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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they should not do business in them. To me this means block access. If you don't then they're supposed to block access to you anyway so who is strong arming who?

As I said in my first comment: if it makes doing business in the UK unpalatable then they are of course free to halt their operations. I was specifically responding to the suggestion above that they should do so as a bargaining move to force the government's hand.

The Wikimedia Foundation isn't "doing business" in the UK, they're a nonprofit. Their mission statement is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Part of fulfilling that mission is opposing laws that restrict free knowledge and open access, so why should they not use their huge presence as a bargaining tool? Doing so directly aligns with their purpose.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#314

Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind. Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no". > The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and eff…

As ridiculous or absurd as this idea might seem, it's probably the most succinct and likely effective response to this kind of situation. The UK is betting the rest of the world doesn't reciprocate.

Not ridiculous, the only way to stop injustice is to fight.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#315

US should slap travel bans on UK politicians travelling to Disney parks and similar in Florida with their families. And/or with their older children visiting NYC. The combined pressure of the wives and their children, will knock sense in their thick skulls quickly. In the sense of - being stupid is not cost free. Atm it's cost free for them, and costly for me.

The US is moving in the same direction.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#316
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they should block with a very visible message, tailored to the british public. I know what that status message means, you know it, but the general public doesn't. They need the black page with big letters they used before with sopa/pipa/etc.

You can return a 451 error with a descriptive page, same as how sites have custom 404 pages

We need new 6xx codes. "Requests that are fine, need no redirection and have no errors but are blocked because of politics, overbearing laws or regime"

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>parents You do understand that there are creeps out there grooming children, right? Parents definitely do need to have oversight over their own kids. Children should absolutely not have privacy on the internet. The ID requirement is terrible, but saying that children need privacy to explore their sexuality on the internet is very problematic. If this is the position the UK government holds then that brings into ques…

Yep, I feel like there is a cognitive dissonance somewhere in there. On one thread about social media and internet affecting young people negatively, you have people saying parents should control their kids' exposure to the internet. And in another thread about ID laws, you have people saying kids should have privacy to roam the internet.

To be fair, those are not actually in opposition. Because they dont believe parents can actually do it.

They just want to throw responsibility and blame on parents, so that government dont restrict porn access. Parents are just a tool and scapegoats.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that would be tricky, since Wikipedia is not a business, and is nor is it specifically American. (Other than a foundation in the US that runs the servers) . There are Wikipedias in many of the world's languages! If the UK effectively bans public wikis above a certain size (even if by accident), then it is the law of the land that Wikipedia is banned. Or at least the english wikipedia, which is indeed very large…

By Wikipedia I meant the foundation of course. I'm not sure localisation automatically makes them a multinational entity. Windows is available in Chinese but we both understand that Microsoft is not a Chinese company. It is fair to say it's not a business, but essentially there's no difference to my feeling that private entities from other countries shouldn't be throwing their weight around in local democracy. Do you…

> Do you feel that Wikipedia today is banned through the letter of the law?

Wikipedia is certainly large enough, in terms of traffic. And as anyone can edit it, it would seem to be a user-to-user service, making it a Category 1 provider, equivalent to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

And their wiki page about 'breasts' certainly shows photographs of female nipples. Their pages on penises are likewise illustrated. They also have pages about suicide and self-harm.

Wikipedia is also a website we could reasonably expect children to access.

And Wikipedia did lobby the government, before the act was passed, to make it clear they weren't subject to it, which the government opted not to do.

So it would certainly appear they are subject to it.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#319
post #91

Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind. Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no". > The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and eff…

Does WP do this anywhere else? I wonder what happens if they simply don't comply. Will the UK at any point ask ISPs to ban Wikipedia?

Probably, my understanding is theyve already implemented IP blocking to other sites.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#320
post #35

Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind. Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no". > The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and eff…

I thought people here didn’t like when American companies tried to strongarm democratic governments abroad?

It turns out reductionism is stupid and people have different opinions
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