Dr Martin Husovec

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Digital services, such as social media, online marketplaces, app stores, and search engines, were left largely unregulated for twenty years. While users of the services were exposed to liability under typical content rules applicable to obscenity, defamation or intellectual property, the platforms were regulated only lightly. The first generation of content regulation focused on enabling companies to operate services that process user-generated content through a set of liability exemptions (US Communication Decency Act, EU E-Commerce Directive, etc.). The global norm was reliance on self-regulation of the technology industry when it comes to content issues. Following a number of controversies, in the early 2020s, legislatures around the world started introducing new comprehensive content-related regulations to address various problems, ranging from hate speech and terrorist content to child sexual abuse material and copyright infringements. This course covers some of the basic content laws dealing with what users can and cannot do online, and regulatory models dealing with platforms and other digital providers that host, distribute and give access to content.

An indicative list of topics includes:

Users, Intermediaries and Freedom of Expression

Policing Obscenity

Policing Defamation

Policing Antisocial and Harmful Content

Platforms: Business Models and Regulatory Approaches 

Platform Competition and Ex-Ante Rules

Content Moderation Fair Procedure

Platform Design Practices and Risk Management

Filtering and Website blocking by Infrastructure Providers

Territoriality of Content Enforcement

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the WT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

Core teaching will be delivered across 11 weeks, e.g. lectures in Weeks 1-10, classes/seminars in Weeks 2-11. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6.

1,500 word essay.

A Murray: Information Technology Law: Law and Society 5ed (esp. Part II)

P Bernal, The Internet, Warts and All: Free Speech, Privacy and Truth (CUP 2018)

T Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World (Atlantic 2016)

M Husovec, Principles of the Digital Services Act (Oxford University Press, 2024, forthcoming)

M Husovec, Rising Above Liability: The Digital Services Act as a Blueprint for the Second Generation of Global Internet Rules (2023) Berkeley Technology Law Journal Vol. 38, No. 3 (2024), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=4598426

J Riordan, The Liability of Internet Intermediaries (OUP 2016)

M Collins, Collins on Defamation (OUP 2014)

J Zittrain, ‘Be Careful What You Ask For: Reconciling a Global Internet and Local Law’ in A Thierer (ed.), Who Rules the Net?: Internet Governance and Jurisdiction (Cato Institute 2003).

J Balkin, ‘Free speech is a triangle’ (2018) 118 Columbia Law Review 2011

de Streel, Alexandre and Feasey, Richard and Kraemer, Jan and Monti, Giorgio, Making the Digital Markets Act More Resilient and Effective (May 26, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3853991 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3853991

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.