The European liability and responsibility of providers of online-platforms such as "Second Life"

Citation: Hoeren, T., 'The European liability and responsibility of providers of online-platforms such as ' Abstract Virtual platforms like Linden Lab's 'Second Life', which simulate real life, have become very popular recently. As the vast number of participants grows, the possibility of misuse grows as well. This article casts a light on possible provider liability, if crimes or misdemeanours are committed by users by using child pornography as an example. A liability may arise from three different possible violations of duties committed by the provider. First of all the provider must restrain from designing the platform, using pornographic content himself or enabling users to display pornographic content. Secondly he must technically assure that no minors may access the platform and finally he may be obliged to control the user-provided content. In order to point out, which duties the providers have to fulfil, it is necessary to define, what exactly 'Second Life' is. Therefore the article gives an overview of the liability of providers under the E-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC in the European Union. According to the author 'Second Life' is a completely new phenomenon. Because of the fact that most of the content is user-provided, Linden Lab is classified as a host provider. Therefore it does not have to control all the content by itself but is obliged to remove content on notification. In that case the duty to hinder the reappearance of similar content may follow. The implementations of relating duties in Germany, France and the UK is presented and critically valued. 1. The problem at hand Online platforms such as 'Second Life' are quite a new phenomenon in the virtual world. Although a first version was made publicly available in 2003 and competitors such as 'Active World' released their platforms as early as 1995, it was not until 2006, that 'Second Life' received widespread attention as an online platform. In March 2007 Second Life registered 5 million accounts. 5 million people potentially use 'Second Life' by now to chat with friends, participate in virtual adventures or do business. In April 2007 'Second Life' received its first negative publicity. Participants, so called 'Avatars', had used the online platform to offer pornography, including child pornography, and had engaged in virtual paedophile activities, so called 'age play' between an adult and an infantile 'Avatar'. Two types of 'cybercrimes' need to be distinguished with regard to this recent scenario. The first type involves …