FranceLCEN Article 6 V and VII (rewritten by the SREN Law), Hosting Providers' Duty to Inform Authorities of Reported Illegal Activity
In force since .
A notice and action rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Reporting, Governance
As of .
What it requires
- As a hosting service provider, help fight the dissemination of content constituting the offences listed in Article 6(V)(A), and promptly inform the competent authorities of every such illegal activity by a recipient of your service that is reported to you.
- Give the people who publish an online communication service on your hosting the technical means to meet the identification conditions of Article 1-1(I).
- Inform the competent authorities immediately in the cases where Article 18 of the Digital Services Act requires it.
- If you run an online platform whose activity in France exceeds the connection threshold set by decree, whether or not you are established in France, and you store content, keep temporarily, through proportionate human and technological procedures, the content reported to you as contrary to the provisions listed in Article 6(V)(A) that you have removed or made inaccessible, so as to make it available to the judicial authority for the investigation and prosecution of criminal offences.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Articles 6(V)(A) and 6(V)(C) punish a failure to inform the authorities with one year's imprisonment and a fine of EUR 250,000, raised under Article 6(V)(C) for a legal person committing the offence habitually to up to 6 % of worldwide turnover.
Penalty structure
Articles 6(V)(A) and 6(V)(C) each carry a fine of EUR 250,000. Only the offence in Article 6(V)(C), a failure to inform the authorities as Article 18 of the Digital Services Act requires, has a turnover leg: where a legal person commits it habitually the fine may be raised to 6 % of worldwide turnover before tax for the year preceding the sanction.
- Rule
- Higher of
- As of
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 250,000
- Turnover percentage cap
- 6
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The criminal courts, for the offences in Article 6(V); the text names no administrative enforcer of these duties.
What this law does
Article 6(V)(A) requires hosting service providers to help fight the dissemination of content constituting the offences it lists in the Code pénal and in the loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse. They must promptly inform the competent authorities of all such illegal activities that are reported to them and that recipients of their services carry out. A breach of that duty to inform is punished by one year's imprisonment and a fine of EUR 250,000.
Article 6(V)(B) requires providers of hosting services to give those who publish an online communication service the technical means to meet the identification conditions of Article 1-1(I). Article 6(V)(C) punishes a failure to inform the competent authorities immediately, as Article 18 of the Digital Services Act requires, with one year's imprisonment and a fine of EUR 250,000.
Where a legal person commits that offence habitually, the fine may be raised to 6 % of its worldwide turnover before tax for the year preceding the sanction.
Article 6(VII) requires an online platform whose activity in France exceeds a connection threshold set by decree, whether or not it is established in France, to use proportionate human and technological procedures so that, where it stores content, it keeps temporarily the content reported to it as contrary to the listed provisions that it has removed or made inaccessible, in order to make it available to the judicial authority for the investigation and prosecution of criminal offences.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app operates a social platform.