Governance of Digital Business in Industry 4.0: Legal and Regulatory Aspects

Introduction

The development of the Internet has been nothing short of a technological revolution in today's fast-paced world. Every commercial transaction worldwide has been made simpler and has crossed national borders. India has grown into a sizable market for social media goliaths like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter (Mills & Plangger, 2015). Research shows how these digital intermediaries have become essential to online news distribution, giving publishers competition for attention and advertising and new opportunities to reach larger online audiences (Aneez et al., 2019). The new family of internet-based technologies are used in digital business, often known as e-business or e-commerce. Through these technologies, individuals can interact in novel ways, new business models can be created, firms can run more effectively, and they can benefit from the emerging global network economy. Digital business companies are considered Intermediaries in cyber Space.

In the realm of IT, intermediaries come in several forms. Below are a few of them:

• 1.

  Telecom service provider (Tsp): This category includes all Indian businesses that provide telecom services.

  • a.

    Vodafone, Aircel, Tata, Reliance, Airtel, and Idea are a few examples.

• 2.

  Internet service providers (ISPs) are the businesses that enable customers to connect to the Internet through a wireless connection, cable, or some other method.

  • a.

    Gtpl and spigot are two examples.

• 3.

  Webhosting service provider: Organizations that provide hosting solutions.

  • a.

    In plain English, we may explain that this website provides Space on server sites for storing files so users can access them from wherever.

  • b.

    GoDaddy.com is one such.

• 4.

  Search Engines: A few good websites that assist people in finding particular information on the web. And give links to every webpage related to that specific search. Additionally, they provide a list of links in particular rank order.

  • a.

    Among them are Google and Yahoo.

• 5.

  Online payment platforms: Paytm, Rupay, and Paypal are a few examples.

• 6.

  Online auction sites, such as eBay, provide one example.

• 7.

  Social media Websites: for instance, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

• 8.

  Blogging: Examples include wordpress.com and blogger.com.

• 9.

  Cyber café: This establishment offers internet access to customers. Cyber cafés are categorized as intermediaries under the IT Act of 2000.

Company Law And Digital Business

According to the relevant legislation, every company entity must register with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. E-commerce startups are businesses formed under the Companies Act of 2013 and operate an online store or marketplace or be a foreign business or an out-of-country office, branch, or agency controlled or owned by an Indian citizen (Gupta, 2020). E-commerce refers to purchasing and selling services and products, including digital ones, through an electronic and digital network (Cockfield, 1999).