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Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

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Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#131

Post by mytailorisrich »

pjc50 wrote: post #101
mytailorisrich wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small forums should and can exist. They are not required to have 24 hour coverage.

You said above "If someone is not prepared to read submissions or to react quickly when one is flagged". Does the Act specify "quickly"? Does several hours count as "quickly"?

Reacting quickly means what's proportionate and reasonable. This is quite standard wording for a law.

The Act (section 10 about illegal content) says that "In determining what is proportionate for the purposes of this section, the following factors, in particular, are relevant—

(a) all the findings of the most recent illegal content risk assessment

(b) the size and capacity of the provider of a service."

"24 hour coverage" is the maximum that can be achieved so it's not going to be proportionate in many, if not most, cases. People have to ask themselves if it is proportionate for a one-man gardening forum to react within 5 minutes at 3am, and the answer is not going to be "yes".

Obviously you can also automatically hide a flagged submission until it is reviewed or have keywords-based checks, etc. I believe these are a common functionalities and they will likely develop more (and yes, a consequence might be to push more people towards big platforms).

People need to have a calm analysis, not hysteria or politically-induced obtuseness whatever one might think of this Act. If they are a small and not in the UK they can probably completely ignore in any case.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#132

Post by hnlmorg »

pjc50 wrote: post #101
mytailorisrich wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small forums should and can exist. They are not required to have 24 hour coverage.

You said above "If someone is not prepared to read submissions or to react quickly when one is flagged". Does the Act specify "quickly"? Does several hours count as "quickly"?

Not the OP but I don’t recall the actual law saying 24/7 moderation was required.

Given the UK already has a “watershed” time where terrestrial TV can broadcast mature content between set hours (from 9pm), I cannot see why the same expectation shouldn’t exist that moderation isn’t happening outside of reasonable hours.

Typically with laws in the UK (and EU too) is to use more generalised language to allow the law a little more flexibility to apply correctly for more nuanced circumstances. Such as what is practical for a small forum to achieve when its specialty isn’t anything to do with adult content.

You’ll definitely find examples where such laws are abused from time to time. But they’re uncommon enough that they make national news and create an uproar. Thus the case goes nowhere due to the political embarrassment that department draws to itself.

Though to be clear, I’m not defending this particular law. It’s stupid and shouldn’t exist.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#134

Post by Kim_Bruning »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #88
ChrisKnott wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homepage is manually edited isn't it?

There have been no edits for the last 6 days; then 18 days prior to that. I don't think so.

You're correct that the wikicode on the main page only gets touched rarely. It is mostly transcluding templates, which do get altered more regularly!

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#135

Post by ihsw »

AngryData wrote: post #126
nsksl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. If they want to have uneducated children, let them.

That is a terrible attitude about education. You are essentially condemning those kids and future generations to a shittier society and shittier lives.

[dead]

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#136

Post by varispeed »

supermatt wrote: post #99

Why can't these measures be handled via parental control? Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration. Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag. Parents should be responsible for p…

This is because these measures are not about protecting children.

It's a distraction.

Real objective is to further increase the barrier of entry for SMEs to compete (try start your own forum or any kind of challenger to Facebook et al). Government on the other hand gets a tidy surveillance tool as a sweetener.

So whenever time comes to turn a screw on dissent, the law is ready to be used.

Welcome to British corporate fascism.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#137

Post by IlikeKitties »

hermitcrab wrote: post #117
IlikeKitties wrote: post #2

All this is of course bullshit. The only response that would have a chance of succeeding would have been if most websites collectively just blocked everyone from the UK. Imagine if 60-70% of the internet just stopped working for UK People. The law would be toppled tomorrow. Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such.

>Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such. Companies can be fined £18 million pounds or 10% of revenue, whichever is greater. If you feel like being the first test case, be my guest.

All companies could easily just block UK Users instead.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#138

Post by phendrenad2 »

exasperaited wrote: post #93
master-lincoln wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you both have a point. Why not block foreign access to your internet service if the laws of that foreign country are nothing you want to be concerned with? It might be a bit disruptive in the beginning, but in the long run I think we all benefit from that. It increases the chance of politicians to realize their over-boarding decisions by having public pressure from previous users of those services and it incr…

The point I am making is that everyone in the USA is somehow absolutely certain that Britain is a hell-hole of authoritarianism because of this law, and yet 25 US states have enacted laws which are in some cases basically lunatic porn censorship (whereas our OSA is not) and HN just ignores it because the Brits, eh? The fabric of the USA is being ripped apart by a kleptocratic authoritarian fascist-at-least-wannabe go…

When all you have is a whataboutism, everything looks like a nail?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#139

Post by ipnon »

cormorant wrote: post #77

Can anyone explain how Wikipedia supposedly is in Category 1? [1] And if it marginally is, how come they cannot just turn off their "content recommender system"? Perhaps an example is the auto-generated "Related articles" that appear in the footer on mobile only? [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/regulation/3/ma...

Perhaps they genuinely believe the mission of collecting all the world’s knowledge is more important than complying with the draconian moral panic of a likely short lived government in an increasingly irrelevant former great power.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#140

Post by GeekyBear »

alsetmusic wrote: post #111
lysace wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even low-grade encryption was actually forbidden in France for a while in the mid 90s. I remember snickering about the whole thing back then, in a much smaller but also quite similar forum. https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_... > Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month…

Apple made an advertisement about the PowerMac G4 as a "supercomputer" because of onerous export controls related to encryption way back. It's more cheeky, I think, than serious. But then again, I haven't looked into it beyond just remembering that it happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw

When you go back a few decades, "supercomputer" level performance doesn't seem all that impressive now.

A Raspberry Pi outperforms a Cray-1 supercomputer, for instance.

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