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Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

express.co.uk

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Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#401

Post by hopelite »

loeg wrote: post #389
thewebguyd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. This is a dangerous precedent though that IMO everyone should fight against. It's how we get the balkanization of the internet, and the death of it as a global network. TBH we also shouldn't put the onus on blocking "unsafe" countries on the website owners, nor an intermediary like CloudFlare. If a nation wants to block certain content, let the nation de…

The balkanization is being caused by the UK. No technical solutions prevent this.

It’s rather ironic, because the very kind of “social credit score” that we were told the Chinese are subject to is has existed in the West and is being implanted in a far more sly way with things like tone policing; arbitrary accusation of rule breaking of ever increasingly narrow, convoluted, and subjective rules enforced by faceless mods and surely son by AI bots, bans, and even extraordinary lengths to hunt down anyone that “evades a ban”.

I just heard about that TikTok has already implement a censorship regime that excludes topics and concepts for which you get a ding on your social credit score. Not even something that was done when China was racially in control of TikTok.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#402

Post by pverheggen »

dboreham wrote: post #388
flir wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK). Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.

This has been happening for years but if you're in the US you don't realize. For example I can't access my local Montana newspaper web site from the UK "because GDPR" (even though the UK isn't in the EU).

There is a UK GDPR, it’s the same framework but adopted under UK law:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the...

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#403

Post by bigbadfeline »

colechristensen wrote: post #356
thewebguyd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. This is a dangerous precedent though that IMO everyone should fight against. It's how we get the balkanization of the internet, and the death of it as a global network. TBH we also shouldn't put the onus on blocking "unsafe" countries on the website owners, nor an intermediary like CloudFlare. If a nation wants to block certain content, let the nation de…

It depends on the kind of website. If you're not advertising, selling anything, or otherwise doing any business through your website you're much more emboldened to not care about every jurisdiction. But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries and I don't have a ton of objection to you needing to follow foreign laws. I'm fine with "balkanization" (I kn…

> But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries.

Say, I'm the provider... well sorry, you (the customer) are doing business with a foreign country (mine) and you should do it in accordance with YOUR laws about YOUR country's foreign trade.

That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite?

In other words, UK has no jurisdiction over US businesses who conduct business from US soil, UK cannot force them to obey UK law just because a UK citizen decided to buy something over the internet. The UK can punish THEIR citizens for what the UK considers unlawful trades and that's always the case no matter what.

Claiming jurisdiction over foreign businesses ends up in a completely lunatic situation where every business, in every country, has to obey the laws of every other country just because some people might decide to order from abroad. Block, ban, punish only where you have jurisdiction, everything else ends up in sheer insanity.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#404

Post by stingraycharles »

stackskipton wrote: post #384
stingraycharles wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the parent is making is that you don’t have to manually keep track of the countries you need to block. You just tell Cloudflare what your website does / what type of laws may be problematic, and Cloudflare manages the blocklist automatically. Makes a lot of sense actually that it’s surprising they don’t have this yet.

My guess is liability factor. If they get it wrong, massive liability on their side especially since someone could be like "I told you X" and Cloudflare didn't think the law applied or not. Better to put onus on the customer.

This is already a fact of life: Amazon, Cloudflare, etc all manage blocklists for common patterns in firewalls, and many compliance standards (e.g. SOC2) pretty much require you to enable them. Mistakes are sometimes made in these things, but fairly certain that liability is covered by the ToS.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#405

Post by Blahah »

smashah wrote: post #391
flir wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK). Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.

At this point, the UK government is beyond shaming. On the contrary, it shame and record-breaking unpopularity seems to empower them. I wouldn't put it passed them to require the digital ID to access the internet passed curfew.

*past (in both cases)

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#406

Post by bdangubic »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #403
colechristensen wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the kind of website. If you're not advertising, selling anything, or otherwise doing any business through your website you're much more emboldened to not care about every jurisdiction. But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries and I don't have a ton of objection to you needing to follow foreign laws. I'm fine with "balkanization" (I kn…

> But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries. Say, I'm the provider... well sorry, you (the customer) are doing business with a foreign country (mine) and you should do it in accordance with YOUR laws about YOUR country's foreign trade. That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite? In other words, UK has no jurisdiction over US bu…

I love this idea of businesses doing and selling whatever the F they want and citizens being punished based on laws in their country. not sure why US businesses even have to obey US laws?!? just punish the consumers/citizens and be done with it

of course defining what “US” business is might be quite challenging, is Apple a US company?! They make nothing in the US and pay no taxes in the US … love this idea though!

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#407

Post by SanjayMehta »

flir wrote: post #299
zmmmmm wrote: post #267

There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here give people a simple toggle that manages geoblocks on legal liability factors. It's way too much for every organisation to individually track every country's laws day by day in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. And it sounds like the UK would have just self-selected out of the list of "safe" countries. If something like this was in wid…

I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK). Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.

[flagged]

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#408

Post by cs02rm0 »

I don't think these laws are being made with the will of the people.

There's been no groundswell of opinion, no technically minded authority pushing expert opinion.

The same people lobbying for the online safety act were pushing age verification tools. The government is exceptionally unpopular, even by the standards of already deeply unpopular governments in recent years.

I despair of the situation in the UK. How have we ended up here?

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#409

Post by naruhodo »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #408

I don't think these laws are being made with the will of the people. There's been no groundswell of opinion, no technically minded authority pushing expert opinion. The same people lobbying for the online safety act were pushing age verification tools. The government is exceptionally unpopular, even by the standards of already deeply unpopular governments in recent years. I despair of the situation in the UK. How hav…

And how has Australia ended up in a similar situation[1] - coming this December?

My guess is that the common factor is News Corporation pushing an agenda on behalf of the very, very wealthy.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AustralianPolitics/comments/1nu68je...

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