New from me: Federation Has a European Legal Problem
on what the recent Russmedia ruling means for open social protocols like #ActivityPub and #atproto
warning: do not read if you value your sanity
https://connectedplaces.online/federation-has-a-european-legal-problem/
@fediversereport the most important part of this (for me):
"Court rulings do not apply themselves. Regulators have to interpret them, national courts have to put them into specific cases, and new questions inevitably get referred back to the CJEU for clarification. Each of those points is somewhere the ruling can be made narrower than it currently reads."
Literal, broad interpretations of this Dec 2025 ruling are scary, no question.
I'll quote from Bird & Bird:
"
"As always, though, court decisions which address the liability of online intermediaries inevitably raise new questions as they try to answer others – and the Russmedia judgment is no exception.
First, the decision relies primarily on the interpretation of the GDPR, specifically controller obligations in relation to a specific combination of facts, i.e. user-generated content containing not only sensitive data but intentionally harmful content of a sexual nature.
cont'd
"The court's determination draws from a variety of factual elements such as (i) platform design choices, (ii) wording of applicable terms and conditions, (iii) exploitation of user-generated content. Arguably, those vary on a case-by-case basis and are thus liable to influence each economic operator’s own risk. "
Connected Places
jaz 
⁂
Francis Mangion (M)