ABSTRACT
The legal landscape surrounding Internet intermediaries – such as e-commerce platforms, social media, and ISPs – centers on their liability for third-party actions. Such liability can be framed as direct liability, for instance, for defective products through strict product liability, and as indirect liability, for instance, in actions for defamation and copyright infringement. The general approach however has been to shield liabilities from liability. Legislation such as the US Communications Decency Act, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the EU Electronic Commerce Directive generally exempt intermediaries from liability, provided the various procedural mechanisms in such legislation are observed. However, it is noteworthy that the EU’s Copyright Directive 2019 and EU Digital Services Act 2020 mandate proactive measures, including implementing content filtering and conducting due diligence risk assessments. As the legal scrutiny over Internet intermediaries intensifies globally, balancing accountability with intermediary immunity remains critical to sustaining innovation and growth on the Internet.
Seng, Daniel Kiat Boon, The Liability of Internet Platform Intermediaries (July 24, 2024) in Research Handbook on Agency and Intermediation, chapter 23 (Deborah A DeMott and Cheng-Han Tan eds, 2026).
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