ARTICLE 15 E-COMMERCE DIRECTIVE AND RECENT MEASURES

This chapter discusses, first, Article 15 of the e-Commerce Directive, which prohibits Member States from imposing on intermediaries a general obligation to monitor or to engage in active fact-finding in respect of the content that they store for their users. It is clarified how such prohibited general obligations are to be distinguished from permitted obligations in specific cases. The case law relating to, and the objectives pursued by, Article 15 are also assessed. Second, the chapter analyses the most important more recent EU law measures regulating the liability and responsibilities of online intermediaries for illegal content in certain specific areas: the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the Copyright in the DSM Directive, the Child Sexual Abuse Directive and the (proposed) Regulation on Terrorist Content Online. It is shown that, taken together, these measures embody a nascent yet incoherent EU-level duty of care for intermediaries in respect of stored user content.