Author: Ding Xiaodong, Deputy Dean and Professor, Law School of Renmin University of China.

Abstact: The EU Digital Services Act is regarded extraterritorially as representative of the "second-generation Internet rules," and offers important insights for governing online copyright infringement, cyberbullying, online rumors, and other harmful activities. The Digital Services Act primarily addresses the shortcomings of the safe harbor rules by imposing graduated content moderation obligations on different platforms, while also applying due process tailored to the heterogeneity of platforms. The insight of the Digital Services Act lies in its recognition of the public-power characteristics of platforms, yet its regulatory approach also contains irrationalities. The platform liability regimes in the European Union and the United States reflect their respective unique political and legal contexts. In comparison, while China's platform liability regime is generally reasonable, it is necessary to guard against over-regulation. On platform liability, it is necessary to reconstruct the safe harbor rules, moderation obligations, and due process rules according to different platform types.For third-party infringements in specific cases in which platforms participate, the rules on Joint Infringement shall be applicable. For massive-scale third-party infringement and illegal content, a platform's liability should be determined based on factors such as the necessity of platform governance, the difficulty of governance, the cost of governance, its comparative advantage in governance, and its good faith in undertaking such governance. The law should refrain from simply treating platforms as public authorities by applying due process to them. However, the law can position platform due process as a signaling mechanism and a governance tool in regulating platforms.

Keywords: safe harbor rules; third-party infringement; content moderation; fundamental rights of users; platform due process.