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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

#581

Post by Lio »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #576
Lio wrote: post #154

One of the most interesting things about this legislation is where it comes from. Primarily it was drafted and lobbied for by William Perrin OBE and Prof Lorna Woods at Carnegie UK[1], billed as an “independent foundation”. William Perrin is also the founder of Ofcom. So he’s been using the foundation’s money to lobby for the expansion of his unelected quango. It has also been suggested that one of the largest benefi…

Ludicrous to call William Perrin “the founder” of Ofcom or refer to it as “his” quango. Passive voice, evidence free conspiracy nonsense that flatters HN biases? Updoots to the left!

> Ludicrous to call William Perrin “the founder” of Ofcom or refer to it as “his” quango

From his own Carnegie UK webpage linked above:

> William was instrumental in creating Ofcom, reforming the regulatory regimes of several sectors and kicking off the UK government’s interest in open data.

William was awarded an OBE for his highly influential work at Carnegie UK with Prof Lorna Woods that underpinned the UK government’s approach to regulating online services.

How is he not a founder of Ofcom?

That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s just a verifiable statement of fact.

Or is it the use of the word founder you object to? If you prefer, “was instrumental in setting up and is closely related to the running of Ofcom”.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#582

Post by PeterStuer »

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…

Did it occur to you they only voted against it because they knew it would pass anyway, so they could afford scoring some brownie points?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#583

Post by qcnguy »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #345
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…

>2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win. As a rule of thumb, governments don't take actions which reduce their power.

They do if they are libertarian governments. Although it's popular to pretend they don't exist, there are plenty of examples of governments reducing their power over history. The American government is a good example of this having originally bound itself by a constitution that limits its own power. And Britain has in the past gone through deregulatory phases and shrunk the state.

Unfortunately at this time Britain doesn't really have a viable libertarian party. Reform is primarily focused on immigration, and the conservatives have largely withered on the vine becoming merely another center left party. So it's really very unclear if there are any parties that would in fact roll this back, although Nigel Farage is saying they would. His weakness is that he is not always terribly focused on recruiting people ideologically aligned to himself or even spelling out what exactly his ideology is. This is the same problem that the conservatives had and it can lead to back benches that are not on board with what needs to be done. Farage himself though is highly reasonable and always has been.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#584

Post by marcus_holmes »

fulafel wrote: post #546
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 !

Nitpick: International law is treaties between countries, the UN, customs like diplomatic immunity, etc. Here it was just about US and French domestic law.

thanks for the clarification :)

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#585

Post by Jolter »

ozim wrote: post #558
Jimmc414 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Feels utterly demoralizing when you have to vote for lesser evil and not for someone you feel will be better for the future.

”The lesser evil” is the essence of any two-party system. Which I would somewhat facetiously classify the UK system as. Abolish ”first past the post” and introduce proportional representation now!

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#586

Post by qcnguy »

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.

The UK has had many such laws and still does. During its time of EU membership the British constitution effectively gave up most of its power to a foreign government. The echr still binds parliament and the courts, again to rulings of a foreign Court.

The most likely outcome by far at this point is the continuation of disconnection from European institutions by leaving the echr. In effect this would mean the rolling back of parts of the British constitution. It would be a good thing because the equivalents of the American Constitution are much more vaguely written, and in practice do nothing to protect anybody's rights whilst allowing left-wing judges to rampantly abuse their position by issuing nonsensical judgments that advance left-wing priorities. That's why reform and Nigel farage have been pushing for many years on leaving the European institutions, which is in effect a rollback of the Constitution. And this position is very popular.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#587

Post by cs02rm0 »

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…

>> 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.

Does it even do that?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#588

Post by mlindner »

gargan wrote: post #566
llbbdd wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just do the same thing many governments the world over have done - adopt a version of the US constitution. Easy, clean, and only massively ironic.

Biggest mistake the Americans did was codify their constitution. I'll probably be pilloried for that but look at the evidence: - US is about to have military on the streets during peacetime with no terror threat within a codified constitution - UK has had military on the streets in response to terrorism in Northern Ireland (a real threat) and not for decades. The UK constitution is uncodified and spread over many (10…

[flagged]

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#589

Post by danlitt »

gargan wrote: post #566
llbbdd wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just do the same thing many governments the world over have done - adopt a version of the US constitution. Easy, clean, and only massively ironic.

Biggest mistake the Americans did was codify their constitution. I'll probably be pilloried for that but look at the evidence: - US is about to have military on the streets during peacetime with no terror threat within a codified constitution - UK has had military on the streets in response to terrorism in Northern Ireland (a real threat) and not for decades. The UK constitution is uncodified and spread over many (10…

Why do you think that the UK having an unwritten constitution means that revolution cannot happen? Of course putting aside the fact we did have a revolution in the 1600s, and the almost constant revolution happening in Ireland until the 1930s. A fluid constitution is no use when the government is intransigent, and very little can protect a democracy from half the voters voting for a coup.

A written constitution only really protects (or affects at all) the things it very specifically enumerates. And when I look at the judicial tools we have that do bind the government (the ECHR for instance) they seem on the whole to make a good difference. A UK constitution that enshrined certain rights (healthcare, free speech, and so on) would make me feel a lot more secure about what future governments could do. It might also provide a better example than the American constitution in the respects it is lacking.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#590

Post by mytailorisrich »

anigbrowl wrote: post #400
mytailorisrich wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have just described how the public drives the democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of ignoring the public.

That's the nice-sounding theory, but I don't see any metrics on how well it works in practice. MPs aren't required to share the input from the public or publish lists of how they voted on every issue prior to elections. Representative democracy really includes very little accountability for the legislators.

It certainly works better than to govern according to whoever shouts the louder.

Petitions have a place, which is to inform of a point of view and of the opinion of a portion of the public. That's a form of lobbying. But that's it, we should certainly not expect that a law be repelled because of a petition, and rightly so.

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