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Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

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

#251

Post by yrgulation »

swores wrote: post #203
yrgulation wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing this using a british designed arm cpu powered phone using the protocol made by a british guy on a forum cofounded by a british american venture capitalist. But the UK is “small” in the “computer world”. Perhaps we should ban german IP instead so we can read less about german nationalist pride and instead focus more on what makes countries competitive and what not in modern tech.

I think (as a Brit myself) you're being overly defensive and inferring insult where there was none. Suggesting that the market size of the UK might not be big enough to make up for the costs of complying with a law like this is not at all the same as saying that people from the UK are not capable of making using industry contributions.

You are right i am overly defensive.

The term small used by op can also be read as a pejorative term meant to describe uk’s would be weakness post brexit - often used by a small but vocal number of eu citizens that like myself (a uk person as well) have been against brexit. And i’ve it read as such.

The uk market may be small in size in comparison with the whole of the eu, but the uk is by no means a small player in the “computer world”, whatever that means.

Indeed due to its size it may not hold much legal clout over the eu, and the eu being protectionist as it is it might even seek to punish british isps or web companies by the excuse of having different laws. Thats not in anyone’s interest and it reflects poorly on the eu and on those people here proposing a ban on uk ips because of some silly laws. I despise the mindset of those who only seek “sanctions” and “punishment” instead of actual solutions and are constantly spewing nationalist nonsense as if, say, germany isnt full of crap and a root cause of quite some major issues on the continent right now.

So yeah I am pretty much bored by all this nonsense. How can we fix the issues that such legislation is causing? Before the righteous ban our ips - not that we’d lose much.

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

#253

Post by M2Ys4U »

kmeisthax wrote: post #73
sterlind wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this UK bill passes, I'd simply return HTTP 451 with a note that although the UK is blocked from my site, VPNs are not.

Promoting VPN usage could be construed by the UK courts as an attempt to commit subterfuge or dodge jurisdiction. They will not take kindly to this. You really want to make it perfectly clear that you want nothing to do with Britain as long as they have crazy laws on the books. Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizensh…

>Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory.

Argh, why won't this misinformation die? You are completely, utterly, 100% wrong.

The GDPR applies if either the data controller is established in the EU or the data subject is physically in the EU.

Article 3 (territorial scope) is incredibly short, read it: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...

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

#255

Post by mminer237 »

solarkraft wrote: post #231
stickfigure wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely it will result in crippling the domestic UK tech industry while everyone else in the world ignores it. I really don't see most countries extraditing someone for the high crime of "let british users access a website without verifying their age".

This has been said about the EU, but the market has proven to just be too big to ignore. It could also be the reverse (see authoritarian countries), with international players leaving the market and local ones filling the space.

Very few websites comply with GDPR. Based on recent interpretations, it's essentially impossible for any US-owned or US-hosted site to comply with GDPR. The EU is just being extremely selective about its enforcement. If they ever decided to follow the law to the letter, most of the Internet would have to disconnect the EU. Theoretically the EU could make clones of all international sites like China has with Baidu and Weibo, but it's hard to see how that would be good for them.

The UK's law is obviously a bit different as international companies can comply with them, but it would essentially just limit legal websites to big tech who have enough market reach that all that compliance could pay for itself.

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

#256

Post by muyuu »

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…

at some point e2e encrypted comms will be grounds for getting swatted

don't think this is a bridge too far, covering your face in the presence of public CCTV got you fined/arrested the week before covering your face with feel-good masks was compulsory

don't @ me telling me it's stupid, I know it is, but this govt doesn't believe in free and private communications and it's working hard in progressively eradicating what's already out there, with full support from the main opposition party

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

#257

Post by streblo »

solarkraft wrote: post #237
LatteLazy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes, in practice the US basically never extradites people to the UK and if they tried you would probably have a good defence (against extradition) under various parts of the constitution.

Weird how it only goes one way, isn't it?

Is it?

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

#258

Post by antonymy »

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.

A VPN is a service that people who are not privacy conscious (which is most people) tend to only use if they have a particular need for it, such as circumventing a region block for some service they want to use. This isn't a very common problem for the average person living in Britain right now, but it's about to be. So I think it's pretty fair to assert VPN usage is going to become more common, as it is a pre-existing, ready-made solution to the problem millions of British people are about to have.

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

#259

Post by tsimionescu »

Eupraxias wrote: post #172
Iv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives all over the world dream of setting up a chinese-style firewall in their countries. They are angry that it was first done by a clearly authoritarian regime which brings some resistance to the idea, but otherwise, in the name of fight against terrorism or child pornography, they would have set it up already.

By conservatives, do you mean the same people who believe we should be conservative in our application of government? Are you sure you are not speaking of liberals, who believe government should be applied liberally? Not like any of them act as they speak, but if I am not mistaken, that's what the words mean.

Conservatives are, by definition, people who want to conserve the status quo. They believe society is good as it is (or as it was in sine possibly imagined past) and seek to use the power of the state to prevent changes, and to revert any changes that are pushing society away from what they believe is the status quo. Conservatism has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "being conservative in application of government". In the USA, it happens that part of the status quo that many conservatives want to conserve is a weak federal government. In the UK, conservatives are typically monarchist, which is essentially the opposite position.

Either way, many conservatives are collectivists: they believe the needs of society and preservation of tradition outweigh the desires of individuals, and so they tend to be in favor of concepts such as the traditional family excluding gay people, the rule of mothers in child rearing being more important than the freedom of women to pursue careers and so on.

The opposite of conservatives are progressives, people who believe the status quo is not generally good, and who seek to use the power of the state to change the status quo in a direction they believe is progress.

There are also many collectivist progressives, and as such tend to want things like egalitarian schooling even if certain extraordinary kids may be kept behind, or supporting progressive taxation such that those who have more have to give more to the collective.

On a different axis, we have liberals, who are the opposite of collectivists. Liberals can be conservative or progressive, but they ultimately believe that the most important value is individual freedom.

An example of a liberal conservative is someone like Ron Paul. He believes the status quo is generally good and shouldn't be changed to much, except where he thinks government has over reached. However, he also believes government shouldn't involve itself in people lives, even to preserve societal values, so he tends to support the legalization of Marijuana and perhaps even gay marriage (though given electoral realities, in not sure of his public position on the second). Contrast this to a more collectivist conservative like justice Clarence Thomas, who believes the state should ban gay marriage and even sodomy and contraception.

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

#260

Post by fleddr »

Whilst this draft bill is laughable and outrageous, isn't a similar concept in the making for the EU? One not emphasizing children but copyrights and such instead? Article 13, I think it's called.

I consider them conceptually similar because in both cases it means that permission-less publishing will ultimately die. Right now the consensus is to allow publication, after which a reasonable effort is made to moderate, including the typical "report" function where you correct after publication.

It looks like we're swinging in the direction where whatever you publish (by means of your users) makes you fully accountable hence the only way to dodge that legal liability is to pre-check instead of post-check.

There's some hope in the sense that none of this can actually work nor is it enforceable. GDPR is a fine example of that. In my country, privacy authorities are a few hundred in staff only. When you report a violation to them, absolutely nothing will happen. They're 2 years behind and the cases they do handle almost never lead to any kind of verdict. No government is going to add thousands in staff just to regulate cookies, as surely they have better things to do with a budget. As such, the strategy seems to be to occasionally make an example out of a few by applying severe fines, just to scare everybody else and remind them that this legislation is a thing.

Let's also not underestimate the ability for people to revolt. If memory serves me well, article 13 had a modification so that people can continue to meme, lol.

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