Platform research access in Article 31 of the Digital Services Act – Sword without a shield?

In September 2021, the Verfassungsblog and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition co-hosted an online symposium, “To Break Up or Regulate Big Tech? Avenues to Constrain Private Power in the DSA/DMA Package”.

“The concentration of private power in the digital realm is not tenable – on this there is consensus. It extends across domains of private power, ranging from power over markets and consumers’ behaviour, power over private rule-making to power of and over opinion. The European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act set out to bridle these dimensions of power, but are they up to the task? In this Online-Symposium, co-hosted with the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, authors from various legal disciplines enquire into this pressing regulatory concern”.

 

IViR researcher Paddy Leerssen contributed to the symposium with an article on Article 31 of the proposed Digital Services Act (DSA), on “Data Access and Scrutiny”. A highly ambitious and innovative provision, Article 31 DSA creates a procedure for the European Commission and national authorities (‘Digital Service Coordinators’) to compel confidential research access to platform data.

Read the full article here.