[HN Gopher] In memoriam
___________________________________________________________________
In memoriam
Author : ColinWright
Score : 180 points
Date : 2025-02-23 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)
| chris_wot wrote:
| Apparently the law is dreadfully written. I was reading the
| lobste.rs thread and wow, it's like they took a programming
| course in goto and it statements and applied it to the law...
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I had the complete opposite impression from that thread. It
| seemed like people were politically motivation to interpret the
| law in a certain way, so they could act like they were being
| coerced.
|
| These closures are acts of protest, essentially.
|
| I agree with @teymour's description of the law. It is totally
| normal legislation.
| Izmaki wrote:
| "Furry.energy"? With a total of 49 members? My World of Warcraft
| guild has more active players...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This is exactly the point, isn't it? The smallest websites are
| destroyed, leaving only the megacorps.
| twinkjock wrote:
| That is not the stated purpose of the law and there is
| recourse built into it. Too often folks view these laws as
| binaries where none exists.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's never the _stated_ purpose of the law, but we might do
| well to be concerned with what it actually does rather than
| what the proponents claim it would do.
|
| Recourse doesn't matter for a sole proprietorship. If they
| have to engage with a lawyer whatsoever, the site is dead
| or blocked because they don't have the resources for that.
| kelnos wrote:
| What recourse? A small, 5o-member community doesn't have
| the resources to ensure they're in compliance, and Ofcom's
| statement about how smaller players are "unlikely" to be
| affected is not particularly reassuring.
|
| The "stated purpose" is irrelevant. Even if they are being
| honest about their stated purpose (questionable), the only
| thing that matters is how it ends up playing out in
| reality.
| Izmaki wrote:
| I'm sure they can find a community elsewhere. Discord comes
| to mind... "Oh but it's illegal", trust me on this: Discord
| only cares if somebody actually reports the server and the
| violations are severe enough.
| jsheard wrote:
| Hexus is a big one, being UK-based and UK-centric they are just
| deleting 24 years of history rather than trying to geoblock
| around it.
| edwinjones wrote:
| Hexus shut down years ago did it not?
| stoobs wrote:
| The reviews/news side did, but the forums kept going until
| this.
| IanCal wrote:
| Right or wrong I think many have misread the legislation or read
| poor coverage of it given people's reasoning.
|
| Much of things boils down to doing a risk assessment and deciding
| on mitigations.
|
| Unfortunately we live in a world where if you allow users to
| upload and share images, with zero checks, you are disturbingly
| likely to end up hosting CSAM.
|
| Ofcom have guides, risk assessment tools and more, if you think
| any of this is relevant to you that's a good place to start.
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
| docflabby wrote:
| it's not that simple - illegal and harmful content can include
| things like hate speech - worth a longer read...
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/online_safety_act/
|
| If I ran a small forum in the UK I would shut it down - not
| worth risk of jail time for getting it wrong.
| docflabby wrote:
| The new rules cover any kind of illegal content that can
| appear online, but the Act includes a list of specific
| offences that you should consider. These are:
| terrorism child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA)
| offences, including grooming image-
| based child sexual abuse material (CSAM) CSAM
| URLs hate harassment, stalking, threats and
| abuse controlling or coercive behaviour
| intimate image abuse extreme pornography
| sexual exploitation of adults human trafficking
| unlawful immigration fraud and financial offences
| proceeds of crime drugs and psychoactive substances
| firearms, knives and other weapons encouraging or
| assisting suicide foreign interference animal
| cruelty
| sepositus wrote:
| > hate
|
| Is it really just listed as one word? What's the legal
| definition of hate?
| tene80i wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_Uni
| ted...
| sepositus wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| > Something is a hate incident if the victim or anyone
| else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice
| based on: disability, race, religion, gender identity or
| sexual orientation.
|
| This probably worries platforms that need to moderate
| content. Sure, perhaps 80% of the cases are clear cut,
| but it's the 20% that get missed and turn into criminal
| liability that would be the most concerning. Not to
| mention a post from one year ago can become criminal if
| someone suddenly decides it was motivated by one of these
| factors.
