Online Intermediaries and Sustainable Market Regulation – a Smart Mix of Liability and Exemptions

Abstract

The Commission has advanced sustainable and responsible behaviour of business operators in the digital environment since the adoption of the Strategy for the Digital Single Market of 2015. The question remains, how can we reach the normative goal of ensuring a safe, secure and fair online environment, where fundamental rights are protected, and responsibilities of platforms, especially large players and gatekeepers, are well defined? A “smart mix” of mandatory and voluntary rules, in combination with industry self regulation, is applied to address business and fundamental rights. This paper asks how the Digital Services Act (DSA) answers the call for sustainable market regulation. Ideally, sustainable market regulation may respond to specific risks, and impose tailored duties for “diligent economic operators”, without setting liability enhanced policy or enforcement targets for normal business activity. The paper discusses what has changed in the approach adopted in the DSA; what is the role of intermediaries in the information flows online; and how this is linked to information and data, important from the perspective of energy consumption as a parallel sustainability goal. It analyses briefly the CJEU case law on balancing liability exemptions with fundamental rights, including the right to information and its impact on the interpretation of the DSA. The paper also considers how the DSA fosters the concept of diligence in the online environment, as well as consumer empowerment, as an important feature of sustainable market regulation.