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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

bbc.com

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#391

Post by gundmc »

profmonocle wrote: post #385
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #10

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…

Possibly naive question, why should Wikimedia do anything at all? Do they have a legal presence in the UK? If not, why not just say "we aren't a UK based organization so we have no obligations under this law" Let the UK block Wikipedia.

IANAL, but I assume this could open Wikimedia leadership to charges of contempt and eventually lead to needing to avoid visiting the UK or other extraditing countries and potentially pave the way for asset seizures. You generally don't want to antagonize world power governments.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#392

Post by ceejayoz »

dh2022 wrote: post #351
immibis wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brandolini's Law is relevant. If we havs to carefully point-by-point critique every point our opponent makes, while they get to use ChatGPT to write nonsense at fifty times human reading speed, we lose. To work around this, when a bullshit-producing organization is cited, it's proper to ask for an alternative citation from an organization that produces mostly non-bullshit. If it truly isn't bullshit content, there sh…

Except that in this particular case these were not bullshit articles. I had time to read them and I agree with them. You should read the articles before calling them names….

> Except that in this particular case these were not bullshit articles.

They are, though. I had time to read them, too, and agree with the "bullshit" assessment. Each relies on the deeply bad-faith idea (in each case, from people/groups all quietly permitting much more significant First Amendment violations go unchallenged, like the President extorting law firms and colleges for millions of dollars) that the ACLU must take up every case that comes their way. That has never been the case; if the Heritage foundation wants that, they can step in and help fund.

A good portion of the ACLU's job is to determine which cases will meaningfully advance civil rights; which cases will lead to precedent or outcomes that support their goals.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#393

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tech2 wrote: post #383
throwaway2489 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you against any kind of content restriction whatsoever or just porn?

They may not be against content restriction, instead they may be against removal of user privacy or anonymity. If the proof of age thing was some kind of zero knowledge proof such that the age verifying group has no knowledge of what you're accessing, and the site you're accessing has no knowledge of you as an individual (beyond tells like IP address etc.) then perhaps they'd be more open to it?

There isn't any technology that can prevent sharing of age verification with third parties without tying your uses to your identity. To unmask someone in order to uncover sharing, you would require the ability to do it in general, which is incompatible with privacy/anonymity.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#394

Post by kittikitti »

There are too many Big Tech bootlickers on YCombinator who enabled this. All of a sudden, they get to act surprised and morally superior. I guess this is who the gatekeepers let in, people who publicly seem moral but when push comes to shove they will always act evil.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#396

Post by nemomarx »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #377
nemomarx wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's some irony that the EU is set to have a fairly anonymous solution like next year. they could have waited or tried to use similar tech for this, in theory

Important to note: Their anonymous solution is reported to be temporary until their digital ID system is released[1], which does not offer that same anonymity, but rather functions as a server-side OpenID-based authentication system.[2] While you can share only your age with an online service, it still creates an authorization token, which appears to remain persistent until manually removed by the user in the eID app…

Good catch, that does seem a lot worse. :/

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#397

Post by Self-Perfection »

profmonocle wrote: post #385
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #10

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…

Possibly naive question, why should Wikimedia do anything at all? Do they have a legal presence in the UK? If not, why not just say "we aren't a UK based organization so we have no obligations under this law" Let the UK block Wikipedia.

If Wikimedia blocks access from UK it has control over response page and can write there accurate description of the reasons why access is blocked.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#398

Post by anigbrowl »

Lerc wrote: post #360
lazide wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess - ‘do you support violent prisoners being given work in proportion to their crimes’ or something similar?

Oh far more deceptive than that. "Should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offenses?" Now let's play tldr with the law! Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an argument against binding referendums.

I'm not really seeing the deception here since it specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and not know you were voting for hard labour?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#399

Post by [deleted] »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #222
bArray wrote: post #194

> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone". Demonstrably false. It creates a safer online world for some . > In particular the foundation is concerned the extra duties required - if Wikipedia was classed as Category 1 - would mean it would have to verify the identity of its c…

A British constitution makes no sense, power is delegated from the king not from the member states like in the US or Canada. The only way the UK could end up with a constitution that's meaningful and not performative would be after a civil war.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#400

Post by anigbrowl »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #145
Henchman21 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it quite right that the public gets ignored all the time? How do you force your representatives to actually represent their constituents?

I have just described how the public drives the democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of ignoring the public.

That's the nice-sounding theory, but I don't see any metrics on how well it works in practice. MPs aren't required to share the input from the public or publish lists of how they voted on every issue prior to elections. Representative democracy really includes very little accountability for the legislators.
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