|
| Further, prejudices in terms of language do change often.
| As bad actors get censored based on certain language,
| they will evolve to use other words/phrases to mean the
| same thing. The government is far more likely to be aware
| of these (and be able to prosecute them) than some random
| forum owner.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| Just want to add that I couldn't find any references to
| gender identity in the linked Wikipedia article as well
| as the article on hate incidents in the UK.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Whatever the current government says it means. What did
| you think it meant?
| bdzr wrote:
| I don't see what the big deal is - Governments don't
| change hands or selectively prosecute.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Hate is whatever I don't like.
| Winblows11 wrote:
| From that list I don't see HN being affected, although I
| read somewhere that a report button on user generated
| content was required to comply for smaller sites.
| guax wrote:
| The good thing about forums is their moderation. It seems
| like mostly what the law covers is already enforced by most
| forums anyways.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| A forum that merely has good moderation is not
| automatically compliant with the act. It requires not just
| doing things, but paperwork that shows that you are doing
| things. The effort to do this well enough to be sure you
| will be in compliance is far beyond what is reasonable to
| ask of hobbyists.
| nsteel wrote:
| I might be falling for what I've read second-hand but isn't
| one of the issues that it doesn't matter where the forum is
| based, if you've got significant UK users it can apply to
| your forum hosted wherever. You've got to block UK users.
| aimazon wrote:
| You're right. Plus, the overreactions have been walked back or
| solved in some cases, e.g: LFGSS is going to continue on as a
| community ran effort which will comply with the risk assessment
| requirements. Most of the shutdowns are on long-dead forums
| that have been in need of an excuse to shutter. The number of
| active users impacted by these shutdowns probably doesn't break
| 100.
| pmlnr wrote:
| > Much of things boils down to doing a risk assessment and
| deciding on mitigations.
|
| So... paperwork, with no real effect, use, or results. And
| you're trying to defend it?
|
| I do agree with need something, but this is most definitely not
| the solution.
| IanCal wrote:
| Putting in mitigations relevant to your size, audience and
| risk factors is not "no real effect".
|
| If you've never considered what the risks are to your users,
| you're doing them a disservice.
|
| I've also not defended it, I've tried to correct
| misunderstandings about what it is and point to a reliable
| primary source with helpful information.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > if you allow users to upload and share images
|
| On my single-user Fedi server, the only person who can directly
| upload and share images is me. But because my profile is
| public, it's entirely possible that someone I'm following posts
| something objectionable (either intentionally or via
| exploitation) and it would be visible via my server (albeit
| fetched from the remote site.) Does that come under
| "moderation"? Ofcom haven't been clear. And if someone can post
| pornography, your site needs age verification. Does my single-
| user Fedi instance now need age verification because a random
| child might look at my profile and see a remotely-hosted
| pornographic image that someone (not on my instance) has
| posted? Ofcom, again, have not been clear.
|
| It's a crapshoot with high stakes and only one side knows the
| rules.
| guax wrote:
| Seems like an overreaction in some of these. Perhaps the people
| running them were close to the edge and more mental burden just
| pushes them over it.
|
| It's like local US news websites blocking European users over
| GDPR concerns.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Feel free to put a stop to it by buying liability insurance for
| all of these service providers, which you may have to persuade
| the underwriter should be free. ;-)
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| > _It 's like local US news websites blocking European users
| over GDPR concerns._
|
| I don't know if you said this sarcastically, but I have a
| friend in Switzerland who reads U.S. news websites via Web
| Archive or Archive IS _exactly_ because of that.
|
| Accessing some of these news sites returns CloudFlare's "not
| available" in your region message or similar.
| homebrewer wrote:
| It's not just the EU; I'm in a poorer region outside the EU
| and seeing "not available in your region" is quickly becoming
| the norm. Site administrators try to cut down on bot traffic
| (scraping, vulnerability scanners, denial of service, etc)
| and block whole regions they're not interested in.
|
| Hell, we do that ourselves, but only for our own
| infrastructure that isn't expected to be used outside the
| county. Whitelisting your own country and blocking everything
| else cuts out >99% of scrapers and script kiddies.
