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Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

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Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#51

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

tialaramex wrote: post #24
bsimpson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my dad told us every time we crossed a bridge when we were kids: "Tolls are a ratchet - they only move in one direction."

Because England is very old it has a whole bunch of things which did charge a toll and then that expired, so, nope. It does also have situations where people go "Hey, this toll bridge was built 50 years ago, surely the tolls should be abolished" and the people who built the bridge are like "Nope. See, here's the press about it 50 years ago saying what a great idea it is to have the tolls be slightly lower but perpetu…

In my part of the United States, the state government authorized the construction of toll roads with an agreement that those roads would eventually be handed over to the state government once the projects have been paid off.

That being said, the toll roads keep expanding so that they can continue to be operated by the private company that built them.

This is an arrangement the state government is quite happy with, because they do not have to budget for the maintenance of those roads and they are able to collect taxes on the revenue collected by the toll authority. Converting those toll roads would cause a spike in expenditures and a drop in tax revenue.

Therefore, there is a perverse incentive on both sides to keep the toll roads from being converted into public ones.

I have no idea if this sort of thing was prevalent in the past, especially in the UK. But I wanted to chime in about why several toll roads that were supposed to be paid off thirty years ago are still going strong. I suspect that 500+ years ago “build toll road, hand toll road to the public” was a lot more straightforward.

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#52

Post by tancop »

bluescrn wrote: post #11
lenerdenator wrote: post #5

Governments would rather censor the whole internet before putting people who have credible allegations of sex crimes against children under investigation and in handcuffs when appropriate.

Yes, building prisons is expensive. But the current UK government seems to treat it as a physical impossibility, while releasing violent offenders early due to lack of capacity.

a lot of uk prisons are effectively private. companies like serco and g4s get paid millions to run everything with zero oversight. its not quite as bad as the worst cases in america (no legal slavery for prisoners) but the government is definitely overpaying for bad services.

early release is not a problem by itself. honestly the best way to reform the criminal justice system would be replacing fixed prison terms with release based on a psych evaluation and completed volunteer work. of course when you need to release offenders for capacity you should start with the least dangerous ones and i dont think thats happening here, its just random or going off time served.

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#53

Post by arjie »

zarzavat wrote: post #39
arjie wrote: post #19

I wonder what the difference in legal traditions is between the US and the Old World. The latter have a lot of "Yes, you're technically in trouble under the guidelines the enforcement authority rules using but they're going to make an exception for you, for now" and the former have a lot of "Yes, the spirit was to block this kind of thing but the letter of the law is that you do get away with it". What informed this…

In the UK there is substantial use of secondary legislation. This is where Parliament authorises someone else to make laws on its behalf in some context. These powers delegated by Parliament are usually mundane but can be extreme and there's no limit to what powers Parliament can delegate. Since politicians are lazy they tend to use secondary legislation all the time . This encourages a culture of legislative sloppin…

I believe the analogous concept is Chevron deference here in the US. It must be a relatively easy optimization to make to reduce legislative load considering it arises so often. Interesting.

One funny thing in California that is relevant is lane splitting. It is legal but guidelines are decided on by the CHP (state police). In practice, this means they have discretion to pull you over.

I must imagine this is like the creation of Shadow IT in organizations. In the past, when you made it hard to get a server or whatever, you’d end up with your org building their software somewhere else where IT can’t see it.

This must be the legal innovation that matches that: if law is hard to pass, shove a bunch of things off into Shadow Legislative which can then change rules on a whim.

It’s essentially a mechanism to re-enable rapid decision making in a sclerotic system. So perhaps the US using it less than the Old World is simply an artifact of age (though extant nations vary, the legal traditions of the Old World seem to have endured) and in time we will see it dominate the US as well.

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#54

Post by makingstuffs »

tialaramex wrote: post #24
bsimpson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my dad told us every time we crossed a bridge when we were kids: "Tolls are a ratchet - they only move in one direction."

Because England is very old it has a whole bunch of things which did charge a toll and then that expired, so, nope. It does also have situations where people go "Hey, this toll bridge was built 50 years ago, surely the tolls should be abolished" and the people who built the bridge are like "Nope. See, here's the press about it 50 years ago saying what a great idea it is to have the tolls be slightly lower but perpetu…

The River Severn bridges connecting Wales and England were marked toll free in 2018 after 50 years of collecting tolls: https://www.visitmonmouthshire.com/plan-your-visit/how-to-ge...

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#56

Post by arjie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50
stackghost wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whether you're in violation of the law is irrelevant because the laws are so numerous and ambiguous that everyone is always in violation of the law and the only thing that matters is if the prosecutors want to charge you. This situation currently describes the USA.

And that's bad, right?

I think it’s a matter of belief and while I’d prefer adherence to the rule of law and enforcement in general I can see why people allow for not-that.

As an example, here’s a post on /r/sanfrancisco https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1uvebed/block...

You’ll see that a large number of people believe that while the letter of the law is violated, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure that applies all the way to the top.

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#58

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

bsimpson wrote: post #20
big85 wrote: post #16

If you don't fight government overreach now, it becomes permanent.

As my dad told us every time we crossed a bridge when we were kids: "Tolls are a ratchet - they only move in one direction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_toll_roads_in_...

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#59

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arjie wrote: post #56
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's bad, right?

I think it’s a matter of belief and while I’d prefer adherence to the rule of law and enforcement in general I can see why people allow for not-that. As an example, here’s a post on /r/sanfrancisco https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1uvebed/block... You’ll see that a large number of people believe that while the letter of the law is violated, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure that applies all the way to the t…

> You’ll see that a large number of people believe that while the letter of the law is violated, it’s not a big deal.

The correct way to deal with this is to make the law do what people actually want. It's entirely possible to draft a law where actually blocking the sidewalk is a violation but the nose of a car extending into it by a few inches isn't considered blocked. And the way to get that law is to enforce the existing law so that the people who don't like it will have it changed instead of having a law that everybody is violating but only the disfavored have it enforced against them.

Re: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now

#60

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

joe_mamba wrote: post #29
arjie wrote: post #19

I wonder what the difference in legal traditions is between the US and the Old World. The latter have a lot of "Yes, you're technically in trouble under the guidelines the enforcement authority rules using but they're going to make an exception for you, for now" and the former have a lot of "Yes, the spirit was to block this kind of thing but the letter of the law is that you do get away with it". What informed this…

Probably because the US was founded by the immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries, and designed a system that's diametral opposed to that, for better and for worse.

> because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries

48/56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were born in the 13 colonies, and I think for a lot of them what they hated about the way the system worked is that they weren't fully part of it. ("No taxation without representation")

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