Browsing by Author "Horváth, Balázs Boldizsár"

This thesis is about the liability of hosting services and how it was reformed by the Digital Services Act (DSA). In our lives hosting services are everywhere and their liability for information that is being stored or disseminated using their platforms is important. The DSA adopted the liability system for intermediary services that was present in the E-Commerce Directive with slight changes. These changes can have significant consequences regarding the liability of hosting services, especially for those that neglect to pay heed to the reform that has taken place. To answer the research question, the thesis introduces the liability of hosting services under the E-Commerce Directive and explores the legal fragmentation that was the result of the different interpretations of Member States, then takes a closer look at the liability system of the DSA for hosting services. In the assessment of the provisions of the DSA, the individual sections are constantly contrasted with the corresponding sections of the E-Commerce Directive. When it is available, the preceding case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and preparatory documents form EU institutions are also introduced in an effort to retrace the steps of legal development that resulted in what the final form of the DSA. Special attention is given to the potential liability systems that were discussed during consultation and were ultimately discarded. The main areas of the thesis are the following: categorization of intermediary services and more closely hosting services, the liability exemption for hosting services and the important definitions connected to it (e.g., ‘active role’ or acting ‘expeditiously’), monitoring obligation, automatic tools for detection of illegal content, own investigations of hosting services, notices and liability, indexing systems and vicarious liability. Some of these existed in the E-Commerce Directive, others are new additions. If appropriate, problems of interpretation are also discussed as the research found some contentious issues with the new act, especially with the new additions. The thesis concludes with a review of the most problematic parts of the reform and a brief evaluation based on the findings. The research found that in many ways the reform that tried to create a clearer and fairer system for online intermediaries brought even more questions that are up for further interpretation. There are potential clashes with sectoral EU legislation and many of the clarifications that were codified in the DSA had already been settled by the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union while the novelties are left without the support of their own case-law.