MLPSC Opening Provocations Panel

Platform Regulation Across the Atlantic: What´s Next for the US and the European Union?

Thursday, January 12 @ Noon EST

Europe has made its moves. The Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act have been enacted as European Regulations and significantly change the regulatory landscape for internet service providers in the European Union and particularly for large social media platforms who will now have to comply with a specific set of rules related to online risk assessments, content moderation obligations including avenues for redress and algorithmic transparency, while making sure that they comply with European fundamental human rights. That is not all, the upcoming European Media Regulation Act seeks to impose new obligations for “traditional” media including public media in ways never seen before in Europe, including powers to interrupt broadcasting by foreign media inside the European space. By comparison, the situation in the United States is uncertain until the resolution of several pending Supreme Court cases that will tell legislatures how much authority they have to dictate how online publishers operate. In this panel we will discuss new and upcoming European regulation and what challenges lie ahead for the EU including what enforcement of new legislation will look like and what problems will there be with compliance or for fundamental human rights. At the same time, speakers will reflect on how possible new legislation in the US will look like and if it will at all be similar to the European approach or if that is even possible under the US constitution. Finally, we will also reflect, alongside all participants on what possibilities and challenges for research open as we face these new regulatory changes on both sides of the Atlantic.

Panelists:

Eric Goldman is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law in the Silicon Valley. He also co-directs the High-Tech Law Institute and supervises the Privacy Law Certificate. He joined the Santa Clara Law faculty in 2006. His research and teaching focuses on Internet, IP and advertising law topics, and he blogs on these topics at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog [http://blog.ericgoldman.org]. Managing IP magazine has twice named him to a shortlist of North American “IP Thought Leaders,” and he has been named an “IP Vanguard” by the California State Bar’s IP Section. Before joining the Santa Clara Law faculty, he was an assistant professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before that, he practiced law for eight years in the Silicon Valley as General Counsel of Epinions.com and an Internet and technology transactions attorney at Cooley Godward LLP.

Elena Herrero-Beaumont is an adjunct professor at IE University´s School of Global and Public Affairs and is the co-founder and Director of Ethosfera, a think tank devoted to promote a critical thinking approach based on the classical and liberal humanistic values to manage institutional and democratic risks in the digital environment. She is a contributing writer at Ethic Magazine. She sits at the Boards of Fundación HAZ and Transparency International-Spain. She is also a member of Instituto Gobernanza y Sociedad (IGS); a member of the editorial board at Ethic and a member of the advisory board at CodeOp, a tech start-up. She was a researcher at Fundación HAZ, where she edited the “Media Integrity Report: Editorial Transparency and Governance in News Media Companies” (2020) and coauthored the annual report, “Primera Plana. Informe de transparencia y buen gobierno sobre independencia y credibilidad editorial de los grupos de comunicación” (2017, 2019).

Tobias Mast is a postdoctoral researcher and head of the research programme “Regulatory Structures and the Emergence of Rules in Online Spaces” at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg. Before that he was a law clerk at the German Federal Constitutional Court. Together with other postdoctoral researchers at his Institute, he is the editor of a large legal commentary on the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act with other 30 contributors. It is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2023.

Moderator:

Rodrigo Cetina Presuel is the Associate Dean for Education and Academic Affairs at the Barcelona School of Management at Pompeu Fabra University as well as a Senior Lecturer in Law and Public Policy and the co-director of the Masters in Public and Social Policies at the school. Before joining UPF-BSM he was a Researcher at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School and served as Executive Director of the RCC at Harvard University. He has held several international faculty, research, and teaching positions, among others at Harvard University, New York University (NYU), Emerson College, Lasell University, and at the City University of New York (CUNY). He conducts research related to digital platforms and fundamental rights online, particularly freedom of expression, communication rights and privacy rights. He has recently published two edited volumes, the Handbook of Communication Rights, Law and Ethics (Wiley, 2021) and Blockchain, Fintech and the Law (Tirant lo Blanch, 2022).

Registration is required to attend. Please register here.