# Definitions — DSA — context bundle

> Focused context for a single provision, curated from overview.legal on 2026-08-22. Canonical page: https://overview.legal/laws/dsa/art-3
> Every item cites its source. Verify against the official text (EUR-Lex / wetten.overheid.nl) before relying on it.

## Provision

### Definitions — Definitions

*DSA, dsa-art-3-en — https://overview.legal/laws/dsa/art-3*

For the purpose of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply:

a. ‘information society service’ means a ‘service’ as defined in Article 1(1), point (b), of Directive (EU) 2015/1535;

b. ‘recipient of the service’ means any natural or legal person who uses an intermediary service, in particular for the purposes of seeking information or making it accessible;

c. ‘consumer’ means any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his or her trade, business, craft, or profession;

d. ‘to offer services in the Union’ means enabling natural or legal persons in one or more Member States to use the services of a provider of intermediary services that has a substantial connection to the Union;

e. ‘substantial connection to the Union’ means a connection of a provider of intermediary services with the Union resulting either from its establishment in the Union or from specific factual criteria, such as: — a significant number of recipients of the service in one or more Member States in relation to its or their population; or — the targeting of activities towards one or more Member States;

f. ‘trader’ means any natural person, or any legal person irrespective of whether it is privately or publicly owned, who is acting, including through any person acting in his or her name or on his or her behalf, for purposes relating to his or her trade, business, craft or profession;

g. ‘intermediary service’ means one of the following information society services:
   i) a ‘mere conduit’ service, consisting of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network;
   ii) a ‘caching’ service, consisting of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, involving the automatic, intermediate and temporary storage of that information, performed for the sole purpose of making more efficient the information's onward transmission to other recipients upon their request;
   iii) a ‘hosting’ service, consisting of the storage of information provided by, and at the request of, a recipient of the service;

h. ‘illegal content’ means any information that, in itself or in relation to an activity, including the sale of products or the provision of services, is not in compliance with Union law or the law of any Member State which is in compliance with Union law, irrespective of the precise subject matter or nature of that law;

i. ‘online platform’ means a hosting service that, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates information to the public, unless that activity is a minor and purely ancillary feature of another service or a minor functionality of the principal service and, for objective and technical reasons, cannot be used without that other service, and the integration of the feature or functionality into the other service is not a means to circumvent the applicability of this Regulation;

j. ‘online search engine’ means an intermediary service that allows users to input queries in order to perform searches of, in principle, all websites, or all websites in a particular language, on the basis of a query on any subject in the form of a keyword, voice request, phrase or other input, and returns results in any format in which information related to the requested content can be found;

k. ‘dissemination to the public’ means making information available, at the request of the recipient of the service who provided the information, to a potentially unlimited number of third parties;

l. ‘distance contract’ means ‘distance contract’ as defined in Article 2, point (7), of Directive 2011/83/EU;

m. ‘online interface’ means any software, including a website or a part thereof, and applications, including mobile applications;

n. ‘Digital Services Coordinator of establishment’ means the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State where the main establishment of a provider of an intermediary service is located or its legal representative resides or is established;

o. ‘Digital Services Coordinator of destination’ means the Digital Services Coordinator of a Member State where the intermediary service is provided;

p. ‘active recipient of an online platform’ means a recipient of the service that has engaged with an online platform by either requesting the online platform to host information or being exposed to information hosted by the online platform and disseminated through its online interface;

q. ‘active recipient of an online search engine’ means a recipient of the service that has submitted a query to an online search engine and been exposed to information indexed and presented on its online interface;

r. ‘advertisement’ means information designed to promote the message of a legal or natural person, irrespective of whether to achieve commercial or non-commercial purposes, and presented by an online platform on its online interface against remuneration specifically for promoting that information;

s. ‘recommender system’ means a fully or partially automated system used by an online platform to suggest in its online interface specific information to recipients of the service or prioritise that information, including as a result of a search initiated by the recipient of the service or otherwise determining the relative order or prominence of information displayed;