| guax wrote:
| No sarcasm. I totally understand why a local news website in
| the US would just block since its irrelevant for them any
| traffic from outside the country and they're have little
| resources. I don't judge them from blocking.
|
| Fact is that its very unlikely they would ever face any
| issues about having it not blocked.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So much for the "world wide" web.
| Fokamul wrote:
| I will host public proxied site for these websites, open for UK
| people, just to troll them :D
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| Whilst I don't condone being unlawful (are you sure you want to
| run that risk?), that's the hacker spirit one needs these days.
|
| Being silly to ridicule overreaching laws is top-trolling! Love
| it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The trouble here is that the law is _so_ crazy that third
| parties allowing users in the relevant jurisdiction to access
| the site could result in the site still be liable, so then
| they would have the same reason to block your proxy service
| if a non-trivial number of people were using it.
|
| To do any good you don't want to cause grief for the victims
| of the crazy law, you want to cause grief to its
| perpetrators.
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| Then I guess that'd be a use case of technologies like Tor
| or I2P, properly, securely used.
| bazzargh wrote:
| Worth mentioning that the lawyer who runs
| onlinesafetyact.co.uk, Neil Brown, has its onion address
| in his profile.
|
| https://mastodon.neilzone.co.uk/@neil
|
| http://3kj5hg5j2qxm7hgwrymerh7xerzn3bowmfflfjovm6hycbyfuh
| e6l...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Ofcom have said that they consider geoblocking to be
| sufficient in writing, so at least they would probably lose
| any legal case brought against them.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Which would in turn cause the whole thing to be a farce,
| because then the solution would be for every site to
| geoblock the UK and then every person in the UK to use a
| proxy.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It is.
| kelnos wrote:
| If GP is not a UK citizen and does not live in the UK, how
| would that be unlawful? They're not beholden to or subject to
| UK law. The UK's belief that they can enforce this law on
| non-UK entities is ridiculous.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Charlie Stross's blog is next.
|
| Liability is unlimited and there's no provision in law for being
| a single person or small group of volunteers. You'll be held to
| the same standards as a behemoth with full time lawyers (the
| _stated target_ of the law but the least likely to be affected by
| it)
|
| http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/12/storm-cl...
|
| The entire law is weaponised unintented consequences.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > unintented consequences
|
| Intended consequences no doubt.
| tene80i wrote:
| What standards would you want individuals or small groups to be
| held to? In a context where it is illegal for a company to
| allow hate speech or CSAM on their website, should individuals
| be allowed to? Or do you just mean the punishment should be
| less?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The obvious solution is to have law enforcement enforce the
| law rather than private parties. If someone posts something
| bad to your site, the police try to find who posted it and
| arrest _them_ , and the only obligation on the website is to
| remove the content in response to a valid court order.
| tene80i wrote:
| I don't have a strong view on this law - I haven't read
| enough into it. So I'm interested to know why you believe
| what you've just written. If a country is trying to, for
| example, make harder for CSAM to be distributed, why
| shouldn't the person operating the site where it's being
| hosted have some responsibility to make sure it can't be
| hosted there?
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| For one thing, because that person is not obliged to
| follow due process and will likely ban everything that
| even might even vaguely require them to involve a lawyer.
| See for example YouTube's copyright strikes, which are
| _much_ harsher on the uploader than any existing
| copyright law.
| tene80i wrote:
| Your argument is that it's better to have the illegal
| stuff (say, CSAM) online than for a site owner to, for
| practical reasons, ban a lot of legal stuff too? Why?
