How Does the EU’s Digital Services Act Regulate Content Moderation? And Will it Work?

Join the Cyber Policy Center, together with the Program on Democracy and the Internet for How Does the EU’s Digital Services Act Regulate Content Moderation? And Will it Work?, a conversation with Martin Husovec, moderated by Daphne Keller of the Program on Platform Regulation. This session is part of the Spring Seminar Series, a series spanning April through June, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center with the Program on Democracy and the Internet. Sessions are in-person and virtual, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance. 

The Digital Services Act is a new legislation that will soon enter into force in the European Union. The DSA is among the first regulatory attempts around the world to regulate content moderation comprehensively. Unlike the previous generation of rules, it does not rely on liability for third-party content as a policy lever to achieve its goals. Instead, it creates self-standing regulatory expectations – due diligence obligations – that are meant to steward the providers and other actors toward content moderation that better respects the due process rights of individuals. While the DSA limits the decision-making power of platforms in many ways, it arguably does not significantly constrain their rule-making power. The talk will explain the basic ideas and tensions behind the DSA and speculate about the likely impact in the upcoming years.

About the Speaker:

Martin Husovec [pronounce as Husovets, or Husoveck] is an Assistant Professor of Law at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His scholarship deals with questions of innovation policy and digital liberties, particularly intellectual property law, platform regulation, and freedom of expression. Martin is currently finalising a book about European regulation of digital platforms, entitled “Principles of the Digital Services Act” (Oxford University Press).

Martin obtained his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich for his work on injunctions against intermediaries (published with Cambridge University Press, 2017). Between 2015-2020, he was Assistant Professor at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, appointed jointly by Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) and Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC). He held visiting appointments at Stanford Law School (2014), the Japanese Institute for Intellectual Property (2015), the Central European University (2018) the European University Institute (2018), and Cambridge University (2019). He remains to be fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society (CIS), CREATe, and TILEC. Martin is also a member of the European Copyright Society (ECS), a group of prominent European copyright scholars, and a book reviews editor at the International Journal of Law and Information Technology.