8 for the mere fact that its intermediation enabled the users' illegal and harmful activities. While the platform operators usually seek the role of mere intermediaries without considerable liability for the proper performance of the main contracts, there is increasing support for a tightened responsibility of the platform operators. According to contract law, as an intermediary, the platform has no contractual obligations regarding the contract between the two users.22 The development of business models of some digital intermediary platforms brought about the question to what extent these platforms can be considered only as information society service providers and to what extent their involvement in the "realization" of the service mediated by the platform puts them at the level of the provider of this service. Services provided by online platforms represent information society service. The notion of 'information society services' spans a wide range of online economic activities including selling goods online, offering online information or commercial communications, providing online search tools allowing for search, provision of electronic network and services etc. The question is whether online platforms as providers of information services can benefit from exemptions from liability under Art. 12- 14, particularly 14 of the E- commerce Directive.23 The E- commerce Directive introduced a 'safe harbour' principle, under which online intermediaries who host or transmit content provided by a third party are exempt from liability unless they are aware of the illegality and are not acting adequately to stop it. The E-commerce Directive takes a horizontal approach to the liability of 'information society service providers'. That means that, when the conditions are fulfilled, the EU legislation exempts the online intermediaries from a wide array of liabilities including contractual liability, administrative liability, tortious (delictual) or extra-contractual liability, penal liability, civil liability or any other type of liability, for all types of activities initiated by third parties, including copyright and trademark infringements, defamation, misleading advertising, unfair commercial practices, unfair competition, publications of illegal content, etc.24 22 Sorensen, 2018, p. 84. 23 Mere conduit service providers (Art. 12) are exempt from liability when the service provider is only passively involved in the transmission of data (i.e. interconnection to the internet provided by traditional internet service providers and network operators), and, Caching providers (Art. 13) are exempt from liability when they temporarily and automatically store data in order to make transmission more efficient (e.g. proxy server) and if several technical conditions for storing the information are met (e.g. local copy identical to original), and, Hosting providers (Art. 14) are exempt from liability when those companies storing data for their users (e.g. webhosting) do not know that they host illegal activity or information and act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the illegal information. 24 Madiega and Members' Research Service, 2020, p.4.
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