Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
DOI
10.15779/Z38RX93F48
Abstract
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (“DSA”) establishes a “meta law”—public regulation of the private regulation conducted by internet platforms. The DSA offers an attempt to balance private technological power with democratic oversight. The DSA will likely prove an attractive model for other governments to assert control over massive global internet platforms. What happens when other countries borrow its approach, in an instantiation of the vaunted Brussels Effect? This Article evaluates the DSA using the “Putin Test”—asking what if an authoritarian leader were given the powers granted by the DSA? The Article argues that authoritarians might well exploit various mechanisms in the DSA to enlarge their control over the dissemination of information, and, in particular, to target the speech of critics.
Publication Citation
Berkeley Technology Law Review, Vol. 38, Issue 3, Pp. 1067-1088.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Chander, Anupam, "When the Digital Services Act Goes Global" (2023). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2548.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2548