SpainLey 13/2022 General de Comunicación Audiovisual (LGCA), Video-Sharing Platform Services (Articles 88, 89 and 93)
Ley 13/2022, de 7 de julio, arts. 88, 89 and 93
In force.
A notice and action rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Contract terms, Disclosure, Governance
As of .
What it requires
- If you run a video-sharing platform service as Article 2(13) defines it, take measures to protect the general public from audiovisual content that incites violence, hatred or discrimination, or that publicly provokes a crime such as terrorism, child pornography or incitement to hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence (Articles 88(b) and (c), 89(1)).
- Include the Article 88 obligations in your platform's terms of service and put them into practice (Article 89(1)(a)).
- Establish and operate transparent, easy-to-use mechanisms for users to notify you of content that breaches the Article 88 obligations (Article 89(1)(b)).
- Establish and operate systems through which you explain to users what became of their notifications (Article 89(1)(c)).
- Establish and apply easy-to-use systems for users to rate content that may breach the Article 88 obligations (Article 89(1)(d)).
- Establish and apply transparent, effective and easy-to-use procedures for handling and resolving users' complaints about how you apply these measures, and let a user whose complaint is not resolved satisfactorily take the dispute to an out-of-court consumer dispute resolution procedure under Ley 7/2017 (Article 89(1)(g) and (i)).
- Offer effective media-literacy measures and tools, and tell users that they exist (Article 89(1)(h)).
- Provide the information the CNMC requires and cooperate with it in its supervision and control (Article 93(5)).
If you get it wrong
Penalty structure
For a serious infraction under article 158(4), article 160(2)(a) sets fines for a video-sharing platform service of up to 30,000 euros where its revenue is below two million euros, up to 150,000 euros from two million to below ten million euros, up to 300,000 euros from ten million to below fifty million euros, and, from fifty million euros of revenue, up to 1.5 percent of the revenue earned from the service in the Spanish audiovisual market in the previous year with a maximum of 750,000 euros.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 750,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia supervises and controls compliance with Title V by video-sharing platform providers (Article 93(1)).
What this law does
Article 2(13) defines a video-sharing platform service as a service whose principal purpose, or that of a separable part, or whose essential functionality, is to provide the general public, over electronic communications networks, with programs, user-generated videos or both, over which the platform provider has no editorial responsibility, and whose organization the provider determines, among other means with automatic algorithms.
Article 89(1) requires providers of the service to take measures to protect minors and the general public from the audiovisual content that article 88 names. Article 88 names content that may harm the physical, mental or moral development of minors, and content that breaches article 4(2) or article 4(4) for the general public.
Article 4(2) bars audiovisual communication that incites violence, hatred or discrimination against a group or its members on grounds such as age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnic or social origin, language, religion, political opinion, nationality or birth.
Article 4(4) bars audiovisual communication that publicly provokes the commission of a crime, in particular a terrorism offence, child pornography or incitement to hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence on racist, xenophobic, sex, gender or disability grounds, as the Criminal Code provides. Article 89(1)(a) requires the provider to include the article 88 obligations in the terms of service of the platform and put them into practice.
Article 89(1)(b) to (d) require transparent, easy-to-use mechanisms for users to notify the provider of content that breaches the article 88 obligations, systems through which the provider explains to users what became of those notifications, and easy-to-use systems for users to rate content that may breach them.
Article 89(1)(g) to (i) require transparent, effective and easy-to-use procedures for handling users' complaints, effective media-literacy measures and tools, and access for users with an unresolved complaint to an out-of-court consumer dispute resolution procedure. Article 89(1)(e) and (f) add age-verification systems and parental-control systems for content that may harm minors, which are minors' online-safety measures and are not described here.
Article 89(3) leaves the liability regime of article 73 of Real Decreto-ley 24/2021 and of Ley 34/2002 unaffected. Final provision 9 brings articles 88 to 91 into force three months after the Act's own entry into force. The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) supervises compliance with the Title V duties of video-sharing platform providers. A failure to take the measures in article 89(1)(a) to (d) and (f) to (i) is a serious infraction under article 158(4).
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app operates a social platform.