A/HRC/44/49/Add.2 leave artists without “counter-notice” procedures allowing challenges to removals of their art.102 The lack of procedural safeguards and access to remedies for users leaves artists without access to a platform to display their art, and without viewership to enjoy their art. 47. In some cases, States work with companies to control what kinds of content is available online. This dangerous collaboration has the effect of silencing artists and preventing individuals, particularly female artists and artists producing women-themed art, from receiving art as expression. Freemuse, found that in more than 50 percent of cases “women’s creativity was restricted at the behest of governments and their various agencies.”103 IV. Conclusion 48. This research report has aimed to provide artists, audiences and their advocates with the vocabulary in human rights law to challenge undue restrictions – and to remind Governments and private actors of the contours of their obligations and responsibilities under that law. To be sure, it has not answered, or even sought to answer, in a granular way what some may perceive to be difficult questions of law or policy. The gravest threats to artistic freedom of expression are not, in any event, hard questions. They typically involve the exercise of State power to repress unconventional, if not unpopular or critical, expression presented in the form of art. 49. Moving forward, States should undertake a number of steps to align their laws and policies with their human rights obligations. These steps include: (a) or offline. (b) Repealing any law that criminalizes or unduly restricts expression, online Abolishing prior-censorship bodies or systems where they exist. (c) Refraining from restricting expression in the form of art, and only imposing narrow limitations pursuant to standards of legality, necessity and legitimacy and according to an order by an independent and impartial judicial authority, in accordance with due process and appellate review. (d) Refraining from imposing disproportionate sanctions, whether fines or imprisonment, on Internet intermediaries, given their significant chilling effect on freedom of expression. (e) Recalling and accounting for the nature of the right to artistic freedom of expression and the extraordinary role that art performs in society. (f) Refraining from establishing laws or arrangements that would require the monitoring or filtering of content, which is both inconsistent with the right to privacy and likely to amount to pre-publication censorship. 50. Private companies should also adopt the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as a mechanism to guide their decisions related to expression in the form of art. Such a commitment would involve a range of public actions and private ordering, and they should always be directed toward protecting and promoting not only the rights of “users” but also the rights of members of the public. 51. Finally, civil society – individuals and organizations – may wish to consider bringing claims of violation to the freedom of expression “including in the form of art” to international, regional and national human rights mechanisms. The framework for protection is clear; it is imperative to make that framework work for artists and audiences worldwide. 102 103 16 Report on content moderation, ¶36. Freemuse, The state of Artistic Freedom 2019, p. 59. Available at https://freemuse.org/resources/item/the-state-of-artistic-freedom-2019/.