A Study On The Governance On Digital Services Of EU’s Digital Services Act

In today’s world,everyone lives in the world of digital services,and as trade in digital services gradually overtakes trade in digital goods as the focus of digital trade,the development of digital services trade is a powerful tool for countries to enhance their competitiveness in the emerging digital economy.At the same time,as digital services contain a large amount of information communication,its influence on public health and security and even politics should not be underestimated.The issue of how to regulate digital services in order to solve the problems specific to the process of digital service provision has also become a cutting-edge issue in the field of digital regulation.Throughout the world,the European Union(EU)has enacted a number of laws to regulate digital services,with the aim of protecting EU digital service recipients and taking into account data security.Among them,the Digital Services Act adopted by the EU on January 20,2022 is the first legal framework for digital services regulation in the EU.Large digital services platforms in the US occupy half of the global digital services market,but there is still no comprehensive legal framework specifically regulating digital services at the federal level.The Chinese digital services regulatory system has been in a state of patchwork,generally imbalanced and fragmented.This thesis takes the Digital Services Act of the European Union as the object of study.It firstly analyzes and discusses the legislative background,legislative purpose,position in the overall digital regulatory system,legislative structure,and key and innovative contents of the Digital Services Act.Finally,in the light of the regulation of digital services under the Digital Services Act,under the current development of Chinese digital market and the digital service regulation in China,this thesis analyses the potential problems at the present stage and provides solutions.The main contents of this thesis are as follows:The first part composes the legislative background,legislative purpose,position in the overall digital regulation system,legislative structure,and key and innovative contents of the Digital Services Act.The analysis focuses on the significance of the Digital Services Act in supporting the development of the EU digital economy and the interaction between the Digital Services Act and other EU laws related to digital services.The second part deals with the regulation of digital service providers in general under the Digital Services Act.The Digital Services Act provides for a number of official and unofficial participants as the digital services regulators,and through the arrangement of the responsibilities of each participant and the interaction between them,it builds a strict regulation system on the general digital service providers.The digital services regulators range from the European Commission to the digital service recipients.The top-to-bottom structure of regulators from the EU level,the member state level to the digital service provider level constitutes the regulatory framework for the general digital service providers.Although the Digital Services Act is designed to provide assistance or joint enforcement at the member state level,the issues involving cross-border regulation may still be affected by inconsistent or even conflicting laws of the member states.The third part discusses the regulatory path of the Digital Services Act for special digital service providers(Very Large Online Platforms).The Digital Services Act defines "Very Large Online Platforms" and creates additional obligations and penalties for them in a special chapter,which is considered to have a broad impact on large digital platforms such as Amazon,Facebook,Twitter,etc.in the United States.This part examines the regulatory path for Very Large Online Platforms in terms of the content,meaning,impact and potential problems of the additional obligations and special penalties imposed on Very Large Online Platforms.The additional obligations on Very Large Online Platforms include enhancements to the original obligations of general digital service providers and brand new obligations.The new obligations reflect the characteristics of the Digital Services Act’s regulation of Very Large Online Platforms,including the requirement for digital service providers to consciously and proactively perform self-censorship,or indirect regulation through the review of digital service providers by professional third parties.The fourth part discusses the regulatory safeguards for digital service providers under the Digital Services Act.The regulatory safeguards include "ex ante" regulation and "ex post" supervision.The "ex ante" regulation mainly requires digital service providers to actively monitor possible violations in the process of providing services,such as online trading platforms should ensure the traceability of merchants and goods.The Digital Services Act’s regulatory approach to monitoring the "ex post" obligations of service providers includes setting punitive sanctions and requiring service providers to take remedial measures to mitigate damages.The fifth part discusses the implications of Digital Services Act’s regulation on China.In light of the diversified regulators,the regulatory path of deep autonomy and the regulatory guarantee of combining "ex ante" and "ex post" obligations of the Digital Services Act,this part proposes suggestions for improving the digital services regulation in China under the background of the legislative practice of digital services in China.