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Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

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31–40 of 110 posts

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#31
post #5

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to keep up with your reading speed.

VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network, before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a broadcast radio station. Cell phones today along with VoIP are a muddy unintelligible mess in comparison.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#32
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to keep up with your reading speed. VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network, before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a broadcast radio station. Ce…

Cell phones inject noise on purpose so you don't notice the gaps in transmission when the other end is silent.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#33
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to keep up with your reading speed. VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network, before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a broadcast radio station. Ce…

the quality of analog phone calls hung on the quality of the equipment, mostly the cables (and distance), whereas the quality of voip (or volte for that matter) depends mostly on the quality of the codec used.

ime both can be shitty or "crystal clear" but i totally agree that having a cell phone call today, with worse quality than an cross-continent analog connection in the 80s is very depressing

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#34
post #5

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.

Yes, making fax machines work over VoIP was important in the early days. The G.711 codec was designed to support endpoints that needed a full 64kbps datapath.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#35
While I'm not a supporter of the Online Safety Bill, I do find that the opprobrium that it has inspired is consistently hyperbolic.

The Online Safety Bill bans nothing. What it does do is create a regulatory framework for the Office for Communications (aka Ofcom, HM Government's regulator for the communications industry) to operate and enforce. The regulatory framework is based around risk assessments, and sets out specific risks (of the sort that most people would agree need to be minimised). Ofcom is empowered to decide that internet services are within scope, and then demand to see policies relating to ameliorating those risks within a service.

The regulatory framework does specify that end-to-end encryption is incompatible with the reduction of these risks. However, we do have to play the ball and not the person of unspecified gender here.

We are, after all, talking about the UK here. The phenomenon of 'those whom the law protects but does not bind, and those whom the law binds but does not protect' is still very much in effect here. This legislation has also been proposed by a government that responds to increasing crime (caused by insufficient police officers) by giving those police more powers (that they don't have the resources to exercise).

Ofcom has wide-ranging responsibilities: it regulates the press and broadcast media, it allocates EM spectrum bands, it regulates the telephone network, and regulates the Royal Mail. Like all organisations in the Home Civil Service, it is staffed by a core of 'generalists' with humanities degrees, assisted by a small cadre of 'specialists', who are put back in their cupboard once they've given their opinion.

What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases. Ofcom will go after the big social media companies and the likes of 4chan. Your Mastodon server or your Gitea server or your corner of the Tildeverse or whatever will never appear on their radar. Ofcom won't have the budget or the resources to go after individuals or small communities; they won't even know you exist.

In the UK, an energy bill or council tax bill is an important identity document, necessary for opening a bank account, because any time someone starts talking about identity cards, the readers of the Daily Telegraph start muttering about the Gestapo. Ofcom isn't going to audit your homelab for online harms.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#36
post #11

My understanding is that the OSB creates a responsibility for Ofcom to create a regulatory system for discouraging online harms. Has Ofcom actually said what these regulations will be? Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you predict? The interim codes of practice that the government published don't even apply at all to individuals. They also acknowledge that smaller companies should not be expect…

> My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely overblown. The questions in my opinion then become, Is it the law preventing these? Is it some people not yet seeing why they should do it? Are they purposefully not doing it initially to calm people? If they don’t want to be able to do it, it could be rephrased.

If you operate an online service, you don't have any actual obligations under the Online Safety Bill until Ofcom taps you on the shoulder. Considering that Ofcom is also responsible for regulating ISPs, all broadcast media, the EM spectrum, the telephone network and the Royal Mail, I don't think they'll have the resources to go after anyone but the social media giants.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#38
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of analogy, the government might make a law that allows, in secondary legislation, the setting of a driving speed limit. These activists are claiming that the government is secretly intending the speed limit to be 1mph. The government are trying to ban driving!! The activists are demanding the enabling legislation be amended so that the speed limit, when set, must be no lower than Xmph. But all this does is fo…

I'd like to offer a different analogy. Encryption in communication is, to me, akin to the locks on the doors of your residence, on safes or other secure containers. It protects your privacy from prying eyes who want to snoop on what others are doing. The activists are claiming that the government wishes to require that all locks be unlockable by one of a range of secret "master" keys, so that they can ensure you're n…

What the government actually wants is for service providers (as in, social media companies, not ISPs) to monitor everything happening on their service to make sure that no one is coming to any serious harm. How providers do that is up to them.

The government doesn't care about the technology; it's all about corporate processes, and they're going to regulate it one corporation at a time. If you're not important to be asked to appear before a House of Commons Committee, you're not going to come to Ofcom's attention.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#39
post #5

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

> you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet"

UK POTS is switching over to an IP based network, so does the bill specify the internet or ip based network?

If you submit a GDPR to your local constabulary, every phone call in the UK has a unique call identify much like a GUID now. Its quite insightful seeing just how much info is given out regarding the phone system capabilities via GDPR requests.

Re: Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

#40
post #35

While I'm not a supporter of the Online Safety Bill, I do find that the opprobrium that it has inspired is consistently hyperbolic. The Online Safety Bill bans nothing . What it does do is create a regulatory framework for the Office for Communications (aka Ofcom, HM Government's regulator for the communications industry) to operate and enforce. The regulatory framework is based around risk assessments, and sets out…

It sounds like you're chiding others for complaining about the bill, and excusing this because the bill "only" enables mass surveillance and anti-privacy measures, rather than stipulating them. Might be I'm reading you wrong on this, but that's what I'm taking away.

> What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases.

I don't really believe that for a second. Whenever sweeping powers are introduced, there is scope creep. Just look at how anti-terrorism laws have been abused. And it seems Apple and others don't believe it either.

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