On 25 July 2022, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner published Regulatory Guidance on the “Basic Online Safety Expectations”, which are provided for by Part 4 of the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) and the Online Safety (Basic Online Safety Expectations) Determination 2022. This comes a day after eSafety became entitled to issue notices seeking information from a wide range of online service providers regarding their compliance with the expectations.
In July 2022, the Singapore Personal Data Protection Commission published a guide to help organisations comply with the Personal Data Protection Act when deploying blockchain applications that process personal data. As such, this Guide provides a broad set of principles and considerations for organisations to design their blockchain applications to be PDPA-compliant, thus ensuring more accountable management of customers’ personal data.
To keep up with the momentum of digitalized lending and address the multitude of aspects (including financial inclusion and consumer protection) impacted by this ever-growing practice, the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or OJK) has finally issued the long-anticipated regulation that revamped OJK Regulation No. 77/POJK.01/2016 on Information Technology-Based Lending Services (POJK 77). On 4 July 2022, OJK enacted OJK Regulation No. 10/POJK.05/2022 on Information Technology Based Collective Funding Services, updating the requirements for peer-to-peer lending operators and revoked POJK 77.
The Ministry of Communications and Information has released, in its Public Consultation published on 13 July 2022, more information on two proposed complementary codes to protect Singapore-based users against harmful and high-risk online content.
Social media platforms with significant reach or impact that are designated social media services will be in-scope for the new compliance obligations proposed by the MCI under the Code of Practice for Online Safety and all social media services are intended to be subject to the Content Code for Social Media Services.
On 6 July 2022, the Singapore Food Agency published a media release in relation to Lui Fammart’s illegal import of seafood, meat products and processed food from China. The sole proprietor of Lui Fammart was fined SGD 8,000 by the court.
Many of us have heard the term “Metaverse,” which is commonly used to refer to the combination of technologies that allows us to access a virtual reality world or bring virtual reality into the physical world, as first mentioned in Neal Stephenson’s scientific novel “Snow Crash” (1992). The term “Metaverse” has become one of the biggest buzzwords over the past year, and recently we have seen tech giants striking deals to take part in the metaverse.
On 20 July 2022, the Health Sciences Authority announced that it had removed over 2,500 listings of illegal health products from local e-commerce and social media platforms between January to June 2022, with over 800 product listings removed during a week of intensified surveillance between 23 and 30 June.
Singapore state investor Temasek, through its Asia Sustainable Foods Platform (ASF), and Cremer, a German agri-food multinational company, have jointly invested SGD 6 million to produce plant-based alternative proteins in Tuas, Singapore.
ASF and Cremer have formed the joint venture, Cremer Sustainable Foods, which will carry out pilots and demo-scale facilities for the joint venture’s first Singapore production facility.
Just one week following the release of the draft Rules concerning the Standard Contract for Cross-Border Transfers of Personal Information, the Cyberspace Administration of China finalized and issued the long-awaited Measures for the Security Assessment of Transfers of Data Abroad on 7 July 2022. The Measures provide the implementation rules and guidelines concerning the security assessment mechanism for cross-border data transfers outside of China, as established in China’s three overarching data protection laws, the Cybersecurity Law, the Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law. The Measures will take effect and will be implemented from 1 September 2022. Companies will have a grace period of six months to comply with the Measures.
At present, certain promotional activities (e.g., sweepstakes, raffle games or random premiums) are subject to the Gambling Act, B.E. 2478 (1935), which require the business operator to get permission from the Department of Provincial Administration. The Gambling Act regulates all sweepstakes activities with a strict and complicated permission system. The Office of the Council of State has now updated the requirements under the Gambling Act by passing the Bill on Sweepstakes Activities in the Course of Business or Occupation to reduce the strict procedures and difficulties for business operators in arranging these promotional activities.