ADDITIONAL COURSE FOR MASTER IN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, April 8th-12th – 16.00-19.00
Regulation of Digital Content through Online Service Providers – The new European Union Digital Services Act (DSA) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

All relevant information about course are available at:  MEI Additional course on Digital Regulation (pdf)

Тhose who wish to attend please fill out the form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1H4PoWd3ZTw1MSnLgFZRofbioULAXsuuYiOAfJ_rmFj0/edit

Program

1st Day
1. Offline and Online Digital Content regulation: what, why, how?
2. The EU Digital Strategy: its legal documents and their implication for the regulation of digital content
3. The EU Digital Services Act: an overview – liability of providers; due diligence obligation; and enforcement.
4. Fundamental/Human Rights and online regulation: normative conflicts emerging from horizontal relations and positive obligations

2nd Day
5. The scope and essential legal notions of online regulation: intermediary service providers; online platforms, consumers, traders, illegal content; content moderation and terms & conditions.
6. Liability of online service providers: general framework and exemptions
7. The EU DSA divide between illegal content and harmful (and not illegal) content; specific problems regarding privacy and freedom of expression (especially: disinformation and hate speech)

3rd Day
8. Self-regulation, regulated-self regulation (co-regulation) and due diligence obligations.
9. Special regime for hosting providers: notice and action mechanisms;
10. Special regime for online platforms: internal complaint-handling system and (out-of-court) conflict resolution
11. Special regime for online platforms: trusted flaggers and transparency obligations.
12. Traders on platforms

4th Day
13. VLOP (very large online platforms): systemic risks, recommender systems, data access; compliance officers, transparency and enforcement.
14. National digital services coordinators, penalties and complaints;
15. European Board for Digital Services

5th day
Mock case from user/consumer, platform, trader and regulator perspectives.

Short Bio of the lecturer –  Professor Domingos Farinho

Domingos Farinho is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon School of Law. He is also a Senior Researcher of the Lisbon Public Law research centre where he coordinates the Lisbon Digital Rights and Freedoms research group. His main areas of research are Administrative Law (especially EU Regulatory Law), Fundamental Rights (mainly Privacy and Data Protection), and Legal Theory. He is also a legal consultant working in the field of TMT and digital public law. He has been especially interested in fundamental rights in the context of Public Administrations and Cyberspace. He has coordinated and participated in several courses regarding Data Protection, the GDPR and access to State-held information. He has written extensively on these topics. His more recent work includes:

1. “A Right of Access to State-held Information Concerning the Education and Work History of (Elected) Candidates for Parliament” in European Data Protection Law Review, Volume 7 (2021), Issue 2, pp. 327 – 335;
2. “The Portuguese Charter of Human Rights in the Digital Age: a legal appraisal” in Revista Española de la Transparencia núm. 13 – 2021, pp. 85-105;
3. Fundamental rights and conflict resolution in the Digital Services Act Proposal: a first approach” in e-Pública, Vol. 9, n.º 1, 2022, pp. 75-103;
4. “Models of Legal Liability for Social Networks: Between Germany and Portugal” (with Ricardo Resende Campos) in Carlos Blanco de Morais; Gilmar Ferreira Mendes; and Thomas Vesting (ed.), “The Rule of Law in Cyberspace”, Cham: Springer, 2022, pp. 331-348;
5. “Self-Regulation and Public Regulation of Social Networks” in Portugal in Carlos Blanco de Morais; Gilmar Ferreira Mendes; and Thomas Vesting (eds.), “The Rule of Law in Cyberspace”, Cham: Springer, 2022, pp. 349-385;
6. Commentary to articles 4(1), 4(3), 6(1)(f)(special processings), 18 and 98 of the GDPR in Indra Spiecker gen. Döhmann, Vagelis Papakonstantinou, Gerrit Hornung, Paul De Hert (eds.), “General Data Protection Regulation – Article-by-Article Commentary”, Berlin, Nomos, 2023.