EU Parliament's 'More Thoughtful' Approach To Regulating The Internet Still A Complete Disaster

from the regulating-human-behavior dept

For a while now, the EU has been working on its latest big update to internet regulations, mostly under the umbrella of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Multiple people who have been following the process there have noted how much more thoughtful the process has been for the DSA as compared to internet regulatory attempts in the US, which seem to mostly be driven by which senator thinks they can get the biggest headlines for misrepresenting which particular outrage this week. A more careful, thoughtful approach is definitely appreciated, but that doesn't mean the results will be any good. Last week, the EU Parliament approved the latest version of the DSA in what has been seen as something of a mixed bag.

Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer described the final vote as having both "huge success and major setbacks." I'm actually a bit surprised that the EFF seems mostly happy with the result (with a few caveats), though that seems to mainly be because a few really bad ideas didn't make the cut. But, it still seems like an awful lot of bad ideas did make it through.

The good parts are that the new DSA mostly retains the E-Commerce Directive's "conditional liability regime" and rejected a proposal that would require "general monitoring" (i.e., faulty filters to try to screen "bad stuff"). There was an attempt to go even further and ban upload filters entirely, but that was rejected. Similarly a proposal to say that courts could not require ISPs engage in full site blocking was rejected.

On the good side, this version of the DSA includes a right to pay for digital services anonymously, though it rejected a limitation on requiring a court order for government's to snoop through your data. It also rejected a proposal that would require a court order to remove content -- banning the practice of enabling government agencies to order content removals. This is extremely unfortunate, and an attack on due process.

There's a lot more in there that's a mix of good and bad, and the whole thing isn't truly final yet either. But, I still think that overall the DSA will have a hugely negative impact on internet freedoms and free speech, even if it got some small things at the margin right.

In the end, I do think that any big "sweeping" set of internet regulations -- whether prepared thoughtfully or not -- are always going to be a disaster. They can't take into account how complex the world is, can't take into account context, and can't take into account the general dynamism of the internet -- and how quickly things change. Not only that, but just the very process of opening up such sweeping regulations that cover so much of how the internet works for users is going to get hijacked by special interests who want this or that thing included in the final regulation.

Is the process more reality-based than the US's grandstand-o-rama? Sure. Will the end results be any better? Doesn't seem like it.

Filed Under: anonymity, conditional liability, data, digital services act, dsa, eu, filters, intermediary liability, internet regulations, privacy