On 29 and 30 November, Masaryk University in Brno (Czechia) hosted this year's Cyberspace conference, where Gavin workshopped a paper-in-progress titled 'Ready! Fire! Aim? EU law's battle for relevance in the war against terrorist content online'.
The paper gives an up-to-date critical analysis of the implementation of the EU's Terrorist Content Online Regulation from the perspectives of effectiveness, transparency, fundamental rights impact - and, ultimately, that of relevance.
Why emphasise the relevance of EU law in the fight against terrorist content online?
For one, since the Union's flagship legislative measure exists in an increasingly crowded and complex space, blending self-regulatory, co-regulatory and proactive law enforcement initiatives against a background of vying national legal regimes tackling broader notions of harmful or illegal content - such as UK's new Online Safety Act, the German NetzDG or the French Loi Avia.
For two, although the Regulation's one-hour removal order is widely expected to lead to increased use of automation (and perhaps AI) in takedown efforts, a degree of automation is already used by a great number of online service providers to tackle the presence of terrorist content on their services - whether it has been officially imposed on them or not. Meanwhile, there are indications that terrorist actors may be starting to use AI - in particular generative AI - to scupper the hashing methods that underpin much automated takedown. Alongside the Terrorist Content Online Regulation, what roles might the DSA and the AI Act play here? Stay tuned for the full paper to find out!
Cyberspace 2024 saw hundreds of participants from across the world discuss cyber-topics related not only to law (cybersecurity, cyberwarfare, cybercrime, Digital Single Market, eJustice, Intellectual Property Online, Privacy, eHealth) but also to disciplines as diverse as new media and politics, internet and society, psychology of cyberspace, Large Language Models and quantum. Gavin represented eLaw on the international internet law panel. See the event website
