As the Digital Services Law slowly takes shape in the press, the European online platforms lobby published a new position paper on Monday 12 October, urging Europe to focus its efforts on content that is already considered “illegal” in Europe, rather than on “dangerous” but less well-defined content (see EUROPE 12399/9).
In this relatively superficial document, EDiMA (which counts Facebook and Google among its members) believes that online service providers should be able to take reasonable, proportionate, and feasible actions to reduce the presence of illegal activities and content on their platforms. It stresses that its members support stronger control, clearer rules, and more accountability for their services, including when they have failed to act quickly to remove previously notified illegal content. It also and above all seeks to demonstrate why hazardous content constitutes a grey area that should be left aside for the time being.
The publication of this document comes a few days before the plenary vote in the European Parliament on the various reports on the Digital Services Act (see EUROPE 12569/5). At this stage, both the draft report from Parliament’s Internal Market Committee and the leaks in the press on the European Commission’s various projects seem to support a clear distinction between illegal and dangerous content, through the “Know Your Business Customer” principle for market places (see EUROPE 12576/13, 12572/15). The idea is apparently that marketplaces would control and prevent fraudulent companies from using their services to sell illegal or dangerous products and content. See EDiMA’s position: https://bit.ly/3nH4j3b (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)