Summary of ICCE feedback on the European Commission’s Digital Services Act proposal

The Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East & Africa (ICCE) has submitted its comments on the European Commission’s proposal for a Digital Services Act (DSA). Please see here the complete ICCE position paper.

ICCE welcomes the proposal and commends the Commission for this effort to ensure that what is illegal offline is illegal online. ICCE reiterates its call for any future law to encourage Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to take more responsibility in policing their customers’ use of their services and remove listings of counterfeit and illicit goods more promptly.  

The Commission’s proposal is a positive step forward, but it would benefit from further clarifications. We call on the European Parliament, and the Member States, to improve various provisions of the proposal and particularly to: 

• Very clearly define the scope of the provision on ISPs voluntary own-initiative investigations and limit the protection offered by Article 6 specifically to 1) Voluntary measures undertaken by ISPs to carry out their annual risk assessment process and mitigation adopted; and, to 2) The development (software coding) of an algorithm intended to identify a specifically defined illegality;
• Clarify that “trusted corporates” could directly qualify as trusted flaggers. This would make the Trusted Flaggers regime more efficient for both rights holders and online intermediaries;
• Extend the KYBC obligations to include Domain Name System (DNS) services and website hosts;
• Include a “best effort” requirement for all hosting service providers to prevent the reappearance of listings of counterfeit and other illicit products (stay-down measures);
• Consider the specific circumstances in which consumers may benefit from a requirement for all consumer facing platforms to carry out a risk assessment and mitigation process as enshrined in Article 26 and 27;
• Oblige ISPs to notify consumers if they purchased counterfeit products through their platforms; and,
• Address the issue of profit generated by the ISPs from the criminal activities of the rogue traders. 

ICCE stands ready to engage constructively with the European Parliament and Member States and all relevant stakeholders to enhance the Commission’s ambition to improve the e-commerce landscape and better protect consumers.

About ICCE

ICCE is a non-profit making association with nine members and ten brands: Brother, Canon, Epson, HP Inc, Kyocera, Lexmark, OKI, Printronix, Ricoh and Xerox. ICCE was formed in 1997 as a direct response to the increase in counterfeit imaging consumables across the regions of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Imaging consumables include such products as toner and ink cartridges and ribbons. To find out more about ICCE got to www.icce.net/about-us  

More ICCE News

To see other ICCE News items and more information about ICCE DSA position papers, please go to our website: www.icce.net/news/