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IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

prestonbyrne.com

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Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#191

Post by rgblambda »

dgroshev wrote: post #159
jalapenos wrote: post #143

Why is it that every mention of the UK government I hear in the news, I think "wow, those guys are absolute scum !". They should just hand it back to the king, the democracy experiment has failed there.

That's how filter bubbles and propaganda work. Take this case: the law was enacted two years ago by a different government, the regulator follows the law as enacted, and yet no one cares about this little nuance. In reality, it's a decent technocratic government trying to reverse a decade of mismanagement and fighting about five hundred fires at the same time. It's OK to good.

I agree with you on the decade of mismanagement and five hundred fires, but Labour (and the Lib Dems) supported this bill when it was being voted on.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#192

Post by gpm »

Hizonner wrote: post #169
gpm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. Governments can do whatever they damn well please in their own territory. Including arresting you if you ever visit because you violated some law that they wrote that applies to people in the rest of the world,…

The US will enforce most UK court judgements. I'm not sure how administrative fines work; there might be a need to involve a court first, but once that's done the US will [on edit- may] enforce them. The US will not enforce UK judgements or fines if enforcing them is contrary to the US' own laws, including its Constitution. SCOTUS ultimately decides when that's the case. So it's really, really relevant to whether a n…

Sure... I think it's pretty much a given that Ofcom expects the US won't help them enforce this law given the 1st amendment. That doesn't mean they won't/shouldn't do their best to do so by themselves..

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#193

Post by zb3 »

crazydoggers wrote: post #65
morkalork wrote: post #8

Interesting that it's the existence of the suicide discussion forum that's too much to bare for the UK. Really drives home the point that in the state's eyes: your self, your body and ultimately your life, don't belong to you.

Is it not possible that there is concern for individuals well beings in the midst of a mental health crisis? It’s one thing to be talking about suicide or assisted suicide because you’ve decided it’s right for you and your situation. It’s another to be dealing with depression from trauma, unable to get help and have no support system, and then be coerced by individuals on forums with ulterior motives. I’m not saying…

> It’s one thing to be talking about suicide or assisted suicide because you’ve decided it’s right for you and your situation.

And that's what the site is for. They could improve by blocking all countries where there's free access to assisted suicide though.

> It’s another to be dealing with depression from trauma, unable to get help and have no support system, and then be coerced by individuals on forums with ulterior motives.

You've answered your own question. "And then" - exactly, THEN, not before. If they could get help, they would. But they can't so they end up there. If your alternative is that they should just suffer for years instead then I strongly disagree with this stance.

I remember one guy on a Polish forum announcing his plans which were stopped because someone called the police.. I kept checking his profile since then and it's clear that he continued to suffer and does to this day.. whoever thought that they "saved" him instead subjected him to literally years of suffering.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#194

Post by mcmcmc »

flumpcakes wrote: post #30
beejiu wrote: post #9

I don't really understand the concern. The UK objects to suicide forums and American operators of suicide forums are protected by the First Amendment of extradition to the UK. So if you want to operate a suicide forum from America, just don't travel to the UK and you're okay.

> suicide forums are protected by the First Amendment Are they? Is all speech protected? If so, how do you prosecute people who leak secrets?

It depends, and no obviously not. Having a forum to discuss suicide/suicidal ideation is fine, outright telling someone to kill themselves is illegal. The Michelle Carter case is an example of this

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#195

Post by matt-p »

morkalork wrote: post #8

Interesting that it's the existence of the suicide discussion forum that's too much to bare for the UK. Really drives home the point that in the state's eyes: your self, your body and ultimately your life, don't belong to you.

The state shouldn't intervene in suicide is quite a take.

Maybe you consider it "Gubbbermenntt overreach" but I kind of consider suicide prevention as a reasonable function of state.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#197

Post by hunterpayne »

vessenes wrote: post #149
Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

Preston talks about this in an earlier blog post. It's a matter of UK law and, I'd bet, many countries, that they have the sovereign right to legislate about matters in and outside their borders. "If Parliament says smoking in Paris is illegal, it is illegal." What's different today than when that doctrine was conceived of is: data goes everywhere, communications are decentralized, international cooperation around es…

Ok, but I feel like the UK government hasn't thought this matter through. Think about what happens if the US decides it can enforce US law on UK soil against UK citizens. The main industry of the UK is questionable international finance using legal fictions on various islands. What happens when the US decides that that shouldn't be happening anymore? Its the same logic OfCom is using here. And unlike the UK government, the US could actually enforce this stuff in person. The US literally has military bases outside London with tanks and artillary and airstrips. This isn't a road to continue down.

PS The UK doesn't have free speech and never has. Free Speech was invented by the Dutch and the US was the first to put it in a founding document.

PPS I know of no government that thinks it can enforce their law outside of their borders against foreigners. That is outside the definition of sovereignty and something the UK government seems to have invented lately.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#198

Post by incompatible »

zdragnar wrote: post #50
mcny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I anal and also this is more of a question than a statement but a us person could travel to a country x and that x could send this us person to a UK prison? I don't know if doing so would be legal but when the rubber hits the road, each country x is technically sovereign and does not have to honor the first amendment of the US constitution. So even if it might be frowned upon to extradite foreign (US) n…

Extradition of a foreign citizen to a third country is not a simple matter, diplomatically speaking. The US might not have the hegemony it enjoyed 20-30 years ago, but it certainly has plenty of sway. When it's a matter of drug charges or other obviously criminal activity, the US embassy and diplomats don't normally raise a fuss, but for something like this where the person made first amendment protected speech in th…

I wouldn't be surprised to see the US administration being very selective about which "first amendment protected speech" they actually cared about. I can even imagine them rapidly extraditing somebody who's speech they didn't like, such as pro-abortion or anti-fascist.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#199

Post by gerdesj »

fukka42 wrote: post #185
vessenes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preston talks about this in an earlier blog post. It's a matter of UK law and, I'd bet, many countries, that they have the sovereign right to legislate about matters in and outside their borders. "If Parliament says smoking in Paris is illegal, it is illegal." What's different today than when that doctrine was conceived of is: data goes everywhere, communications are decentralized, international cooperation around es…

[flagged]

American companies were appropriating IP or trade secrets as they were called when Birmingham was known as Brummagen.

Nowadays we have China, int al, doing the same sort of job.

Nothing changes.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#200

Post by eertami »

iamnothere wrote: post #161
gtrevorjay wrote: post #148

[flagged]

Starmer’s government may have also forgotten that its nuclear deterrent is on lease from the US. Something about this feels off. It’s clearly not in the interest of the UK diplomatically given the current US admin. Are the people on the UK side of the cross-Atlantic CISA/State/Ofcom “counter-misinformation” op still blindly running their scripts as if the US elections never happened? It sure feels that way.

> Starmer’s government

It seems worth pointing out (for any readers unaware) that the Online Safety Act, introduced by Conservative MP Michelle Donelan, was passed in September 2023 during Rishi Sunak's Conservative government.

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