Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

webdevlaw.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 480 posts

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#111

Post by Nasrudith »

di4na wrote: post #91
dane-pgp wrote: post #3

> What I’ve come to realise since then is it’s not a joke. That’s the intention. Make it too prohibitive, risky, or impossible for public discourse to flow on smaller platforms and services; require the larger ones to become speech police and societal monitors This is, I believe, also the intention behind the calls to repeal Section 230. It takes politics back to the simpler age where there were just a few entities d…

To be fair re Section 230, the interpretation the court have of it is... wildly on the side of the platform. In particular, it allows a company to wiggle out of its TOS if it seems the TOS could be construed at being more stringent than Section 230. There is definitely some change to do to section 230. I do not think it needs a repeal, but i do think it needs some rethinking and probably some more regulation on priva…

Bullcrap. There is nothing to wiggle out of because they don't have any actual obligation. Terms of service are a mutual courtesy and not a legal contract. They cannot have you arrested or fined for posting swears on their Christian Minecraft server but they can ban you.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#113

Post by ejb999 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #29

If this applies to every site that hosts user generated content then that's nuts. When the internet first started, part of the appeal is that you could just make stuff without people looking over your shoulder, asking for forms, etc. Seems that the internet we created today is technically the same as the one from before, but now with governments throwing up red tape at every corner. Makes me wonder what a site like H…

I'll admit, I haven't read the entire article - but the obvious question to me - using your example of HN - what authority does the UK have over a website hosted in another country at all? They can pass all the rules they want, but how do they propose to enforce them on a company that does not operate in the UK?

If that was possible, wouldn't CCP or Russia be ordering websites all over the world to shutdown to control information they don't like be visible?

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#114

Post by throwaway4aday »

cowtools wrote: post #69
commandlinefan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer This horribly written law can easily be interpreted to apply to ISP's as well - so if the ISP is allowing these peer-to-peer systems that allow "unsafe" content to be shared, they're liable for it too, or they have to shut down the peer-to-peer systems. Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand.

Sure, but there is some limitation to what they could feasibly restrict. Tor with WebRTC bridges?

You could conceivably implement a fully encrypted p2p social network over WebRTC within the browser. You would obtain the app by simply visiting a website that hosts it making it nearly unblockable since anyone could stand up a page. Public key crypto could allow you to verify your identity or send private messages across the network. The hardest part is establishing the initial connection but since this can be done with a variety of methods I'm sure a sufficiently creative person could come up with something fun and easy for people to use. Maybe some form of steganography where you post an image to your social feed and others can point their phone's camera at it and get the SDP offer and then post the answer as a reply or something. A more automated method would probably be better but that's left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#115

Post by olivermarks »

sbierwagen wrote: post #108
zarzavat wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand. Unless the UK significantly increases its military capacity and sets up world government, they will not be able to shut down the internet. The internet will still exist. The best they can hope for is a great firewall / North Korea type situation which would require a much more authoritarian (moreover fu…

1) The point isn't to regulate the internet, it's to regulate what UK citizens can see. 2) The great firewall was complicated by the design goal of accessing some, but not all, foreign websites. The UK could accomplish their goals in a day or two by just cutting all the underwater cables. That sounds like an impossible crazy thing, but so did Brexit a couple years ago.

'Cutting' is extreme but the spooky filtering that is almost certainly already in place certainly isn't, as Chinese citizens are all too aware

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#116

Post by ok123456 »

root_axis wrote: post #99
ok123456 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> You watched a few confused people mill around the rotunda and take selfies. This characterization is dishonest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iludfj6Pe7w Please don't bother with equivocations.

I clicked your video and it was run of the mill protest, crowd control, and milling around the rotunda taking selfies.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#117

Post by iasay »

jfk13 wrote: post #97
antonymy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My immediate thought as well. As this law will apply to ANY service available to UK users the only feasible solution for smaller websites and app developers will be exclusion to avoid liability. So UK users will simply start using VPNs to by pass region blocks.

Ah, the familiar HN bubble, where people instinctively think of "simply start using VPNs" as the solution. No; some tiny minority of UK users may do that, but the overwhelming majority will just use whatever services are "approved" (follow whatever rules they have to, to stay in the market) and remain available by default.

I don’t think that’s the case. I know someone who has no involvement in anything technical in his entire life and is using VPNs and torrents fine. He can surely work it out if demand requires it.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#118

Post by Nasrudith »

Zak wrote: post #10
dane-pgp wrote: post #3

> What I’ve come to realise since then is it’s not a joke. That’s the intention. Make it too prohibitive, risky, or impossible for public discourse to flow on smaller platforms and services; require the larger ones to become speech police and societal monitors This is, I believe, also the intention behind the calls to repeal Section 230. It takes politics back to the simpler age where there were just a few entities d…

> [Preventing public discourse] is, I believe, also the intention behind the calls to repeal Section 230 What do you think about calls to remove platform immunity from algorithms that have an editorial effect?

It is called the goddamned First Ammendment. What you are stating is legally speaking speaking complete nonsense like insisting that a coffee shop cannot be a resturant.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#119

Post by throwaway4aday »

guerrilla wrote: post #87
throwaway4aday wrote: post #53

Can someone explain why this won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer and e2e encrypted chat/forums/social media etc.? When government or industry makes it nearly impossible for consumer needs to be met we inevitably see a grey and black market spring up to meet those needs. My prediction is that if legislation like this becomes widespread we'll see a freely distributed application rise to prominence among a ga…

> Can someone explain why this won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer and e2e encrypted chat/forums/social media etc.? Simple, because if that because popular, new laws will be drafted to ban all of that from all app stores for circumventing this or some other reason.

There are other methods of distribution than app stores. People didn't buy their copy of Napster from GameStop back in the day, they downloaded it from a website.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#120

Post by chongli »

jfk13 wrote: post #97
antonymy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My immediate thought as well. As this law will apply to ANY service available to UK users the only feasible solution for smaller websites and app developers will be exclusion to avoid liability. So UK users will simply start using VPNs to by pass region blocks.

Ah, the familiar HN bubble, where people instinctively think of "simply start using VPNs" as the solution. No; some tiny minority of UK users may do that, but the overwhelming majority will just use whatever services are "approved" (follow whatever rules they have to, to stay in the market) and remain available by default.

Loads of people in China use VPNs every day to bypass the great firewall and access foreign sites. They even rotate among many different VPN services when the ones they’re using get blocked.

I see no reason UK users couldn’t do the same. All it takes to get grandma on a VPN is for an enterprising grandson to set her up.

Post reply on HN