Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia broad effort to avoid liability. They also involve the delegation of regulatory functions to private actors that lack basic tools of accountability. Demands for quick, automatic removals risk new forms of prior restraint that already threaten creative endeavours in the context of copyright. Complex questions of fact and law should generally be adjudicated by public institutions, not private actors whose current processes may be inconsistent with due process standards and whose motives are principally economic”.588 The UN Special Rapporteur thereafter provided recommendations to States to guide their efforts to protect the rights to free expression, opinion and information online within the contemporary context of a digital age.589 The following recommendations to governments in Southeast Asia are guided by the Special Rapporteur’s formulation: a) States should repeal any law, regulation or legal framework that criminalizes or unduly restricts expression, online or offline – or take necessary steps to amend or otherwise rectify such laws, regulations or legal frameworks to bring them in line with their international legal obligations; b) States should repeal any law, regulation or legal framework criminalizing defamation, in line with their international legal obligations; c) States should refrain from adopting legal frameworks or regulatory models, and amend existing frameworks or regulatory models, where State authorities or agencies, rather than judicial authorities, are arbiters of lawful expression; d) States should refrain from adopting legal frameworks or regulatory models, and amend existing frameworks or regulatory models, which delegate responsibility to companies as adjudicators of content, which empowers corporate judgment over human rights values to the detriment of users; e) States should only seek to restrict content online pursuant to an order by an independent and impartial judicial authority and in accordance with due process and the standards of legality, necessity and legitimacy. Existing legal frameworks or regulatory models governing content regulation online should be accordingly amended. 588 A/HRC/38/35, paras 13, 15. 589 A/HRC/38/35, para 64. 157