The EU designed the DSA to fundamentally improve your experiences on the Internet for the better. Whether you’re in the EU or beyond it, ‘the Brussels effect’ suggests that European laws help shape global norms, so it pays to learn more about the upcoming changes. Similar legislative shifts like GDPR massively impacted businesses and consumers alike, and well-prepared groups fared the best in the long run. That being said, let’s dive into the DSA, and discover how it helps us fight counterfeiting and tackle scammers online.

What is the DSA?

The DSA stands for the Digital Services Act, a set of rules designed to govern digital service providers. Legislators originally conceived the DSA to protect consumers from Big Data and Big Tech concerns around Very Large Online Providers (or VLOPs), with more than 45 million monthly active users. 

e term VLOPs covers a broad range of platforms, including marketplaces like Alibaba, Amazon, and Zalando, app stores like the Apple AppStore or Google Play, and social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and even Wikipedia. However, the DSA since evolved and expanded, with ripple effects for all manner of organizations and individuals.   

Simply put, the DSA requires service providers to give their users more powerful tools to flag, report, and take down illegal content. Twitter, for example, already added a button to report scams directly under the DSA. The regulations also compel providers themselves to prove that they monitor, analyze, and improve their own content. The EU reached a political agreement on the DSA back in April 2022, and it’s already beginning to affect VLOPs. However, the rules won’t apply to all regulated entities until the 17th of February 2024.

How DSA will change the Internet?

Legislators built this act to bring Europe up to date with an evolving digital landscape. Understanding each specific obligation that the regulations establish helps you predict the impending digital impact.

The DSA’s obligations for service providers include:

• More measures to counter illegal content, goods, and services, including support for ‘trusted flaggers’
• New infrastructure to trace sellers online
• Effective safeguards for users
• Transparency measures
• Protections for minors
• Crisis response mechanisms for health and security events like pandemics or wars
• A ban on targeted advertisements
• A ban on ‘dark patterns’ (misleading tricks that manipulate users)
• New data access for researchers
• New user rights
• A unique oversight structure
• New liability rules 

As you can see, there’s plenty to unpack. The EU designed these obligations to benefits end users, empower SMEs, and regulate large corporations. In particular, the new focus on illegal activity and tracing sellers unlock specific applications for fighting counterfeiters, safeguarding brands, and protecting consumers from fake goods. 

Will the DSA stop online brand abuse and the sale of counterfeits?

There’s no quick fix for counterfeits, but the DSA’s new rules take power away from scammers and place it in the hands of consumers and businesses online. The EU outlined specific rules in the DSA that benefit all parties in their anti-counterfeiting efforts. These include compelling service providers to add effective listing removal procedures, transparent trader tracing infrastructure, and random checks against scam databases.

Why are the DSA and DMA necessary?

Digital services impact and make our lives easier in many different ways. We use them to communicate with each other, shop, order food, find information, see films and listen to music through new, constantly evolving services . Digital services have also made it easier for companies to trade across borders and access new markets.  

While there are many benefits of the digital transformation, there are also problems. A core concern is the trade and exchange of illegal goods, services and content online. Online services are also being misused by manipulative algorithmic systems to amplify the spread of disinformation, and for other harmful purposes. These challenges and the way platforms address them have a significant impact on fundamental rights online.

Despite a range of targeted, sector-specific interventions at EU level, there were still significant gaps and legal burdens to address in the beginning of the 2020s. For example, some large platforms control important ecosystems in the digital economy. They have emerged as gatekeepers in digital markets, with the power to act as private rule-makers. These rules sometimes result in unfair conditions for businesses using these platforms and less choice for consumers.

Therefore, the European Union has adopted a modern legal framework that ensures the safety of users online, establishes governance with the protection of fundamental rights at its forefront, and maintains fair and open online platform environment.