Some notes and links on regulating the media and election interference …
This article is written in two parts, the first a series of links, and the second a series of comments on what seem to be the critical laws in the UK and the EU.
Links
What do the US do?
- Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act, its illegal to bribe (or gift) foreign public officials, which would include MPs
- Help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/ from the Federal Election Commission; it’s illegal for foreigners to donate or gift participants in US federal elections.
- The US have special visas for foreign national journalists, and require media oligarchs to be US citizens. The google snip from USCIS “As a representative of foreign media, you cannot travel to the U.S. and engage in your profession without an I nonimmigrant visa, even if you …”
UK Laws
- Online_Safety_Act_2023, from wikipedia and the text at legislation,gov.uk
- National_Security_Act_2023 from wikipedia and the text at
- Communications_Act_2003, from wikipedia under which the famous twitter threat was prosecuted, lots of commentaries if you search for “misuse of communications act”.
- PPERA, prohibits foreign money and limits expenditure
- Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 @legislation.gov.uk, the intorduction of the duty to notify and takedown.
- The Electronic Commerce Directive (00/31/EC) and … – GOV.UK, see also Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR): Regulates marketing, including requiring customer consent for electronic marketing communications and The ecommerce directive and the UK from HMG
- Regulation of Foreign Involvement in Elections: Great Britain from the Library of Congress
- On The Bribery Act 2010 by Pinsent Mason
- On press ownership, The_Elephant_Next_Door-A_Survey_of_International_Media_Ownership_Regulations, from the media reform organisation, (it has a .org TLD, and so may be a US site, Media Ownership Rules Review 2009 from Ofcom 2009, and UK prohibits foreign state ownership of UK newspapers from Linklaters, they say, “The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC) introduced amendments to the Enterprise Act 2002, which will now prevent foreign state powers from gaining control or influence over UK newspaper enterprises.”
The EU
- https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/e-commerce-directive date 7th June 2022, by the Commission
- https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/opaque-campaign-money-risk-to-eu-elections from Transparency International
- Articles tagged CoFoE on this wiki, CoFoE had a number of recommendations on a duty for truth
- Meta accused of breaking EU digital law by charging for ad-free social networks and they’re after twitter/x too.
- See also below.
WIPO
- Online Intermediaries and Copyright Liability Wealde & Edwards 2005, The report, presented to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, examines the role of online intermediaries, and liability for copyright infringement. The authors discuss the difficulties found in disclosure identity requests under various data protection regimes, and the liabilities for file-sharing.
A commentry on the laws
European Union
Digital Services Act
The EU’s Digital Services Act establishes, “Obligations for very large online platforms and search engines to prevent abuse of their systems by taking risk-based action, including oversight through independent audits of their risk management measures. Platforms must mitigate against risks such as disinformation or election manipulation, cyber violence against women, or harms to minors online. These measures must be carefully balanced against restrictions of freedom of expression, …”. The EU have declared twitter/x to be a VLOP and are pursing Twitter’s compliance with the DSA.
Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act
Digital Markets Act & Facebook
Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Meta is defined as a gateway provider and this places a number of transparency duties upon the company, not the least being advertising transparency to advertisers and interoperability requirements with value added suppliers. The Commission is in dispute with Facebook about their pay to be advert free, or is it pay not to be profiled for advert selection, although these would seem to be GDPR breaches.
The UK Law
The UK has a series of laws, PPERA 2000, Communications Act 2003, and the Online Safety Act. IPA III
PPERA
httpPolitical_Parties,_Elections_and_Referendums_Act_2000, at Wikipedia, I have extracted, the following from the article,
“The Act created an independent Electoral Commission to regulate political parties and their funding arrangements. It also required parties to submit statements of their accounts on a regular basis, and prohibited the receipt of funds from foreign or anonymous donors. Restrictions on campaign expenditure were also put in place, dictating the maximum amount that parties were able to spend”
The spending constraints were amended in the runup to the 2024 election, and reported by the Guardian, “Anger grows at tory move to weaken power of election watchdog”
Communication Act 2003
Again from the wikipedia page,
The act has a large number of provisions, including the following: Dishonestly obtaining access to the Internet with no intention to pay for the service was made a criminal offence. Sending a malicious communication using social media was made a criminal offence.
National Security Act 2023
Again from the wikipedia page,
An Act to make provision about threats to national security from espionage, sabotage and persons acting for foreign powers; about the extra-territorial application of Part 2 of the Serious Crime Act 2007; for the registration of certain arrangements with, and activities of, specified persons and foreign powers; about the award of damages in proceedings relating to national security and the payment of damages at risk of being used for the purposes of terrorism; about the availability of legal aid to persons connected with terrorism; to amend the Terrorism Act 2000; and for connected purposes.