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Some sorts of goods should be prioritized over some sorts
| of bads. There would be no terrorism if we locked every
| human in a box and kept them there, yet you do not
| support this position, why? I jest, but I think public
| discourse is an unalloyed good and I would rather we not
| compromise informal small discourse for the sake of anti-
| terrorism, anti-CSAM, etc. These things won't be fully
| rooted out, they'll just go to ground. Discourse will be
| harmed though.
| dcow wrote:
| That is not the argument. The argument is that, with
| appropriate court order, a site operator must take down
| the illegal material (if it hasn't already been moderated
| out). However, the site owner should _not be liable_ for
| that content appearing on their site since it was not put
| there by them and since there is value in uncensored
| /unmoderated online communities. The _person who posted_
| the content should be liable, not the site owner. In
| neither case is the content just freely siting there
| harming the public and unable to be removed because
| nobody is liable for punishment.
|
| I think an interesting alternate angle here would be to
| require unmoderated community admins to keep record of
| real identity info for participants, so if something bad
| shows up the person who posted it is trivially
| identifiable and can easily be reprimanded. This has
| other problems, of course, but is interesting to
| consider.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Let's consider two ways of dealing with this problem:
|
| 1) Law enforcement enforces the law. People posting CSAM
| are investigated by the police, who have warrants and
| resources and so on, so each time they post something is
| another chance to get caught. When they get caught they
| go to jail and can't harm any more children.
|
| 2) Private parties try to enforce the law. The people
| posting CSAM get banned, but the site has no ability to
| incarcerate them, so they just make a new account and do
| it again. Since they can keep trying and the penalty is
| only having to create a new account, which they don't
| really care about, it becomes a cat and mouse game except
| that even if the cat catches the mouse, the mouse just
| reappears under a different name with the new knowledge
| of how to avoid getting caught next time. Since being
| detected has minimal risk, they get to try lots of
| strategies until they learn how to evade the cat, instead
| of getting eaten (i.e. going to prison) the first time
| they get caught. So they get better at evading detection,
| which makes it harder for law enforcement to catch them
| either. Meanwhile the site is then under increasing
| pressure to "do something" because the problem has been
| made worse rather than better, so they turn up the false
| positives and cause more collateral damage to innocent
| people. But that doesn't change the dynamic, it only
| causes the criminals to evolve their tactics, which they
| can try an unlimited number of times until they learn how
| to evade detection again. Meanwhile as soon as they do,
| the site despite their best efforts is now hosting the
| material again. The combined costs of the heroic efforts
| to try and the liability from inevitably failing destroys
| smaller sites and causes market consolidation. The
| megacorps then become a choke point for other censorship,
| some by various governments, others by the corporations
| themselves. That is an evil in itself, but if you like to
| take it from the other side, that evil causes ordinary
| people chafe. So they start to develop and use anti-
| censorship technology. As that technology becomes more
| widespread with greater public support, the perpetrators
| of the crimes you're trying to prevent find it easier to
| avoid detection.
|
| You want the police to arrest the pedos. You don't want a
| dystopian megacorp police state.
| amiga386 wrote:
| How about:
|
| Individuals and small groups not held directly liable for
| comments on their blog unless its proven they're responsible
| for inculcating that environment.
|
| "Safe harbour" - if someone threatens legal action, the host
| can pass on liability to the poster of the comment. They can
| (temporarily) hide/remove the comment until a court decides
| on its legality.
| ta8645 wrote:
| How about have separate laws for CSAM and "hate speech".
| Because CSAM is most likely just a fig-leaf for the primary
| motivation of these laws.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| big DMCA energy
| aimazon wrote:
| There has been new information since that blog post which has
| reaffirmed the "this is much ado about nothing" takes because
| Ofcom have said that they do not want to be a burden on smaller
| sites.
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
|
| "We've heard concerns from some smaller services that the new
| rules will be too burdensome for them. Some of them believe
| they don't have the resources to dedicate to assessing risk on
| their platforms, and to making sure they have measures in place
| to help them comply with the rules. As a result, some smaller
| services feel they might need to shut down completely.
|
| So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that this is
| unlikely to be the case."
| ColinWright wrote:
| "... unlikely ..."
|
| Political winds shift, and if someone is saying something the
| new government doesn't like, the legislation is there to
| utterly ruin someone's life.
| pembrook wrote:
| Nothing more reassuring than a vague "we're unlikely to go
| after you [if you stay on our good side.]"
|
| It's clear the UK wants big monopolistic tech platforms to
| fully dominate their local market so they only have a few
| throats to choke when trying to control the narrative...just
| like "the good old days" of centralized media.
