On May 11, 2022, the Fifth Circuit reinstated Texas state law HB 20 which allows private parties to sue tech platforms with 50M+ MAUs for their censorship of user-generated content based on “the viewpoint of a user or another person”. On May 13, technology lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer...
Former President Donald Trump has filed proposed class action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google subsidiary YouTube as well as CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai. The lawsuits come six months after Trump was permanently or temporarily suspended from all three platforms...
One of the more perplexing provisions of the draft Online Safety Bill is its multi-level definition of legal but harmful content (lawful but awful content, to give it its colloquial name).
The proposal that service providers’ safety duties under the Bill should apply to such content is in itself...
Do platforms like YouTube and cyberlocker Uploaded directly perform copyright-restricted acts under Article 3 of the InfoSoc Directive? At what conditions is the hosting safe harbour under Article 14(1) of the Ecommerce Directive available? What may be the requirements for injunctions under Article...
Special Rapporteurs from the United Nations have written to India noting that the government’s new IT Rules go against international human rights norms in their current form. India’s response contends that such concerns are “misplaced” and that the country’s democratic structure remains unaffected...
The draft Digital Services Act (DSA) Regulation presents multiple layers of transparency and accountability obligations that differ depending on the type of service concerned. There are a few obligations that are imposed on all intermediary services, i.e., mere conduit, caching, and hosting services...
Vietnam introduced national guidelines on social media behaviour on Friday which encourage people to post positive content about the Southeast Asian country and require state employees to report "conflicting information" to their superiors.
The code prohibits posts which violate the law and...
Twitter disclosed on Monday that it blocked four accounts in India to comply with a new legal request from the Indian government.
The American social network disclosed on Lumen Database, a Harvard University project, that it took action on four accounts — including those of hip-hop artist L-Fresh...
The European Commission has published its long overdue guidance on the application of art. 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD), a mere three days before the implementation deadline. The final version of the guidance makes it clear that the Commission has abandoned...
While platforms currently have no obligation to incorporate fundamental rights into their terms of service, an important provision in the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act (DSA), may potentially go some way in this direction. Notably, art. 12 DSA lays down new rules on how platforms can enforce...