On 26 October 2023, the UK’s Online Safety Bill received Royal Assent, becoming the Online Safety Act (“OSA”). The OSA imposes various obligations on tech companies to prevent the uploading of, and rapidly remove, illegal user content—such as terrorist content, revenge pornography, and child sexual exploitation material—from their services, and
Continue Reading UK Online Safety Bill Receives Royal AssentShona O'Donovan
Shóna O’Donovan is an associate in the technology regulatory group in the London office. She advises clients, particularly in the technology industry, on a range of data protection, e-privacy and online content issues under EU, Irish and UK law.
Shóna advises multinational companies on complying with EU and UK data protection and e-privacy rules. She regularly defends clients in regulatory investigations and inquiries, and provides strategic advice on incident response. She advises clients on existing and emerging online content laws, including those affecting intermediary services and audiovisual media services. In this context, she regularly advises clients on the intersection between online content and privacy rules.
Shóna also counsels clients on policy developments and legislative proposals in the technology sector, and the impacts of these developments for their business.
In her current role, Shóna gained experience on secondment to the data protection team of a global technology company. In a previous role, she spent seven months on secondment to the European data protection team of a global social media company.
Shóna’s recent pro bono work includes providing data protection advice to the International Aids Vaccine Initiative and a UK charity helping people with dementia, and working with an organization specializing in providing advice to states involved in conflict on documenting human rights abuses.
Online Safety Bill to Proceed Through Parliament
On May 10, 2022, Prince Charles announced in the Queen’s Speech that the UK Government’s proposed Online Safety Bill (the “OSB”) will proceed through Parliament. The OSB is currently at committee stage in the House of Commons. Since it was first announced in December 2020, the OSB has been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny on the balance it seeks to strike between online safety and protecting children on the one hand, and freedom of expression and privacy on the other.
To what services does the OSB apply?
The OSB applies to “user-to-user” (“U2U”) services—essentially, services through which users can share content online, such as social media and online messaging services—and “search” services. The OSB specifically excludes email services, SMS, “internal business services,” and services where the communications functionality is limited (e.g., to posting comments relating to content produced by the provider of the service). The OSB also excludes “one-to-one live aural communications”—suggesting that one-to-one over-the-top (“OTT”) calls are excluded, but that one-to-many OTT calls, or video calls, may fall within scope.Continue Reading Online Safety Bill to Proceed Through Parliament