Online Safety Act 2023 (c. 50) – Section 5 – Disapplication of Act to certain parts of services

Sections

Section 5Disapplication of Act to certain parts of services

(1) This Act does not apply in relation to a part of a Part 3 service if the conditions in paragraph 7(2) of Schedule 1 (internal business service conditions) are met in relation to that part.

(2) This Act does not apply in relation to a part of a regulated search service if—

(a)
the only user-generated content enabled by that part of the service is content of any of the following kinds—
- (i)
  content mentioned in paragraph 1, 2 or 3 of Schedule 1 (emails, SMS and MMS messages, one-to-one live aural communications) and related identifying content;
- (ii)
  content arising in connection with any of the activities described in paragraph 4(1) of Schedule 1 (comments etc on provider content); and
(b)
no regulated provider pornographic content is published or displayed on that part of the service.

(3) In this section—

“regulated provider pornographic content” and “published or displayed” have the same meaning as in Part 5 (see section 79);
“user-generated content” has the meaning given by section 55 (see subsections (3) and (4) of that section).

Annotations

Commencement Information

I1 S. 5 in force at Royal Assent, see s. 240(4)(a)

https://osa.digiphile.law/article/article-5.html

Text as at 19 September 2026.

This is an unofficial convenience version of the Online Safety Act 2023. It is presented “as is” without guarantee of accuracy, completeness or reliability. See the source text for the official version. This site was last updated in September 2026.