The EU Digital Services Act (DSA): A Commentary

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) is a book furnishing a comprehensive framework regulating the provision of digital intermediary services in the EU internal market. It elucidates the conditions under which service providers can avoid being held liable for their users’ illegal content, establishes a set of harmonized duties they must follow, and sets broad safeguards for users’ rights.

As an extensive article-by-article commentary, this book offers an exhaustive guide to the complex web of the DSA’s tightly intertwined provision. On a systemic level, it also contextualizes the DSA by exploring its relationship with other relevant legal instruments, such as consumer protection, data protection, and private international law. Among the topics and issues addressed are the following:

Liability and Content Moderation:

• liability of online services which transmit, cache, or store illegal user content
• rules on removing, reducing visibility of, or otherwise moderating content which is illegal or breaches terms of service, and
• acting against user content based on own investigations, governmental orders, or received notices, and rights and redress possibilities given to users

Service-Specific Obligations:

• rules affecting profiling-based advertising, content recommendation systems, and user interface design
• duties of platforms which disseminate user content, obligations of online consumer marketplaces, and exemptions for micro and small enterprises
• novel transparency reporting duties, publication of databases and reports, and provision of access to platform data and algorithms, and
• duties of very large online platforms and search engines

Enforcement Framework:

• competencies, tasks and powers of authorities and the EU Commission to monitor compliance, investigate infringements and impose sanctions
• national, cross-border and European coordination, cooperation and enforcement mechanisms, and
• issues of jurisdiction and applicable law, and duties of providers established outside of the EU

How this will help you:

Considering the DSA’s scope, this book will be invaluable to businesses of any size that handle user content. It will be highly appreciated by a broad audience of legal practitioners, public officials, civil society stakeholders, researchers, and content creators. All professionals working with user content management issues will gain valuable compliance insights from this book.