A model of ‘rough justice’ for internet intermediaries from the perspective of EU copyright law

Abstract

Internet intermediaries’ content moderation raises two major problems. The first relates to the accuracy of the moderation practices, which is an issue on whether the intermediaries over-enforce or under-enforce. The second problem concerns the inherent privatization of justice that results when enforcement of rights is left to a private party. The purpose of the article is to develop a model of ‘rough justice’ for internet intermediaries’ content moderation practices taking into account the obvious fact that such content moderation cannot comply with the degree of justice known from civil procedural law. There is no reason to believe that internet intermediaries strive to achieve the highest level of justice in their content moderation. As a consequence, the model of rough justice presupposes legislative intervention related to 3 different groups of provisions: 1) Procedural rules, 2) substantive rules, and 3) competences of persons involved in content moderation.