Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

webdevlaw.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 480 posts

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#461

Post by muyuu »

calibas wrote: post #454
concordDance wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it as a solution?

Seems a bit paranoid for one thing. Also, it's unfair and cruel to put the responsibility for preventing abuse onto the abused. The person engaging in dysfunctional behavior is the problem, not their victims. Sure, you can avoid being bullied by staying hidden all the time, and I guess that works for some people but it doesn't sit well with me.

the dysfunctional behaviour online is that of the 2020s, not the 1990s

the draconian legislation attempts we're seen now are the govt's weaponisation of 2020s dysfunctional behaviour to shut down the free internet wholesale and substitute it with a heavily surveilled and censored alternative that actually benefits from the child-like narcissism of the 2020s

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#462

Post by jhgb »

Shuang1 wrote: post #271
solarkraft wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how it only goes one way, isn't it?

It's not really weird. We have rights guaranteed to us in the United States that no other country has, so it makes sense we would not extradite.

...such as? For that matter, you don't think other countries have rights guaranteed to their citizens that the US doesn't have? The legal mismatches don't seem to be likely to make a difference here that could introduce a bias in extraditions.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#463

Post by jhgb »

mminer237 wrote: post #280
akavel wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding GDPR, citation needed - do you have actual links you can share to those claimed "recent interpretations", and whose in particular they are? I'd be quite interested to see them, if true ,which I seriously doubt - for the time being, as an EU citizen, my understanding is, and continues to be, that it's totally possible for US corpos to adhere to GDPR; it would just require some money and effort to be spent by…

They're decisions by the governments of Germany, France, and Italy: * https://rewis.io/urteile/urteil/lhm-20-01-2022-3-o-1749320/ * https://www.cnil.fr/en/use-google-analytics-and-data-transfe... * https://www.gpdp.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/d... So far they've just been enforced against companies that use Google Analytics, but the reasoning behind it has been that having users connect to a US server e…

How does any of those things make it "essentially impossible for any US-owned or US-hosted site to comply with GDPR"? Is it legally required in the US, for example, to use Google Analytics?

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#464

Post by throwaway4aday »

cowtools wrote: post #145
throwaway4aday wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could conceivably implement a fully encrypted p2p social network over WebRTC within the browser. You would obtain the app by simply visiting a website that hosts it making it nearly unblockable since anyone could stand up a page. Public key crypto could allow you to verify your identity or send private messages across the network. The hardest part is establishing the initial connection but since this can be done…

I've looked into this the other month. There are a number of obfuscation networks that have tried this to some extent (including IPFS and GNUnet), but I am yet to find a network that works exactly as you've described: where you can just access a "tor web portal" in your browser or something. I think an obstacle would be preventing fingerprinting inside a non-fingerprint-proof browser. You might be able to do this if…

> The Public/Private keypair could represent a user's identity, and the file in this case could be a blog or account page which is updated with new links to the user's posts, or links to other user's posts.

I built a small proof of concept along these lines a while back. The implementation was similar to what you're describing with peers seeding and forwarding messages. I didn't get as far as name resolution since that's a tough nut to crack in p2p but building off of IPNS would probably be the way to go. The prototype worked but it wasn't very attractive to use since it was only good for passing notes and there are better services out there with more features. I think something like it would only be worthwhile building if there really was a concerted effort to lock down all social media in a fairly heavy handed way.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#465

Post by throwaway4aday »

muyuu wrote: post #319
orangepurple wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, where there is a will, there is a way. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209044791...

only a tiny fraction of the people will bother with the immense overhead of steganography it would much more practicable to resort to alternative channels outside the internet, like mesh networking using direct comms (typically ad-hoc wifi modes and other radio protocols to avoid the liability/detectability of cabling), sneakernet, IP over Avian Carriers - those are all cumbersome and rather slow typically, but still…

With network enabled SoC's costing $1 and associated charge controller, battery and solar cell coming in around $5 I could definitely see a future where people roll out their own clandestine internets in order to route around the centralized and regulated internet. The simplest form of this is a single access point set up as a piratebox allowing people within range to connect and download/upload files. It could be scaled to a large mesh network covering an entire city.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#466

Post by tomjen3 »

yrgulation wrote: post #86
tomjen3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has fewer people than Germany, and only low double digits compared to the EU. With this legalization I would IP ban the UK, then grow the service and look into opening up for the UK when my service was big and the lawyers didn't matter.

Typing this using a british designed arm cpu powered phone using the protocol made by a british guy on a forum cofounded by a british american venture capitalist. But the UK is “small” in the “computer world”. Perhaps we should ban german IP instead so we can read less about german nationalist pride and instead focus more on what makes countries competitive and what not in modern tech.

