EU Terrorist Content Rules Progress; Opposed by Civil Society

EU efforts to quash dissemination of terrorist content online moved forward Tuesday as the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee recommended approval of a measure on "the misuse of hosting services for terrorist purposes." European Council government ministers have greenlighted the regulation, which is expected to be approved by the full parliament later this month. Hosting service providers play a key role in the digital economy but are sometimes abused by third parties for carrying out illegal activities online, a March 18 EC memo said. Of particular concern is their misuse by terrorist groups and their supporters to spread content to radicalize and recruit followers, it said. In light of their central role and the technology and capabilities associated with the services they provide, hosting services "have particular societal responsibilities" to protect their services from misuse while preserving fundamental rights. The regulation shouldn't affect the application of directive 2000/31/EC, which grants intermediaries exemption from liability from illegal content, nor would it hamper national authorities and courts from imposing liability if hosting services violate the conditions, the memo said. The measure would apply to information society service providers that store and disseminate to the public information and material provided by a user of the service on request, regardless of whether the storing is "of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature." Providers of "mere conduit" or "caching" services -- along with other services in other layers of the internet infrastructure that don't involve storage, such as domain name registries and registrars and providers of domain name systems -- would be outside the scope. Terrorist content is often spread through services set up in third countries, so this would apply to "all providers of relevant services in the Union" that let people or entities in one or more EU countries use those services and that have a substantial connection to the countries. The legislation calls for harmonized rules on procedures for taking down terrorist content. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, European Digital Rights and Internet Governance Project joined about 60 civil society groups in panning this. They argued it would incentivize online platforms to continue to use automated content moderation tools such as upload filters to the detriment of free speech, and that it lacks sufficient judicial oversight.