BInterior Market Commissioner Thierry Breton is a master of (self-)marketing. Just in time for the European Parliament’s vote on one of the central Brussels projects in EU digital policy, the law for digital services, Breton tweeted on Thursday: “Time to bring order to the Wild West – a new sheriff is in town, the DSA. This was underscored by a short sequence from the spaghetti western Two Glorious Scoundrels, in which misinformation, hate speech, counterfeit products, illegal content and, last but not least, lobbyists played the role of villains. The reactions were mixed. But Breton did one thing. With more than 91,000 spectators up to the vote, it drew attention to a topic that is not always easy to sell.
With the “Digital Services Act”, DSA for short, the sister law of the law for digital markets intended to control the market power of the internet giants, the EU is making platforms such as social media or internet marketplaces more responsible. It’s about making sure that what’s illegal offline is also illegal online. That sounds more banal than it is – especially since platforms are not liable if illegal content is distributed on them. The DSA does not change anything about this “liability privilege”. The concern is too great that platforms would otherwise block too much content as a precaution (keyword upload filter) and thus restrict the “free internet”. However, clear procedures are being put in place as to how they must remove illegal content, from child pornography to hate speech, as soon as they are made aware of it. However, neither the Commission proposal from the end of 2019 nor the position now passed by the European Parliament provide for fixed deletion periods as in the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG).
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