A NEW EU LAW ON NOTICE AND ACTION FOR REMOVAL OF ILLEGAL CONTENT ONLINE?

For over a decade, online platforms have been imposing their own arbitrary rules for illegal content that is distributed on their networks. This resulted many times in hateful and other problematic content to spread, and at the same time in an over-removal of perfectly legal content online.

The European Parliament has been calling for a clear legal framework for online platforms and how they should handle users’ complaints, and how they should (or should not) remove or disable illegal content. However, the EU Commission kept postponing such legislation in past 7 years, while very few Member States have actually introduced regulatory frameworks on "notice and action". With the upcoming Digital Services Act, this is about to change.

This event will be an opportunity to hear from renowned experts how the rules for online platforms, and more specifically for the notice and action mechanism should look like. We will discuss how illegal content should be addressed, while ensuring strong user rights and safeguarding the right to freedom of expression. During this event, we will also launch our Digital Campaign and website: ''My Content, My Rights''.

PROGRAMME

15:00 Introduction by MEP Alexandra Geese
15:10 Discussion with experts, start session 1

Session 1:

• Lionstorm, Queer artist duo from the Netherlands
• Dimi Dimitrov, Manager Public and Regulatory Policy at Wikimedia
• Rejo Zenger, Policy Officer at Bits of Freedom (tbc)
• Akram Kubanychbekov, Senior Advocacy Officer at ILGA Europe

15:40 End of discussion, summary by MEP Marcel Kolaja


BREAK

15:50 Start of session 2

Session 2:

• Chloé Berthelemy and Jan Penfrat, Policy Advisors at EDRi
• Martin Husovec, Assistant Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE Law) and fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society
• Thomas Lohniger; Executive Director at epicenter.works
• Eliska Pirkova, Policy Analyst at Access Now Europe
• Gabrielle Guillemins, Senior Legal Officer at ARTICLE 19
• Matthias Vermeulen, Director at AWO Agency and associate fellow at the VUB Centre for Law, Science, Technology and Society

16:30 End of discussion, summary by MEP Patrick Breyer
16:35 Q&A with public, moderated by MEP Kim van Sparrentak
16:50 End of event