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IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

prestonbyrne.com

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Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#81

Post by mlhpdx »

Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

I don’t agree that choosing to host a website without limiting the audience is innocent. It’s a choice, and has been the default for a long time, but it means one has chosen to speak outside the borders of their own country and that comes with rules, like them or not.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#82

Post by OptionOfT »

Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

If I recall correctly, this is how the GDPR works. If someone to who the GDPR applies to visits a website, a website cannot record any information about them, regardless of whether that website actually is based in the EU, which is why certain US websites block traffic from the EU.

Source: https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/

    1. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.

    2. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to:

        (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or

        (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.

    3. This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law.
E.g. the website in this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45819635 does not work when you visit it with a European IP address. You get an error 451.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mzajc wrote: post #18

> The primary one is that the notion of a “UK based IP” is nonsense. Geolocation databases work by figuring out where people log in from and only after doing a lot of pattern recognition do those addresses get associated with that location. I support the cause, but I don't think that's true. RIPE, the RIR responsible for UK, makes available a list of allocations per country. For UK: https://stat.ripe.net/data/country…

[deleted]

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#84

Post by N0RMAN »

Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

I don’t understand the IP location criticism at all. At least for my experience across Europe all locations that are being reported by the common databases are within 250km of the actual customer.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#86

Post by landl0rd »

mlhpdx wrote: post #81
Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

I don’t agree that choosing to host a website without limiting the audience is innocent. It’s a choice, and has been the default for a long time, but it means one has chosen to speak outside the borders of their own country and that comes with rules, like them or not.

No, one has chosen to make something available for contact within one country. One is not actively himself reaching across borders to do so. One cannot reasonably be required to take any affirmative action to fulfill the whims of a foreign government.

Also, Britain isn't important enough to make this stick against e.g. an American.

If someone writes me a letter asking a question about material that is prohibited in his own country, that is not my problem. It is his responsibility to comply with local law and that of local government to seize material that is illegal there. They cannot deputize me to act, unpaid and without consent, on their behalf.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#87

Post by tankenmate »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #47
flumpcakes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, geo-IP is not perfect, but it's not built on pure guessing like the author implies.

Yeh it's the sub-country data that's often bad, not the national stuff.

Not true, IP addresses are sold on, or even from time to time IP addresses are even leased (they can be transferred from RIRs, temporarily or permanently). Some times IP address ranges are registered with RIR but used in a different geography / region.

Geo-IP databases are mostly accurate, emphasis on mostly.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#88

Post by Hizonner »

N0RMAN wrote: post #84
Hizonner wrote: post #55

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular . That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. It was obvious from the minute t…

I don’t understand the IP location criticism at all. At least for my experience across Europe all locations that are being reported by the common databases are within 250km of the actual customer.

The criticism is that it exists, which invites abuse. Being more accurate would be worse.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#89

Post by holbrad »

vitus wrote: post #56
crtasm wrote: post #34

>This is demonstrably false. By testing from.. a single VPN IP? And as noted in other comments here he doesn't seem to understand how geo ip databases are maintained. I sure won't be asking this guy to represent me anytime soon.

The combative stance that he's taking really doesn't do him any favors in resolving the issue. Lawyer: "I've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is blocked." Regulators: "We've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is not blocked." In what world is the correct response "Dear regulators, you're incompetent. Pound sand." instead of "Can you share the IP address you used so my client can address this in their…

I this is exactly how you should respond to outrageous demands.

The UK should pound sand.

Re: IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

#90

Post by pbhjpbhj »

So the author repeats that the SaSu site was geoblocked but simultaneously note that all UK are idiots that don't realise a geoblock is imperfect and claim...

>The UK regulator has now publicly confirmed that the “mirror” site for my client’s site is not accessible in the UK.

The writer then proceeds to describe the way in which the spinning up of a mirror lead to the site becoming available for people in the UK. And the author protests that:

>The reasons why SaSu had a mirror are SaSu’s alone/none of Ofcom’s fucking business; [...]

The way it is written makes for a string suspicion that SaSu thought they could obviate OSA with a cheeky mirror (standard fare for torrent sites - who also wish to bypass censorship - I gather) and got caught. I can't see why else the author would be so vociferous, nor how the mirror wouldn't block the very same UK addresses as the main-site except by design.

Suicide is illegal here (there is movement on this, thankfully). Helping people do illegal things, also illegal. Facilitating such help, also illegal. There seems no need to stoop to imagining some weird conspiracy or blaming a cabal of shadowy figures.

I guess you could think of it like we treat helping people kill themselves like USA treats UK people facilitating copyright infringement.

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