The Platform Neutrality Conundrum and the Digital Services Act

On 23 April 2022, the European Commission and the Council announced a political agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA). At the time of writing this editorial, the final text has not yet been made available. Whatever its final language ends up being, the DSA will establish a remarkable set of duties of care and transparency obligations for internet intermediaries, heavily shaping, in particular, the way in which online platforms conduct their activities and how users may interact with them and with other parties.

This major overhaul is, however, deliberately incomplete as it keeps unaffected a long list of obligations already established in other norms, ranging from Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, to the amended Directive 2010/13 on Audiovisual Media Services, or to Regulation 2021/784 on the dissemination of terrorist content online, to name just a few. Internet intermediaries will face potentially huge fine if they fail to comply with the new legal framework.

See complete chapter at: IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law. Volume 53, pages 681–684 (2022).