Calls for murder, hate speech, extremist content, depictions of sexualized violence against children, offers of dangerous products on internet platforms show that the legal rules of a civilized society must also be enforced in the digital world.

But how should effective action be taken against illegal content on digital platforms?

Politicians have been grappling with this question for a long time.

With the Network Enforcement Act, the federal government presented a controversial partial answer in 2017 that, as has been shown, needs to be improved.

At this point, we do not want to deal with whether the balance between the protection of legal interests and freedom of expression has been struck correctly.

The set of rules is complex

Now the European Union has taken matters into its own hands and presented a complex set of rules that is to be finally adopted this year: the Digital Services Act (DSA), which in terms of regulation goes well beyond the Network Enforcement Act and the future basic rules for regulation of digital services.

Some even speak of a “Basic Law for the Internet”.

The DSA applies as a regulation directly in the member states of the European Union and also provides them with guidelines for the design of administrative organization and procedures for supervision.

In particular, Member States must appoint a Digital Services Coordinator (DSC)

Accordingly, a discussion has started in this country about which authority should be designated as the DSC, what competences they have and how it should be organised.

The solution to this task is particularly delicate in Germany, because the powers to regulate digital services are distributed among various authorities at federal and state level.

For example, the Federal Office of Justice has powers to implement the Network Enforcement Act;

the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information monitors compliance with data protection at federal government agencies and telecommunications companies;

the Federal Network Agency carries out consumer protection tasks in the digital sector;

and the state media authorities oversee private telemedia.

The variants discussed range from the naming of one of the actors mentioned to the creation of a new (federal) authority and its naming as DSC.

However, the ideas about the structure and competences appear rather vague.