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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

#421

Post by spauldo »

owisd wrote: post #117
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…

Problem with Wikipedia specifically going all-in on a UK block is, due to the licence, there's nothing to stop someone circumventing the block to make a OSA-compliant Britipedia mirror with minimal effort.

And Wikipedia continues on without having to worry about UK regulations. What's the downside for Wikipedia?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#422

Post by wiredpancake »

daedrdev wrote: post #109
hliyan wrote: post #81

On a slightly related note, has anyone else noticed an increase in social media attacks on Wikipedia, kind of like this? https://x.com/benlandautaylor/status/1954276775560966156 Post reads: "Periodic reminder that Wikipedia has a squillion times more money than they need to operate the actual website, and all marginal donations go to the fake paper-shuffling NGO that attached itself to the organization for the purpos…

This has been a criticism for a decade or more

Correct, it is especially of note given the publicity of Wikimedias funding and balances.

There is a million more greedy companies than Wikimedia, there is also other places that could use your money though, i.e Internet Archive, which is always desperate for donations.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#423

Post by alphager »

Aeolun wrote: post #419
gundmc wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not wikimedia’s responsibility to ensure people from the UK don’t hit their servers by typing wikipedia.org into the browser bar.

According to UK law, it is.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#424

Post by wiredpancake »

trhway wrote: post #381

Does Online Safety Act covers only HTTP? I mean does it cover say bittorrent? Or any outgoing TCP connection?

As if this is even a consideration in the law.

They are clueless to whatever an internet protocol is. Effectively, if it uses the "internet" and you interface with it from a device, it is subject to the ruling.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#425

Post by jacobolus »

anigbrowl wrote: post #398
Lerc wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

People read "greater emphasis on the needs of victims" and stop processing afterwards.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#426

Post by sdrinf »

phpnode wrote: post #85
entuno wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those petitions aren't really worth anything - governments have ignored ones with over six million signatures before. And they also ignored this one a few years back that had just under 700,000 signatures to "make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account": https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/575833 Ironically, the primary reason they gave for rejecting it was: > However, restricting…

The other point is that recent polls suggest the British public are overwhelmingly in support of this legislation [0], which is not reflected in most of the narrative we see online. Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear. [0] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...

Follow-up question is big lulz: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...

"And how effective do you think the new rules will be at preventing those younger than 18 from gaining access to pornography?"

-> 64% "not very effective / not at all effective"

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#427

Post by Havoc »

It's disappointing that their argument was more "exempt up" and less "this is an unworkable law".

Not sure what comes next but wikipedia blocking UK followed by perhaps a study or two about harm done to the economy may be a good start to get the morons in charge to see the light

This whole saga tells me that nobody in UK gov knows wtf their doing on anything online. (This act was introduced under conservatives and passed under liberals)

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#428

Post by jacobgkau »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #46
cft wrote: post #3

If the UK orders a Wikipedia block to its ISPs, it would be a good thing, to raise public awareness of the OSA. Wikipedia should do nothing and wait.

From about ten years ago, ISPs were required to block web sites which were unsuitable for children by default . Any ISP's customer (the person paying for internet access, who would therefore be over 18) could ask for the block to be removed. Requiring individual web sites to block access was unnecessary if the intention was to prevent children accessing those sites.

My understanding is that the default "block" just worked through the ISP's DNS servers. So that only works if the parents know to restrict the ability of their kids to change their DNS servers on their local devices (which is not set up by default) and the kids don't know how to get around it.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#429

Post by tiltowait »

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.

"Hard labour for all serious violent offenses" seems almost refreshingly straightforward. Was there more in the actual referendum that was hidden? I grant that "serious violent offenses" is somewhat vague; was it overly broad?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#430

Post by luqtas »

Iulioh wrote: post #115
Ravus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sadly an example of terrible leading question bias, to the point where I'm surprised that it even got a 22% oppose rate. The percentages would change dramatically were one to write it as, "From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring adults to upload their id or a face photo before accessing any website that allows user to user interaction?" Both questions are fact…

"Do you want CHILDREN to be MURDERED by RAPEISTS online or are you a good person? Y/N

then proceeds to the tea break and brainstorms on how to empower the monarchy and conquer the world
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