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The Responsibilities of Online Service Providers pp 179–199Cite as

Online Service Providers as Human Rights Arbiters

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Part of the book series: Law, Governance and Technology Series ((LGTS,volume 31))

Abstract

Within the EU, governments increasingly encourage online service providers to engage in co- and self-regulatory measures to prevent harmful and illegal content in the online sphere. As part of this tendency, governments shape schemes of liability for third-party content around the online service providers (intermediaries), giving them strong incentives to block, filter or take down content upon notification or request from public authorities in order to avoid liability. Concern has been raised, that the intermediaries are being used to implement public policy with limited oversight and accountability with severe implications on human rights. Drawing on case-studies of three EU directives, including the E-commerce directive, the chapter illustrates how measures of blocking, filtering, and take down of content in co- and self-regulatory frameworks interfere with the human rights standards related to freedom of expression and information. It further discusses current approaches towards human rights responsibilities of private actors, with a particular focus on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The chapter concludes that self-regulatory frameworks are insufficient to counter the human rights challenges related to the involvement in online content regulation of intermediaries, who play a crucial role for online public participation.

This chapter draws on the Case Study on ICT and Human Rights (Policies of EU), Work Package No. 2 – Deliverable No. 2.3, which was published in March 2016 as part of and funded by the EU FP7 FRAME project.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As of July 2015, Laidlaw’s PhD thesis has been published under the title Regulating Speech in Cyberspace, by Cambridge University Press.

  2. 2.

    See (Council of Europe, 1950) Available at: http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf

  3. 3.

    See, also, (Jean-François Akandji-Kombe, 2007)

  4. 4.

    “In determining whether or not a positive obligation exists, regard must be had to the fair balance that has to be struck between the general interest of the community and the interests of the individual, the search for which is inherent throughout the Convention. The scope of this obligation will inevitably vary, having regard to the diversity of situations obtaining in Contracting States and the choices, which must be made in terms of priorities and resources. Nor must such an obligation be interpreted in such a way as to impose an impossible or disproportionate burden on the authorities” (Appleby and others v. UK 2003, para. 40)

  5. 5.

    ‘Blocking’ refers to technical measures taken to prevent users from accessing specific websites, IP addresses, and domain name extensions. ‘Filtering’ refers to technical measures used to exclude pages containing certain keywords or other specific content from appearing when the end-user search for information (La Rue 2011, para. 29). ‘Take-down’ refers to situations where content is removed from webpages at the request of the owner of the content, a victim hereof, or public authorities on behalf of such (Delfi AS v. Estonia, 16 June 2015) para. 13.

  6. 6.

    Including both content regulation, which is implemented and enforced directly by states, and content regulation, which is based on law, but implemented and/or enforced by private companies (co-regulation).

  7. 7.

    Search engines are not formally covered by the E-commerce directive (Frydman 2004). However, most Member States grant search engines an exemption from liability, either by analogy with caching or hosting, or as derived from general principles of tort law, (Javier Martínez Bavière, p. 241).

  8. 8.

    The EU has also adopted the copyright directive, (European Parliament and Council of the European Union 2001)

  9. 9.

    Co-regulation may also be referred to as ‘privatised law enforcement’, (Douwe Korff for the Council of Europe 2014) p. 85.

  10. 10.

    This presupposes, that such limitations happen within mandatory / co-regulatory frameworks in which the potential human rights violations derive from public authorities and constitute ‘interferences’. In voluntary / self-regulatory frameworks the question is whether such limitations fall under the state’s positive human rights obligations and thus, whether the state has ensured a proper balance between the rights of the individuals.

  11. 11.

    Collateral censorship ‘occurs when the state holds one private party A liable for the speech of another private party B, and A has the power to block, censor or otherwise control access to B’s speech’ (Balkin 2014)

  12. 12.

    As discussed extensively by e.g. Hoboken, (J. v. Hoboken 2012)

  13. 13.

    As regards the differences between the degree of knowledge in relation to civil and criminal liability, see also (Kuczerawy, 2015, p. 48)

  14. 14.

    As stressed in the Digital Single Market Strategy (European Commission 2015) Para. 3.3.2.

  15. 15.

    The ECtHR, however, stressed that the findings could not be transferred to discussion forums or social media platforms (Ibid, para. 116).

  16. 16.

    Hosts who provide their own content and open their intermediary services for third parties to comment on that content.

  17. 17.

    It could be argued, that the strict liability resulted from the clear illegal nature of the comments, (Delfi AS v. Estonia, 16 June 2015, Concurring opinion of Dissenting Judges Raimondo, Karakas, De Gaetano and Kjølbro ) Concurring opinion by Dissenting Judges Raimondo, Karakas, De Gaetano and Kjølbro.

  18. 18.

    Recital 9 of the E-commerce directive ties the free movement of information society services to Article 10 of the ECHR (freedom of expression and information), and recital 46 stipulates that with regards to ‘the removal or disabling of access to the information concerned; the removal or disabling of access has to be undertaken in the observance of the principle of freedom of expression and of procedures established for this purpose at national level’.

  19. 19.

    A distinction is made between micro-gatekeepers (certain content moderators), authority gatekeepers (Facebook, Wikipedia, portals), and macro-gatekeepers (ISPs, search engines). Macro-gatekeepers have the greatest democratic impact and thus the strongest human rights obligations (Laidlaw 2012, p. 60ff.). They are distinguished from the other levels, because users must inevitably pass through them to use the internet. As such, they engage all aspects of freedom of expression and information. Moreover, a shift from voluntary to more binding obligations is suggested (Laidlaw 2012) p. 241.

  20. 20.

    This point has also been raised by Hoboken (2014) in relation to privacy and data protection. See (J. Hoboken, August 15, 2014)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Institute for Human Right, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Rikke Frank Jørgensen

  2. Danish Institute for Human Rights, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Anja Møller Pedersen

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  1. Rikke Frank Jørgensen
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  2. Anja Møller Pedersen
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Correspondence to Rikke Frank Jørgensen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Mariarosaria Taddeo

  2. Alan Turing Institute, London, United Kingdom

    Luciano Floridi

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Jørgensen, R.F., Pedersen, A.M. (2017). Online Service Providers as Human Rights Arbiters. In: Taddeo, M., Floridi, L. (eds) The Responsibilities of Online Service Providers. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47852-4_10

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