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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

#141

Post by dan-robertson »

jajuuka wrote: post #119
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…

That's what blows my mind anytime I hear someone complain about all the vile content on the internet today and that we need to protect children. What about "be a parent" is so impossible to do today? Every device and OS has parental controls for a reason. Yeah they aren't perfect but they will prevent 99% of the content from getting to your kids.

It does feel like the online environment is pretty adversarial and hard for parents to deal with. In particular, it seems hard to pick and choose something reasonable. It doesn’t seem totally unreasonable to want some kind of state action to help represent the many parents and encourage creating better reasonable options.

Lots of things that feel relatively common online feel like they would be very alien and weird situations if they happened offline.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#142

Post by hungmung »

Quarrel wrote: post #72
dcow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those controls all still exist. You just get a pass if you’re using “standard crypto”. Or if your implementation is open source.

Export controls still exist, but we're at least a far cry from the days of "This version of Mozilla is illegal to download if you are outside the USA. Please don't do it." (and before that PGP!)

There are no real laws or court rulings protecting crypto, the Department of Commerce simply changed their rules to allow it, and I have no doubt they could easily change them back if the mood struck them.

Zimmerman had a novel defense (selling PGP source code as a book, which should be protected by 1A), but it was never actually tested in court.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#143

Post by Fredkin »

tomck wrote: post #45
miohtama wrote: post #33

In related news, the Labour party is already considering banning VPNs. We almost got like two days of Online Safety Act in effect. https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-ban-vpn-online-safety...

You're repeating propaganda from a far right newspaper headline, written misleadingly to make it sound like labour have said something recently about VPNs (they haven't)

I don't care where the headline is from. Other places have the same suspicion. There clearly is _some_ concern in Labour that VPNs could be used to bypass the OSA and it doesn't take much imagination to see where this is going.

'Kyle told The Telegraph last week in a warning: "If platforms or sites signpost towards workarounds like VPNs, then that itself is a crime and will be tackled by these codes."'

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/what-does-the-labou... :

"In 2022 when the Online Safety Act was being debated in Parliament, Labour explicitly brought up the subject of VPNs with MP Sarah Champion worried that children could use VPNs to access harmful content and bypass the measures of the Safety Act. "

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vpns-online-s...

Sure. Nothing was said directly right now, but to just take Labour's word for it that they won't go further with these restrictions is really naive.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#144

Post by lysace »

mrweasel wrote: post #125
lysace wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikimedia hosts what UK puritans consider pornographic content. A lot of it. Often in high quality and with a permissible license. I would link to relevant meta pages but I want to be able travel through LHR.

To be fair, Wikimedia/Wikipedia also hosts a full copy of "Debbie Does Dallas" does to a fluke of copyright. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Does_Dallas

I don’t think we disagree.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#145

Post by tracker1 »

AngryData wrote: post #128
tracker1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that matter, how many kids manage their parents' devices. Maybe less so today, but for a long time, a lot of children were far more tech savvy than their parents. The contrast between my grandmothers when they were still around was stark. One never fell for anything... the other, I was cleaning malware it felt like quarterly. My parents for a long time used their neighbor's wifi, despite having their own, because…

That may have been a half decent excuse for parents 2 decades ago, but it isn't very good now when current parents grew up in the computer age with computers at school and in the vast majority of homes and even 90 year olds are using smart phones daily.

Like I said, likely less so today. That said, there are still a LOT of people that can use their devices, but have no understanding of security, configuration, etc. My SO can't even handle a password manager, but she can manage live TikTok chats/streams (or whatever they're called) with ease.

That said, it could definitely be done relatively easily at the carrier level, and a really simple addition to browsers, even if only on mobile devices.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#146

Post by nsksl »

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.

Maybe so, but it’s better than the alternatives.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#147

Post by 1dom »

Towaway69 wrote: post #10
perihelions wrote: post #7

This is full of contradictions and both-sides-of-the-mouth speech. You can't coherently argue for an "open internet" "for everyone", and simultaneously plead exceptionalism for your own website, due its special virtues[0]. An "open internet" for websites with sterling reputations is a closed internet. It's an internet where censorship segregates the desirable from undesirable; where websites must plead their case to…

This is a fine sentiment, could you also please provide an alternative approach? The law has passed, Wikipedia has to enforce that law but don’t wish to because of privacy concerns. What should Wikimedia now do? Give up? Ignore the laws of the UK? Shutdown in the UK? What exactly are the options for wikimedia?

One of the complaints against OSA is how easy it's proven to circumvent, evidenced by the massive increase in VPN usage.

So it would be interesting to understand if shutting down in the UK would have an impact, now we all had to learn how to circumvent georestrictions this past week.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#148

Post by lysace »

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

The French encryption ban was a moronic aberration that just lasted a few years. Hopefully just like this UK regulation.

It wasn’t relevant to any Apple ads.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#149

Post by mbonnet »

chippiewill wrote: post #4

I'm skeptical this goes anywhere legally speaking. The categorisation regulations are a statutory instrument rather than primary legislation, so they _are_ open to judicial review. But the Wikimedia foundation haven't presented an argument as to why the regulations are unlawful, just an argument for why they disagree with them. It should be noted that even if they succeed (which seems a long shot), this wouldn't affe…

It won't go anywhere because in British jurisprudence, Parliament is supreme.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

#150

Post by pessimizer »

varispeed wrote: post #136
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…

Yes, it is a pretense and the point of mentioning "the children" is to mobilize the child-worshipping demographic who believe, in all cases, that anything that raises any risk to children should be banned, and that this should not be discussed by decent people. The successful child-worshippers also instantly burst into hysterics and aggressive personal attacks when spoken to about the subject (hysterics and tears when they agree, the latter otherwise.) Their success lies in never lowering themselves to discuss anything with anybody. They're here to tell you.

They are an extreme minority of every population (mostly people who aren't interested in politics or civil liberties who enjoy and care about children.) But sensible people are also an extreme minority of the population; we normal people usually aren't so sensible, instead we listen to sensible people and follow their advice.

So the people who want everybody on the internet to identify themselves pit hysterics against measured voices in the media, in order to create a fake controversy that only has to last until the law gets passed. Afterwards, the politicians and commentariat who were directly paid or found personal brand benefit in associating with the hysterics start leaving quotes like: "This isn't what we thought we passed" and "It might be useful to have a review to see if this has gone too far." Then we find out that half the politicians connected with the legislation have connections to an age verification firm which is also an data broker, and has half a billion in contracts with the MoD.

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