Intermediary Liability and Fundamental Rights

This chapter of the Oxford Handbook of Online Intermediary Liability sets the stage for considering the tension between intermediary liability and fundamental rights with special emphasis on the European legal framework. Competing fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression, privacy, freedom of business and the right to property are entangled into the intermediary liability conundrum. Policy makers are still in search of a balanced and proportional fine tuning of online intermediaries’ regulation that might address the miscellaneous interests of all stakeholders involved, with special emphasis on users’ rights. In this context, the increasing reliance on automated enforcement technologies, which will be the topic of further review in multiple chapters throughout the Handbook, might set in motion dystopian scenarios where users’ fundamental rights are heavily undermined.

Keywords: European Intellectual Property Law, Online Service Providers, IP owners, Users' Rights

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Geiger, Christophe and Frosio, Giancarlo and Izyumenko, Elena, Intermediary Liability and Fundamental Rights (July 15, 2019). in: Giancarlo Frosio (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intermediary Liability Online (OUP, 2020), p. 138, Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) Research Paper n°2019-06, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3411633 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3411633