Open Letter to European Commission – Urgent Consideration of Tackling Illegal Content Approach

“We joined today in signing a letter addressed to the European Commission requesting for urgent consideration of its approach towards tackling illegal content online. In September of last year, the European Commission published a Communication on this issue, which raised many free speech concerns as pointed out by organizations like ours. The Commission had nevertheless promised to continue stakeholder dialogues and assess progress made by online platforms by May 2018 before issuing any sort of recommendations. It has come to our attention, however, that the Commission plans to issue a set of recommendations on Notice and Action by the end of February 2018; going against their initial plans. In this letter, we urge Commission to uphold its promise to continue dialogues and exchanges with stakeholders on how best to tackle illegal content online. The lack of a structured, targeted and multi-stakeholder dialogue would inevitably be detrimental to maintaining a sturdy e-Commerce framework for the EU”.