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Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

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Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#21

Post by ChrisKnott »

b800h wrote: post #10
ChrisKnott wrote: post #9

My understanding is that the OSB creates a responsibility for Ofcom to create a regulatory system for discouraging online harms. Has Ofcom actually said what these regulations will be? Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you predict? The interim codes of practice that the government published don't even apply at all to individuals. They also acknowledge that smaller companies should not be expect…

The bill itself doesn't appear to exempt anyone. From Taylor Wessing: "[following amendments] The OSB continues to apply to any service that enables content generated, uploaded or shared by one user to be encountered by another user (user-to-user services) or that allows users to search more than one website or database (search services)."

It actual exempts several categories (email servers etc).

My point is that there is no reason to think the regulations that eventually come into force for services which aren't exempted will be as ridiculous as you suggest.

I agree that the OSB gives Ofcom the power to regulate Minecraft servers, but those regulations must be reasonable and proportionate so I don't believe that it will affect a private individual running a private server, as you appeared to suggest.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#22

Post by b800h »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #21
b800h wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bill itself doesn't appear to exempt anyone. From Taylor Wessing: "[following amendments] The OSB continues to apply to any service that enables content generated, uploaded or shared by one user to be encountered by another user (user-to-user services) or that allows users to search more than one website or database (search services)."

It actual exempts several categories (email servers etc). My point is that there is no reason to think the regulations that eventually come into force for services which aren't exempted will be as ridiculous as you suggest. I agree that the OSB gives Ofcom the power to regulate Minecraft servers, but those regulations must be reasonable and proportionate so I don't believe that it will affect a private individual run…

Yeah agree about point to point services. Email and SMS and voice.

What I don't see is the bit where it says that the audit responsibilities are limited to certain people or companies.

If you could point to the "reasonable and proportionate" bit in the legislation that would be interesting to check out.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#24

Post by ChrisKnott »

b800h wrote: post #20
ChrisKnott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of analogy, the government might make a law that allows, in secondary legislation, the setting of a driving speed limit. These activists are claiming that the government is secretly intending the speed limit to be 1mph. The government are trying to ban driving!! The activists are demanding the enabling legislation be amended so that the speed limit, when set, must be no lower than Xmph. But all this does is fo…

That's not my understanding of the legislation. I see no exemptions from the child access provisions. The criterion is "any site with a significant number of child users" or where additionally OFCOM decides to intervene, and where significant is not defined. And of course you seem to have to perform an audit to determine how many child users you have in order to be exempted. Again, this is my reading of the very comp…

But all the provisions service providers are expected to implement have a "reasonable" or "proportionate" qualifier, no?

And the actual, practical meaning of these responsibilities will be defined in a yet-to-be-published Code of Practice...?

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#25

Post by CamperBob2 »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #19
rovr138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely overblown. The questions in my opinion then become, Is it the law preventing these? Is it some people not yet seeing why they should do it? Are they purposefully not doing it initially to calm people? If they don’t want to be able to do it, it could be rephrased.

By way of analogy, the government might make a law that allows, in secondary legislation, the setting of a driving speed limit. These activists are claiming that the government is secretly intending the speed limit to be 1mph. The government are trying to ban driving!! The activists are demanding the enabling legislation be amended so that the speed limit, when set, must be no lower than Xmph. But all this does is fo…

Like unreasonably low speed limits, the purpose of legislation like this isn't to be enforceable against everyone. It's to be enforceable against anyone.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#26

Post by LeoPanthera »

b800h wrote: post #5

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on.

On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#27

Post by LocalH »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #19
rovr138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely overblown. The questions in my opinion then become, Is it the law preventing these? Is it some people not yet seeing why they should do it? Are they purposefully not doing it initially to calm people? If they don’t want to be able to do it, it could be rephrased.

By way of analogy, the government might make a law that allows, in secondary legislation, the setting of a driving speed limit. These activists are claiming that the government is secretly intending the speed limit to be 1mph. The government are trying to ban driving!! The activists are demanding the enabling legislation be amended so that the speed limit, when set, must be no lower than Xmph. But all this does is fo…

I'd like to offer a different analogy.

Encryption in communication is, to me, akin to the locks on the doors of your residence, on safes or other secure containers. It protects your privacy from prying eyes who want to snoop on what others are doing.

The activists are claiming that the government wishes to require that all locks be unlockable by one of a range of secret "master" keys, so that they can ensure you're not privately doing anything illegal. Not only that, but the government also wishes to institute a compliance regimen to ensure that all locks are indeed actually openable by these master keys.

Given the historic behavior of all governments, I don't trust them not to claim the most powerful interpretation of the laws and regulations that are instituted. Maybe not at first, but it will happen, because it has always happened this way.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#28

Post by endigma »

Source code hosting; Gitea or Gitlab or Gogs etc all have UGC. The interesting part to me is I'm not sure how this helps the UK citizens who are using the internet be any safer, all you'd have to do is access the rest of the internet to circumvent this.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#29

Post by ozfive »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #26
b800h wrote: post #5

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

This guy has a tutorial on running modems over VoIP.

https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-work...

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