The law requiring platforms to withdraw “terrorist” publications within an hour validated by the Constitutional Council – Le Monde

The Constitutional Council gave the green light on Saturday, August 13, to the proposed law La République en Marche (LRM) which requires all hosting service providers to remove “terrorist content” within the hour. line. The rue de Montpensier had been seized by deputies from La France insoumise (LFI) on this text, adopted at the end of July, which adapts a European regulation and partly takes up one of the flagship provisions of the Avia law. The latter had been widely challenged by the Constitutional Council in July 2020. Read also Article reserved for our subscribers Five years after the attacks of November 13, the fight against terrorism facing the digital challenge Under the law validated on Saturday, the refusal to complying with the removal of terrorist content is punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 euros. The financial penalty can, in extreme cases, be up to 4% of the digital platform’s turnover. The law validated on Saturday by the Constitutional Council also establishes the possibility for national authorities to issue cross-border withdrawal orders. In their appeal, the LFI deputies considered that the text carried “a manifest attack on the freedom of expression and communication guaranteed by article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789”. In its decision, the Constitutional Council considers that “the disputed provisions do not violate freedom of expression and communication” and “consequently judges them to be constitutional”. Sufficient safeguards for the Constitutional Council He stresses in particular that terrorist content “constitutes abuses of the freedom of expression and communication which seriously undermine public order and the rights of third parties”. The withdrawal injunction must also “include not only the reference to the type of content concerned, but also a sufficiently detailed motivation”, underlines the Council in its decision. Read also Article reserved for our subscribers European Union: “Tackling the dissemination of terrorist content online is an absolute priority” The Central Office for the Fight against Crime linked to Information and Communication Technologies ( OCLCTIC), a service of the judicial police, has been appointed to issue the withdrawal orders. A qualified personality from Arcom (Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority) can recommend the cancellation of a withdrawal injunction if he considers it unfounded, or even urgently take administrative action. Thus, “the determination of the terrorist nature of the content in question is not left to the sole discretion of the administrative authority”, notes the Council. Finally, the possibility for web hosts and publishers, who contest a withdrawal injunction, to obtain a decision from the administrative justice within 72 hours and within a month in the event of an appeal, constitutes, in the eyes of the Wise Men, ” promptly “. The World with AFP