I am not pretending that Britain hadn’t done interesting and important things in the past. I am saying that only a small number of people live in the U.K. jurisdiction and so it is worth a comparative amount of admin.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#467

Post by concordDance »

codedokode wrote: post #460
concordDance wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol and cigarettes physically harm you. As best I can tell internet access is no more harmful than gaming. The two classes of risk are too different for the analogy to work.

If Internet access is not harming, then why do Bills like this exist?

Corporations like having less competition by putting up barriers to entry, old media disliked new media which carried over to big tech (and the inter-company PR wars have been brutal) and politicians like being seen to "do something" about whatever problems are in the news.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#468

Post by awwright »

tsimionescu wrote: post #259
Eupraxias wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By conservatives, do you mean the same people who believe we should be conservative in our application of government? Are you sure you are not speaking of liberals, who believe government should be applied liberally? Not like any of them act as they speak, but if I am not mistaken, that's what the words mean.

Conservatives are, by definition, people who want to conserve the status quo. They believe society is good as it is (or as it was in sine possibly imagined past) and seek to use the power of the state to prevent changes, and to revert any changes that are pushing society away from what they believe is the status quo. Conservatism has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "being conservative in application of gover…

Two corrections:

(1) This is a good overview, but conservatives don't believe in the status quo for the status quo's sake. They believe that our traditions are highly optimized, essential components to living a fulfilling life. We don't even know why many of the rules even exist, the exact problem they solve has long been forgotten to history; so we should be careful when changing these rules.

There is an element of caring for your long-term health as well as the larger society, and raising the next generation of humans, which most everyone agrees with in some form (even libertarians argue that absolute individual liberty is what produces the best outcome for society). This not necessarily make you a collectivist, in the way that progressives push for labor unions, economic planning, and intersectionality.

What you're missing is a description of when conservatives support use of force to promote social values. Modern American conservatives think that rights come with responsibilities, that neither unfettered libertinism nor enforcement of responsibility with police power is legitimate.

(2) Clarence Thomas has never spoken from the bench about what laws the state ought to pass, he is careful to emphasize he is not a lawmaker and that is not his job. When he dissents in Obergefell and other cases that rely on "substantive" due process, it's because i legal rationale invented to uphold slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#469

Post by alsetmusic »

Agamus wrote: post #448
cstross wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorter version: Yes, you are mistaken. Longer version: this is a discussion of a bill in progress in the British parliamentary system, where the current government is by a party known as the Conservative and Unionist Party , or "Conservatives" for short. This should not be confused with any colloquial meaning of the term "conservative" that might be familiar to you from American vernacular usage. Note that political…

Another version: no I am not. I'm impressed with how many people really do not understand the meaning of these terms. The idea that the US is culturally divided makes a lot more sense to me now, reading all of these responses.

> I'm impressed with how many people really do not understand the meaning of these terms.

When multiple people tell you that you’re wrong and no one else is taking your side, the rational response is to consider that you may be wrong. But, as humans, we sometimes lack the willingness (or perhaps ability) to do so.

Re: Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill

#470

Post by rlpb »

zugi wrote: post #334
rlpb wrote: post #220

The article says: "Is it possible for your site, service, or app, which allows content to be shared and/or people to communicate with each other, to be accessed by any adult or any child within the UK? Then you’re in scope. NB “accessed” doesn’t necessarily mean that a user can set up an active account on your service. If a British adult can merely download your app on the app store, the app is in scope." However, th…

Perhaps you missed the "which allows content to be shared and/or people to communicate with each other" phrase? That seems to be the author's phrasing of the bill's wording "content that is generated by a user of the service... may be encountered by another user." A site or app that doesn't allow user content isn't in scope. But just add a comment section and suddenly you have this world of regulatory requirements wi…

> A site or app that doesn't allow user content isn't in scope.

I agree, but the article's author's phrasing, IMHO, claims the opposite.

> In practice this will end discussion and comment sections from all but the largest sites that can afford all the regulatory compliance.

My possibly contrarian (for HN) opinion is that the Internet's "wild west" approach of disclaiming liability when republishing and algorithmically editorializing content on a platform isn't acceptable, so I'm actually in favour of this. Otherwise we have people being harmed with nobody to hold to account.

If when tracking down an offender the offender cannot be found, then they're effectively being shielded by the platform, and the platform should be held liable. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

I don't think this would necessarily exclude all discussion or comment sections because I'm only talking about (my definition) a "platform". I would exclude "mere conduit" direct communication apps. This bill probably doesn't achieve the distinction and exception I want though.

Post reply on HN