The EU strategy on minors and the web
Interview in Repubblica with Fulvio Sarzana of the Sarzana e Associati law firm
"The adopted strategy builds on the European Strategy for a Better Internet for Children, adopted in 2012," explains digital lawyer Fulvio Sarzana. "This strategy has influenced national policies across the EU and has been recognized internationally. In March 2021, the Commission adopted an EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child for the first time, which called for an update of the 2012 Strategy for a Better Internet for Children.".
“"The goal is ambitious, but the conditional is a must," Sarzana states, "not only because, despite its declarations of principle, the Commission's 2012 strategy has not yielded the desired results, partly due to rapid technological obsolescence, but also because so-called ethically-motivated regulations often tend to overlap legitimate protection needs with restrictions that achieve the opposite result.".
From this perspective, Sarzana recalls, it is useful to remember that there is a strong difference between European and US legislation regarding freedom of expression and protection from inappropriate content, represented in the US by the famous Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“This rule, which Donald Trump attempted to change in 2020 with an executive order, protects free expression and the free flow of ideas even at the expense, it may seem paradoxical, of the protection of the individual, and this by virtue of a very broad concept of protecting the free choice of content.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a very famous case, struck down regulations that required internet filters in schools, on the grounds that the benefits of the free flow of ideas and the right to information outweighed the dangers of accessing inappropriate content online,” says Sarzana.
“The European provisions go in a different direction, being more focused as they are on the dangers linked to the availability of inappropriate content by minors, and we can already expect a battle on the provisions implementing the strategy by civil rights organisations”, he continues on Republic
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