Digital Competition Bill, platform market regulation, and how India as one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets is shaping its competition law framework for the digital age, including key lessons that compare approaches in the EU and U.S.
In this episode, Anush and Kena dive deep into Jasper van den Boom's groundbreaking new book "Regulating Competition in the Digital Network Industry" (Cambridge University Press, December 2025). Jasper introduces us to "progressive ecosystem regulation"—a bold new framework that challenges how we think about competition in digital markets.
Moving beyond traditional market-by-market approaches, Jasper argues that Big Tech firms don't just dominate individual platforms—they act as de facto regulators of entire segments of the digital network industry through their ecosystems. His solution? A three-tier regulatory system that creates different obligations for entrants, mature ecosystems, and incumbent giants, with a radical twist: offering heavily regulated firms a "way out" if they divest parts of their ecosystems.
We explore the distinction between "good" and "bad" ecosystem competition, discuss why early DMA experiences suggest we may need a fundamental paradigm shift, and examine whether current regulatory tools can truly check the power of Big Tech—or if we need to rethink digital regulation from the ground up. Join us for a conversation that bridges law, economics, and management studies to tackle one of the most pressing policy challenges of our time.
Link to the book- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/regulating-competition-in-the-digital-network-industry/0E8D7AB947EBF0209BA264AC051D38F6
In this episode, Anush and Kena are joined by Jasper van den Boom, Assistant Professor of EU Competition Law at Leiden University's Europa Institute and Associate of the SCiDA project, for an in-depth conversation exploring the cutting edge of digital market regulation. The three engage in a lively debate about what the designation process entails across the EU, UK, and Germany, examining best practices and critical timing challenges in digital market enforcement. They also tackle bigger questions: Is digital market regulation going too far, or is it not doing enough? How is the regulatory landscape affecting the investment climate in the EU and UK?
In this first part of their two-part series on the SCiDA podcast, Jasper explains how his research on business ecosystems has shaped regulatory thinking and explores the pathways from academic research to real-world policy implementation. Part two will dive into Jasper's book "Regulating Competition in the Digital Network Industry," published by Cambridge University Press. Whether you're a competition law practitioner, policy maker, or simply interested in how digital markets are being reshaped, this conversation offers essential insights into the future of digital competition regulation.
Former Google software engineer turned competition law scholar Todd Davies joins Anush and Kena to explore the legal battleground where AI meets antitrust. Drawing on six years inside Big Tech and his PhD research at UCL, Todd examines whether integrating generative AI into dominant platforms like WhatsApp and Google Search violates competition law through tying and self-preferencing.
He unpacks the "foreclosure by enclosure" problem where publicly accessible knowledge gets locked inside proprietary AI systems and argues that tech giants had alternative design choices that wouldn't raise red flags.
From Stack Overflow's existential crisis to Google's AI Overviews replacing website clicks, Todd makes the case for swift regulatory intervention before these integrations become irreversible. A must-listen for anyone wondering whether competition authorities can keep pace with AI innovation.
See his paper on the topic here- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5375544
In this episode, Anush and Kena sit down with Dr. Christian Bergqvist, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Senior Fellow at the GW Competition and Innovation Lab, to discuss his groundbreaking research mapping over 100 antitrust cases against Google across 23 jurisdictions.
Christian unpacks the dramatic shift in regulatory sentiment toward Big Tech, revealing how Google transformed from universally loved to broadly loathed by governments within just a few years. We explore the patterns behind these cases, 86% fall into just eight categories, with Google Search, Android, and AdTech at the center of the storm.
Christian brings his unique perspective as both a former Tier 1 competition lawyer and academic researcher to examine which cases pose existential threats to Google's business model, from potential AdTech breakups to the Helena World Chronicle scraping case that could derail Google's AI ambitions. Join us for a masterclass in digital market regulation and a preview of what the next five years hold for Big Tech.
In this episode, Anush and Kena are joined by Dr Thibault Schrepel, Associate Professor of Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Faculty Affiliate at Stanford's CodeX Center. Thibault brings a unique perspective to digital market regulation through his groundbreaking work in computational antitrust and complexity science.
He's the founder of the 'Computational Antitrust' project uniting over 75 antitrust agencies globally, and author of the world's most downloaded antitrust articles in recent years, including 'The Blockchain Antitrust Paradox' and 'Complexity-Minded Antitrust.' His recent books 'Blockchain + Antitrust', “Artificial Intelligence and Competition Policy”, and awards highlight his position at the forefront of digital market regulation theory.
What makes Thibault particularly valuable for today's discussion is his complexity science approach to understanding digital markets - viewing them not as static systems but as dynamic, evolving ecosystems that may require equally adaptive regulatory approaches.
Hosted by Dr. Anush Ganesh, this episode features SCiDA co-chairs Professor Rupprecht Podszun (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) and Professor Oles Andriychuk (University of Exeter), along with Dr. Kena Zheng (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf), discussing their response to the DMA review consultation.
In this episode, the team examines the first two years of DMA practice and explores critical gaps in enforcement, particularly around AI and cloud services. They discuss why major players like Nvidia, OpenAI, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud haven't been designated despite meeting quantitative criteria, and propose AI services as a new core platform service category.
The conversation delves into Google's controversial European Search Dataset Licensing Program and the underutilization of Article 6(11) data access provisions. The guests debate the DMA's "iterative journey" approach to compliance versus achieving immediate contestability, and examine the tension between stakeholder-driven enforcement and regulatory dialogue with gatekeepers.
The SCiDA team engaged in extensive internal debate on several aspects discussed in this episode, particularly around compliance philosophy and enforcement approaches, reflecting the complexity of regulating digital markets effectively.
Time stamps
00:00-07:30 - Introduction to SCiDA and the DMA consultation 2025
07:30-24:00- Effectiveness of the DMA + Inclusion of AI services
24:00-29:30- Data access and Article 6(11) DMA
29:30-40:00- Compliance and Regulatory Dialogue
40:00-43:30- Decentralized approach
43:30-53:44- Final comments and way forward