A Review of Intermediary Liability and Content Governance Obligations for Digital Platforms Under The DSA, DMCA, And CDA Regimes
Abstract
This paper examines the three principal legal frameworks governing platform liability for third- party content in the transatlantic digital economy: the European Union's Digital Services Act , the notice-and-takedown regime of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512, and the broad immunity conferred by Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act , and extends the comparison to the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act, India's intermediary guidelines, and Australia's social media minimum age regime. Drawing on enforcement developments through December 2025, including the European Commission's first DSA fine against X, preliminary findings against Meta and TikTok, the bipartisan Sunset Section 230 Act, the TAKE IT DOWN Act's notice-and-removal mandate, and the Third Circuit's algorithm-focused ruling in Anderson v. TikTok, the paper argues that these regimes rest on incompatible theories of platform responsibility. The DSA imposes affirmative, tiered due diligence duties structured around systemic risk; the DMCA conditions a copyright-specific safe harbor on procedural compliance with notice-and-takedown; and Section 230 provides close to unconditional immunity for most other content-related claims, an immunity now under sustained doctrinal and legislative pressure. The paper traces the doctrinal history of each regime, situates the analysis within the academic literature on collateral censorship and risk-based governance, surveys recent case law and enforcement actions across six jurisdictions, and considers the pressures, legislative, judicial, and market-driven, that may push these regimes toward convergence or deepen their divergence, concluding with practical implications for platforms operating across jurisdictions.
Keywords
intermediary liabilityplatform regulationDigital Services ActSection 230Communications Decency ActDMCA safe harborcontent moderationsystemic riskcomparative internet law
References
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