Martin Husovec

Using Experimental Evidence to Design Optimal Notice and Takedown Process

Whether it is copyright infringement or hate speech, Internet intermediaries like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube are expected to enforce the law by removing illegal content. The legal scheme under which a lot of such delegated enforcement takes place is often referred to as notice & takedown. According to theory and empirical evidence, this scheme leads to many false positives due to over-notification by concerned parties, over-compliance by providers, and under-assertion of rights by affected content creators. We re-create these problems in a laboratory and then test a mechanism to address two of them: the over-compliance by providers, and the lack of complaints by the content creators. We show that our proposed solution of an independent ADR mechanism significantly reduces over-compliance by providers. At the same time, it increases complaints by the content creators who are successful in their complaints, but primarily in cases in which it is easier to evaluate who is right.

Injunctions Against Intermediaries in the European Union: Accountable But Not Liable?

In the European Union, courts have been expanding the enforcement of intellectual property rights by employing injunctions to compel intermediaries to provide assistance, despite no allegation of wrongdoing against these parties. These prospective injunctions, designed to prevent future harm, thus hold parties accountable where no liability exists. Effectively a new type of regulatory tool, these injunctions are distinct from the conventional secondary liability in tort. At present, they can be observed in orders to compel website blocking, content filtering, or disconnection, but going forward, their use is potentially unlimited. This book outlines the paradigmatic shift this entails for the future of the Internet and analyzes the associated legal and economic opportunities and problems.