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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#511

Post by jedberg »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #508
miroljub wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors. No, it should remove servers, employees and legal presence from the UK. It's not their job to block UK people from accessing it just because the UK regime want them to. Let the regime censors actually put an effort to block them. Let them make a Great Firewall of the UK, why make it easy for them?

IANAL, but international law precedent has allowed countries to prosecute web services for providing services to a country where that service is illegal. A French NGO successfully sued Yahoo! for selling Nazi memorabilia, a crime in France, despite Yahoo! being a US company [0], and this was upheld by US courts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo !

> and this was upheld by US courts.

No it wasn't. It was overturned on appeal. But Yahoo stopped selling Nazi memorabilia anyway.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#512

Post by marcus_holmes »

jedberg wrote: post #511
marcus_holmes wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but international law precedent has allowed countries to prosecute web services for providing services to a country where that service is illegal. A French NGO successfully sued Yahoo! for selling Nazi memorabilia, a crime in France, despite Yahoo! being a US company [0], and this was upheld by US courts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo !

> and this was upheld by US courts. No it wasn't. It was overturned on appeal. But Yahoo stopped selling Nazi memorabilia anyway.

I'm not a lawyer, but that's not how I read it. The appeal by Yahoo! was dismissed according to the wikipedia article, as I read it. How did you read it?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#513

Post by onetimeusename »

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…

Why does this increase the likelihood of a (written I assume) constitution? I remember I saw a thing about David Cameron talking about wanting one. I think he also created a Supreme Court. I read into it and it seemed like there was no real reason for either a written constitution or a Supreme Court. Both of those things were popularized by the US's government so maybe that points to why.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#514

Post by milesrout »

onetimeusename wrote: post #513
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…

Why does this increase the likelihood of a (written I assume) constitution? I remember I saw a thing about David Cameron talking about wanting one. I think he also created a Supreme Court. I read into it and it seemed like there was no real reason for either a written constitution or a Supreme Court. Both of those things were popularized by the US's government so maybe that points to why.

None of what you said is true. The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords was renamed the Supreme Court and moved to a different building (but otherwise essentially unchanged) in 2005 under Tony Blair's Labour government.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#515

Post by milesrout »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #361
speerer wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a constitution. It just isn't a written constitution: > The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document. Source for that quote is parliamentary: https://…

Right of course every state has a "constitution" but the contemporary connotation of the word means an enforceable law that meaningfully constrains the state's power.

[dead]

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#516

Post by brigandish »

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…

> 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.

As an repetition of and an aside to all those pointing out that there is a constitution, what may find gaining some momentum after this are calls for a Bill of Rights, something England used to have[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#517

Post by Jimmc414 »

monooso wrote: post #501
drawfloat wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it. I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government (which, by the way, there is still a non zero chance could be Labour) will necessarily reverse this. Maybe Reform would tweak the topics, but I’m not convinced any party can be totally trusted to reverse this.

Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it. Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like: > I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side. It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in…

> The worst part is that they've somehow put me in the position of defending Nigel Farage.

I've come to believe that is the point of forcing people to choose between extreme polarizing positions. It makes disengagement feel like the only moderate move.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#518

Post by nine_k »

andai wrote: post #110
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…

Yeah. It's the "foot in the door technique." The same is being done with Chat Control. It's very difficult to oppose a law ostensibly designed to fight CSAM. But once the law passes, it'll be easily expanded to other things like scanning messages to prevent terrorism. See also: > Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/06/concern-over...

The problem is that one of the most secure places in the world is a maximum security prison. Hence many measures that drag us closer to the prison state do genuinely improve security.

It takes some balls for the society to say: No, we don't agree to yield an essential liberty in exchange to actual real increase of security. Yes, we accept that sometimes bad people will do evil things, because the only way to prevent that would inflict even more damage on everyone. Yes, we are willing to risk harm to stay free.

There is always plenty of people who are ready to buy more comfort in exchange for limitations of liberty that, as they think, will not affect them, because they are honest, got nothing to hide, always follow the majority... until it does affect them, but it's too late.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#519

Post by cmcaleer »

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…

“Wikipedia is one of the best resources humanity has ever produced” and “The Wikimedia Foundation spends money frivolously while soliciting donations with messages that make users think their money is going towards the project they actually care about” are not statements which are incompatible with each other.

Wikimedia does by and large an OK job (the endowment they set up in particular was a great move), but it’s incredibly bloated in ways that should be curtailed before it gets worse. It’s reasonable to want better for a resource as important as Wikipedia.

We don’t want another Mozilla.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#520

Post by petre »

weavejester wrote: post #494
adamm255 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the current government reversed it, the 'oh think of the children' angle from the Tories/Reform against them would be relentless. I cant say they have been amazing at messaging as it is.

The current leaders of both the Conservatives and Reform are on record as being against the Act. While this doesn't preclude them changing their mind, it does make it more difficult for them to reverse course.

They will reverse it when politicians visiting pron sites are exposed through a leak or something. Everybody else uses VPNs.
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