down model featured in the EU Directive on Copyright of 2019 compels intermediaries to prevent any future transmission of the infringing content. Notice and stay-down requirements seek to ensure that infringing content will not be posted again.

Seeking to protect online freedom of expression, an international coalition released the Manila Principles for Intermediary Liability (Box 3). The Principles provide governments with standards for censorship and takedown laws which respect the users’ rights while promoting innovation.

# **Box 3. Intermediary liability** **<u>guidelines</u>**

The Manila Principles for Intermediary Liability were developed to protect online freedom of expression and to provide governments with standards for censorship and takedown laws that respect the users’ rights. The effort involved civil society groups from around the world, led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, USA), the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS, India), Article 19 (UK), KICTANET (Kenya), Derechos Digitales (Chile), Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC, Argentina) and Open Net (Republic of Korea).

The proposed principles are: _1. Intermediaries should not be liable for third party content: intermediaries should be exempt from liability for third party content where they did not modify the content; they must not be required to routinely monitor content on their network or platform;_ _2. An order by a judicial authority must be required for content restriction: an order from an independent and impartial judicial authority must be required for content restriction;_ _3. Requests for restrictions of content must be clear, be unambiguous, and follow due process: where an intermediary receives a restriction request before a court order is issued, they need not evaluate the legality of the content; the request must include its legal basis; sanctions should be imposed for bad faith restriction requests;_ _4. Laws and content restrictions orders and practices must comply with necessity and proportionality tests: restrictions should be specific to the content at issue, if applicable, limited in geographical scope; and not extend beyond its duration;_ _5. Laws and content restriction policies and practices must respect due process: parties must be provided the right to be heard and to appeal against restriction orders;_ 6. _Transparency and accountability must be built into laws and content restriction policies and practices: applicable rules and transparency reports must be published online in a timely manner._

- Source: (EFF 2015)

At the international level, some principles on intermediary liability were included in recent trade agreements. The recent Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the United States, Mexico, and Canada Agreement (USMCA) set limits to intermediary liability in their intellectual property and digital trade chapters, respectively. Intermediaries are not liable for copyright infringements “that they do not control, initiate, direct, and that take place through systems or networks controlled or operated by them or on their behalf”. However, they must remove or disable access to copyright infringing content on their networks upon obtaining knowledge of its existence.

Intermediary liability rules relating to criminal or civil infringement laws are being modernized for the digital environment. The proliferation of fake news in recent years has led countries to seek to reduce the amount of misinformation that citizens can find online. However, this raises concerns about content filtering, freedom of speech, and media manipulation. Singapore, who has been often criticized for its heavy control of the media (Leung 2019), recently introduced the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation to hold social media sites liable for thirdparty content published on their platforms. Noncompliant platforms are subject to fines and imprisonment if they do not remove the “misinformation” or publish “corrections” next to it. Industry groups fear that this new type of law allows governments to decide what is true or false, 28