t. ‘content moderation’ means the activities, whether automated or not, undertaken by providers of intermediary services, that are aimed, in particular, at detecting, identifying and addressing illegal content or information incompatible with their terms and conditions, provided by recipients of the service, including measures taken that affect the availability, visibility, and accessibility of that illegal content or that information, such as demotion, demonetisation, disabling of access to, or removal thereof, or that affect the ability of the recipients of the service to provide that information, such as the termination or suspension of a recipient’s account;

u. ‘terms and conditions’ means all clauses, irrespective of their name or form, which govern the contractual relationship between the provider of intermediary services and the recipients of the service;

v. ‘persons with disabilities’ means ‘persons with disabilities’ as referred to in Article 3, point (1), of Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council (38);

w. ‘commercial communication’ means ‘commercial communication’ as defined in Article 2, point (f), of Directive 2000/31/EC;

x. ‘turnover’ means the amount derived by an undertaking within the meaning of Article 5(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004 (39).

## Related recitals

### Recital 9 — full harmonisation of intermediary services rules

This Regulation fully harmonises the rules applicable to intermediary services in the internal market with the objective of ensuring a safe, predictable and trusted online environment, addressing the dissemination of illegal content online and the societal risks that the dissemination of disinformation or other content may generate, and within which fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected and innovation is facilitated. Accordingly, Member States should not adopt or maintain additional national requirements relating to the matters falling within the scope of this Regulation, unless explicitly provided for in this Regulation, since this would affect the direct and uniform application of the fully harmonised rules applicable to providers of intermediary services in accordance with the objectives of this Regulation. This should not preclude the possibility of applying other national legislation applicable to providers of intermediary services, in compliance with Union law, including Directive 2000/31/EC, in particular its Article 3, where the provisions of national law pursue other legitimate public interest objectives than those pursued by this Regulation.

### Recital 38 — cross-border orders against illegal content

Orders to act against illegal content and to provide information are subject to the rules safeguarding the competence of the Member State in which the service provider addressed is established and the rules laying down possible derogations from that competence in certain cases, set out in Article 3 of Directive 2000/31/EC, only if the conditions of that Article are met. Given that the orders in question relate to specific items of illegal content and information, respectively, where they are addressed to providers of intermediary services established in another Member State they do not in principle restrict those providers’ freedom to provide their services across borders. Therefore, the rules set out in Article 3 of Directive 2000/31/EC, including those regarding the need to justify measures derogating from the competence of the Member State in which the service provider is established on certain specified grounds and regarding the notification of such measures, do not apply in respect of those orders.

### Recital 74 — online platform interface design and trader compliance

Providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders should design and organise their online interface in a way that enables traders to comply with their obligations under relevant Union law, in particular the requirements set out in Articles 6 and 8 of Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 7 of Directive 2005/29/EC, Articles 5 and 6 of Directive 2000/31/EC and Article 3 of Directive 98/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (31). For that purpose, the providers of online platforms concerned should make best efforts to assess whether the traders using their services have uploaded complete information on their online interfaces, in line with relevant applicable Union law. The providers of online platforms should ensure that products or services are not offered as long as such information is not complete. This should not amount to an obligation for the providers of online platforms concerned to generally monitor the products or services offered by traders through their services nor a general fact-finding obligation, in particular to assess the accuracy of the information provided by traders. The online interfaces should be user-friendly and easily accessible for traders and consumers. Additionally and after allowing the offering of the product or service by the trader, the providers of online platforms concerned should make reasonable efforts to randomly check whether the products or services offered have been identified as being illegal in any official, freely accessible and machine-readable online databases or online interfaces available in a Member State or in the Union. The Commission should also encourage traceability of products through technology solutions such as digitally signed Quick Response codes (or ‘QR codes’) or non-fungible tokens. The Commission should promote the development of standards and, in the absence of them, of market led solutions which can be acceptable to the parties concerned.

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