screens1

Short Course on the EU Digital Services Act (12, 15, 16, 18 April 2024)

The Short Course on the EU Digital Services Act is a 16-hour executive education course, which was most recently delivered in four online sessions in September 2023. Past participants were from national regulators, technology companies, law firms, funding agencies, and civil society organisations. 

The next course will run in April 2024.

Course organiser: Dr Martin Husovec, LSE Law School, Email: M.Husovec@lse.ac.uk.

Course manager: Amanda Tinnams, LSE Law School, Email: A.Tinnams@lse.ac.uk
 

Aims, target audience, structure and timing

Aims

  • To provide a systematic overview of the main components and individual obligations in the EU Digital Service Act (DSA).
  • To explore in-depth case studies of the most relevant and cutting-edge issues of the DSA, including those that are likely to be litigated.
  • To discuss practical strategies for compliance with DSA’s content moderation rules and other due diligence obligations.

Target audience

  • Practitioners, in-house lawyers, and civil servants across the world who work on the regulation of digital services, including content moderation, and want to prepare for the DSA’s entry into force.
  • Professionals, scholars, and students across the world who are familiar with the regulation of digital services and wish to gain in-depth knowledge of the key DSA issues.

Structure and delivery

  • Four 4-hour sessions in April 2024 (12 April, 15 April, 16 April, 18 April), all 1.30pm-5.30pm GMT
  • Capacity: the short course will be capped at 30 students to maximise interaction.
  • Location: the course will be delivered on Zoom.
  • Format: lectures with in-class discussions and case studies

Topics

  • DSA’s scope, components, and broader regulatory context
  • DSA’s liability chapter (liability exemptions and injunctions)
  • DSA’s due diligence obligations chapter (content moderation and fairness, transparency, advertising, and compliance)
  • DSA’s enforcement chapter

Academic staff

 

husovec-2022

Dr Martin Husovec is an Associate Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His scholarship deals with questions of innovation policy and digital liberties, in particular, regulation of intellectual property and freedom of expression. 

He is the author of an upcoming book, The Principles of Digital Services Act (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in August 2024).

He is also the author of the book, Injunctions against intermediaries in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and many articles on the regulation of intermediaries, intellectual property enforcement, and digital freedom of expression.

Martin is a member of the European Copyright Society (ECS), a group of prominent European copyright scholars. He is also a co-founder of a think-tank, European Information Society Institute, which acts as amicus curia before the European Court of Human Rights and operates a domain name dispute resolution system for skTLD. He was an advisor to the President of the Slovak Constitutional Court, national ministries across Europe and Asia, and various EU institutions in the areas of intellectual property, freedom of expression and privacy. His work was repeatedly cited by Advocate Generals at the Court of Justice of the European Union.


 

Schedule

Day 1    |   12 April 2024     |    1:30pm-5:30pm GMT

Scope and Context

  • Digital ecosystem
  • DSA’s basic goals and basic outline
  • DSA’s regulated services: infrastructure services, platforms, search engines, etc.
  • DSA’s basic components: liability chapter, due diligence obligations, and enforcement
  • Regulatory context: DSA vs EU law (copyright, P2B regulation, terrorist content); DSA vs national law

Day 2    |   15 April 2024     |    1:30pm-5:30pm GMT

Liability

  • Liability exemptions: hosting, mere conduit, and caching; 
  • The situation of search engines.
  • Passive and active hosting and platform services.
  • Prohibition of general monitoring obligations.
  • Liability case studies: online marketplaces, social media, cyber-lockers, search engines, webhosting, services content delivery networks, internet access providers, and others.
  • Injunctions and orders of authorities: filtering and other preventive obligations.
  • DSA’s enforcement of liability vs accountability obligations

Day 3   |   16 April 2024     |    1:30pm-5:30pm GMT

Accountability

  • Accountability under DSA’s due diligence obligations: active vs passive providers, thresholds, and various types of borderline services.
  • Basic areas of due diligence obligations: content moderation, fair design, transparency, advertising, and compliance.
  • Content moderation rules for hosting services: from notification to statements of reasons, internal appeals, and external out-of-court dispute resolution.
  • Content moderation case studies: (1) social networks & hate speech; (2) webhosting & terrorist content; (3) marketplaces & consumer protection; (4) search engines & right to be delisted
  • Fairness and transparency, including advertising due diligence obligations.

Day 4    |   18 April 2024     |    1:30pm-5:30pm GMT

Compliance, VLOPs and Enforcement

  • Oversight obligations & special rules for VLOPs/VLOSEs
  • Competence of national DSCs and the European Commission
  • Standardisation and Codes of Conduct
  • Case studies for enforcement: (1) social network & hate speech content moderation; (2) video-sharing platform as a VLOP & copyright content moderation, (3) web hosting & terrorist content; (4) app store as a VLOP & child abuse material; (5) search engine as a VLOSE & right to be delisted
  • Private enforcement of the DSA obligations

Registration and fees

  • For further information, including registration and fees, please contact Amanda Tinnams, Course Manager. Email: A.Tinnams@lse.ac.uk.
  • The registration form is available here.
  • On completion of registration and transfer of payment, you will immediately receive a Zoom link and a set of pre-course readings. The readings will consist of curated materials, including legislative text, excerpts from cases, journal articles, and Husovec's unpublished writing on the DSA."
  • Fees: £2,500 for companies, and £2,000 for civil society and public authorities. An early booking discount of 20% will be available for those who register and pay until 15 March 2024. If you have any special requirements, please contact Amanda Tinnams.
  • The places are allocated on a first come first served basis. If the registration is full, you can ask to be put on the waiting list.

Certificate and CPD points

  • A course certificate — “LSE Short Course on the EU Digital Services Act” — will be provided upon completion of the course.
  • CPD points can be applied for.

Cancellation policy

Cancellations requested after the participant receives the reading materials are subject to a £300 cancellation fee. Cancellations requested less than four weeks before the commencement of the course incur the following penalties: two to four weeks 50% of the course fee, less than two weeks 100% of the course fee. If written notification is not received and you do not attend, the full course fee will be retained as a cancellation charge.