infoJustice

[CIS Press Release, Link (CC-BY)] The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is excited to announce the official launch of the World Intermediary Liability Map (WILMap).

The WILMap is a detailed English-language resource comprised of case law, statutes, and proposed laws related to intermediary liability worldwide. The WILMap allows visitors to the CIS website to select information on countries of interest through a graphical user interface.

The map will enable the public to learn about intermediary liability regimes worldwide and evolving Internet regulation affecting freedom of expression and user rights. Legal liability regimes that put Internet platform companies at legal risk for users’ online activity can imperil free expression and innovation. By their nature, Internet services are inherently global, but Internet companies face a real challenge understanding how those global regimes might regulate the services they offer to the public. This uncertainty can hurt users by potentially scaring companies away from providing innovative new services in certain markets. Additionally, companies may unnecessarily limit what users can do online, or engage in censorship-by-proxy to avoid uncertain retribution under unfamiliar laws.

Today, the WILMap covers more than 50 jurisdictions in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe. The WILMap is an ongoing project. In collaboration with a network of experts worldwide, CIS will continue to update and expand the map, with the goal of covering all jurisdictions.

This project has been made possible by an awesome team of contributors, both individual researchers and institutions, providing the necessary information to set up the country pages. Having developed and coordinated this project as the Intermediary Liability Fellow at CIS, I want to personally thank all the contributors for the great work done. You may find their names and contact details at the bottom of each country page. Special thanks to Nicolo Zingales for helping to coordinate this project.

After the launch, CIS hopes many other collaborators will join this project to create additional country pages, to update those already published, and to make this online resource as comprehensive and complete as possible. We also welcome more informal feedback here.

To learn about intermediary liability rules worldwide, and for information about joining the project, or otherwise contributing to the map, please visit the WILMap page or contact us at gcfrosio at law.stanford.edu.