Should Internet intermediaries do more to prevent illegal and harmful content than they do now? A negative answer to this question is sometimes underpinned by a slippery slope argument. This posits that an intermediary cannot begin doing more, for once he gives in to demands for new duties of care, the range of demands will quickly increase and it may be hard to identify a plausible cut-off point where the intermediary can begin to refuse accepting further duties of care. So, according to the argument, the intermediary is better off not accepting duties of care at all. But is this slippery slope argument valid in the context of liability of Internet intermediaries? Is it really applicable? Is there evidence that a slide would occur? This article examines one such duty of care, viz. a monitoring duty, asks how this duty of care could fit in the relevant European regulation of e-commerce and analyses whether a slippery slope argument for fending off monitoring duties has merit. In doing so, a framework for testing slippery slope arguments is distinguished and applied to the case of monitoring duties. Case law from a number of European countries is analysed to shed light on the likelihood that well-known slippery slope mechanisms can work in the context of Internet intermediary liability.
