Illicit use of digital services to circumvent protection measures and legal and administrative protection for intellectual property rights

Question for written answer E-003459/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Leire Pajín (S&D)

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on digital services obliges providers of intermediary digital services to collaborate in the detection and removal of illegal content.

The lawful use of services offered by some providers can make for more agile, private and secure transmission of content (i.e. domain name systems (DNSs), content distribution networks (CDNs), virtual private networks (VPNs) or reverse proxy services). Nonetheless, illicit use of such services to facilitate or enable access to illegal content has been detected, which circumvents legal or administrative measures used to block infringing services, particularly with regard to content protected by intellectual property rights.

Can the Commission say:

• 1.To what extent the various intermediary services comply with their obligation to act on illegal content - an obligation that is specifically imposed in judicial and administrative decisions?
• 2.Is the Commission examining the extent of hosting services' compliance with administrative or judicial authorities' requests to put a stop to or prevent infringement, their obligation to remove illegal content or their obligation to disable access when they actually have knowledge of such illegal content?

Submitted: 5.9.2025