The German
intention to regulate the matter has been recently discussed between CNECT's Cabinet and the
German authorities. During these discussions, CNECT informed the German authorities of
CNECT's intention to regulate the same matter with a different approach than the one presented in
the notified draft. It seems that DG CNECT and DG JUST are in contact to discuss the notified draft
and have contacts with the German Ministry of Justice (which prepared the notified draft).
Main content:
The notified draft contains the following provisions:
- Standards for effective complaint management to ensure that social networks delete blatantly
criminal content 24 hours after receipt of a complaint from a user. The draft makes it compulsory to
have effective, transparent methods for the prompt deletion of illegal content, including user-friendly
mechanisms for registering complaints.
- Social networks shall be legally bound to file quarterly reports on how they dealt with complaints
regarding potentially criminal content. The reports shall contain statistics on the volume of
complaints and information on the networks' decision-making process. They shall also provide
information on the complaints team responsible for processing the complaints. The reports must be
readily retrievable on the social network's homepage.
- Social networks may be imposed a fine of up to EUR 5 million in the following cases: deliberate or
negligent non-compliance with the reporting obligation, violation of the obligation to have effective
complaint management, violation of the obligation to appoint a person on German soil authorised to
accept service and an authorised recipient on German soil for requests for information from law
enforcement authorities.
The notification message and the draft text concerning this notification can be found on
http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-
databases/tris/en/search/?trisaction=search.detail&year=2017&num=127
Relation with past notifications:
The notification under subject come to develop further the obligations regarding intermediaries'
liability contained in Article 10 of the German Telemedia Act (TMG). According to this Article,
service providers are bound to immediately remove illegal content they are storing for a user, or to
block access to said content, once they become aware of it. This provision was commented by the
Commission when it was amended and notified under notification 2015/305/D, in relation with the
liability exemption contained in Article 14 of the E-commerce Directive.
Interim assessment:
The notified drafts are still under assessment by the following EC services concerned: GROW E1
and E3, JUST and CNECT.
DG CNECT has flagged the sensitivity of the notified draft and informed that they might propose a
reaction.
Timeline:
EC services views are expected by 28 April 2017.
The legal deadline for the EC reaction is 28 June 2017.
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European Commission
DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs
Unit B2 - Prevention of Technical Barriers
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32-2-29-
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