United Kingdom (UK)

Posted February 18, 2025

UK Online Safety Act: New Obligations for Digital Service Providers Targeting the UK

by Mark Booth, Steven Farmer and Scott Morton

Mark Booth

Steven Farmer

Scott Morton

The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) is a comprehensive piece of legislation designed to regulate social media companies and search services and to increase protections for individuals online. It draws comparisons to the EU’s Digital Services Act, with both laws include provisions relating to safety and transparency—seeking to balance the need to protect people online with fundamental rights such as the right to freedom of expression and privacy. Importantly, it applies not just to digital service providers in the UK but to any service with links to the UK.

Posted June 26, 2024

The UK Introduces Tougher Penalties for Consumer Protection Breaches

by Scott Morton and Mark Booth

Scott Morton

Mark Booth

In May 2024 the UK passed the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC). Amongst other changes, the DMCC grants the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) new powers to directly impose fines of up to 10% of a business’s global turnover for consumer protection breaches and to issue notices requiring changes to online interfaces, significantly enhancing the CMA’s enforcement capabilities.

Posted June 5, 2024

New Report Latest to Cast Uncertainty over EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework

by Steven Farmer, Shruti Bhutani Arora, Jeewon K. Serrato, Mark Booth and Gabby Torres

A new report issued in May 2024 by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), an independent thinktank, is the latest development to cause concerns over the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF), predicting that it will likely fail if challenged before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).