The European Union’s major restart of outdated e-commerce rules – also known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) – has been published in the bloc’s Official Gazette.
You can find the full (and final) text of the DSA over here.
The tech companies’ internal legal teams will be looking into detail in the coming months as they discover how to adapt their policies and procedures to ensure compliance and avoid penalties that could amount to 6% of global trading volume for the most egregious violations. .
The rules aim to drive accountability online by simplifying how platforms and marketplaces handle illegal content and goods and services, as well as introducing specific provisions for larger platforms aimed at increasing transparency around powerful algorithms.
According to the EU process, the DSA regulation will enter into force within 20 days (so in mid-November). This is not the true start date although there is still a delay before the provisions become applicable to allow a period of adjustment and alignment for companies.
The bulk of the provisions of the DSA will apply from January 1, 2024, per commission.
But a subset of the commitments – to so-called VLOPs (also known as Very Large Internet Platforms) – will start to apply next year as the European Union stipulates that implementation of VLOPs and very large Internet search engines (also known as VLOSEs) will begin four months after they are made. Designate them as entering the category.
So it’s likely that a host of big tech companies and big tech giants will have compliance requirements that will affect them early next year.
For more information on the rules digital companies have to abide by in the EU under the new DSA regime, check out previous coverage.
slate sister, Digital Markets Law – which targets big tech companies exclusively for pre-regulation – will also start applying from early next year. So everything changes and soon!
