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(1) Transposes into national law Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of June 8, 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive on electronic commerce). In general, the decree presents a scope similar to the Directive. When examined in more detail though, one can observe that the decree, in certain aspects, went beyond the Directive, regulating a number of legal issues that were not explicitly covered by the Portuguese legal system and neither by the Directive. (2) The provisions of the Decree-Law that address the liability of service providers can be found in Chapter III (Articles 11 – 19), entitled "Liability of networking service providers." (i) The statute implements the liability regime estiblesed by...

This law covers the legal protection of intellectual creations in the literary sphere and artistic works. It transposed into Portuguese legislation EU Directive n.º 2004/28/EC of 29 April 2004. For a detailed overview of the Copyright legal framework in Portugal see the chapter on Portugal by D. Moura Vicente in R.M. Hilty and S. Nérisson (eds), Balancing Copyright – A Survey of National Approaches, MPI Studies on Intellectual Property and Competition Law 18, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.

This is one of series of country reports prepared for the Council of Europe in 2015. Other countries' reports, and responses from national governments, are available here. The studies undertake to present the laws and, in so far as information is easily available, the practices concerning the filtering, blocking and takedown of illegal content on the internet.

Articles 11 to 15 of the law outline the liability scheme for internet intermediaries. The law largely follows the European Union E-Commerce 'safe harbours' model, immunizing intermediaries when they act as a mere conduit or when they cache or host material. Intermediaries remain liable if they themselves are the originators of the information, if they modify the information or if they are aware of the infringing nature of the information. While there is no general monitoring duty imposed on intermediaries, once they are made aware of the infringing content they do have a duty to ‘rapidly’ remove it from their platform. Article 16 further provides that the legal remedy brought against these intermediaries is either a take-down or a blocking order (both temporary and permanent injunctive remedies are permitted). The law...

In September, the Lower House of the Parliament of Kazakhstan reviewed the draft law "On Amendments and Changes to Legislative Acts on the Protection of the Rights of the Child". The draft amendments contain several norms that could be used to restrict the operation of foreign Internet-platforms, social networks and messenger services within the territory of Kazakhstan, thereby jeopardizing the continued presence of popular services such as Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp in KazNet. Restrictions on social networks and instant messenger services in Kazakhstan were an almost daily occurrence until the spring of 2019. However, in the past two years, in a very welcome development, theses practices decreased. The proposed changes would: require foreign Internet platforms, social networks and messenger services to...