Notice and takedown

Notice and takedown is the procedure by which someone informs a hosting service or platform that particular content is unlawful, asking for it to be removed or made inaccessible. It is the main practical remedy against defamation, infringement and unlawful publications online.

Legal basis

Since the Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the rules sit there rather than in the e-Commerce Directive. Article 6 contains the liability exemption for hosting services: they are not liable while they have no knowledge of the illegal content and, once they obtain that knowledge, act expeditiously. Article 16 requires hosting services to provide an accessible notice mechanism; a sufficiently substantiated notice confers knowledge. Article 17 requires a statement of reasons to the person whose content is removed, and Article 20 requires platforms to operate an internal complaint-handling system. The ordinary civil route remains open as well: a claim in tort against the poster or, in preliminary relief proceedings, against the intermediary.

How it works in practice

A notice is effective where it identifies the precise URL, explains why the content is unlawful and supports that with documents. For defamation the intermediary weighs freedom of expression; only where an expression is unmistakably unlawful may it remove without a court order. Where the intermediary refuses, preliminary relief proceedings are the next step, possibly combined with a claim for disclosure of the poster’s details.

Where it goes wrong

Notices are too general, without a URL or substantiation, and therefore confer no knowledge. A second error is approaching the wrong party: a domain name registrar is not a hosting service. Third, preserving evidence is forgotten; removed content is hard to reconstruct afterwards without timely screenshots.