|
| I wouldn't stand in the way of authoritarians if you value
| your freedom (or the ability to have a bank account).
|
| The risk just isn't worth it. You write a blog post that rubs
| someone power-adjacent the wrong way and suddenly you're
| getting the classic _"...nice little blog you have
| there...would be a shame to find something that could be
| interpreted as violating 1 of our 17 problem areas... "_
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.
|
| Uneven enforcement is the goal.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Sovereign is he who makes the exception.
| owisd wrote:
| Changing the code of practice is a years long statutory
| consultation process, they're not going to be able to
| change the rules to go after you on a whim.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Ofcom need to change the law then.
|
| Unless Ofcom actively say "we will NOT enforce the Online
| Safety Act against small blogs", the chilling effect is still
| there. Ofcom need to own this. Either they enforce the bad
| law, or loudly reject their masters' bidding. None of this
| "oh i don't want to but i've had to prosecute this crippled
| blind orphan support forum because one of them insulted islam
| but ny hands are tied..."
| rkachowski wrote:
| > So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that this
| is unlikely to be the case
|
| This is the flimsiest paper thin reassurance. They've built a
| gun with which they can destroy the lives of individuals
| hosting user generated content, but they've said they're
| unlikely to use it.
| transcriptase wrote:
| The Canadian government did the same thing when they
| accidentally outlawed certain shotguns by restricting bore
| diameter without specifying it was for rifles.
|
| A minister tweeted that it didn't apply to shotguns, as if
| that's legally binding as opposed to you know, the law as
| written.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The democrats wrote a bill to hire 60k new armed IRS agents
| and promised they wouldn't be used to go after anyone with
| an income less than 250k. Senator Mike Crapo tried to add
| an ammendment to put that in the bill but they blocked it.
| We have a serious problem with politicians lying about the
| text of bills.
| kelnos wrote:
| While I certainly would prefer that the IRS first and
| foremost go after tax evasion perpetuated by the wealthy
| (if for no other reason than there's likely more bank for
| the buck there), tax law is tax law. If someone making
| less than $250k/yr is evading paying taxes, the IRS
| should go after them just the same as if it was someone
| making $5M/yr.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Usually people complain that the IRS doesn't go after
| >250k. I've never heard anyone argue that they don't go
| after <240k enough. This is why the democrats promised it
| would only be used to go after >250k.
|
| The problem is the dishonesty, saying the intent is one
| thing but being unwilling to codify the stated intent.
| mlfreeman wrote:
| The use of "unlikely" just screams that Ofcom will eventually
| pull a Vader..."We are altering the deal, pray we don't alter
| it any further".
| incompatible wrote:
| "Unlikely," I suppose if you don't have any significant
| assets to be seized and don't care about ending up in prison,
| you may be willing to take the chance.
| fweimer wrote:
| You can try the digital toolkit and see for yourself if this
| is a realistic pathway for a small site (such as a blog with
| a comment function). Personally, I find it puzzling that
| Ofcom thinks what they provide is helpful to small sites.
| Furthermore, they make it pretty clear that they see no
| reason for a purely size-based exemption ("we also know that
| harm can exist on the smallest as well as the largest
| services"). They do not explore ways to reach their goals
| without ongoing collaboration from small site owners, either.
| bdzr wrote:
| > the stated target of the law but the least likely to be
| affected by it
|
| The least likely to be _negatively_ affected. This will
| absolutely be good for them in that it just adds another item
| to the list of things that prevents new entrants from competing
| with them.
| eminent101 wrote:
| This is an honest question. Why does a blog need to shutdown?
| If they moderate every comment before it is published on the
| website, what's the problem? I ask because I've got a UK-based
| blog too. It has got comments feature. Wouldn't enabling
| moderation for all comments be enough?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| No, you still need to do things like write an impact
| assessment etc and you're still on the hook for "illegal"
| comments where you aren't a judge and have to arbitrarily
| decide what might be when you have no legal expertise
| whatsoever.
| eminent101 wrote:
| If I'm moderating all comments before they're published on
| the website, what's the problem? I mean, I've got a simple
| tech blog. I'm not going to publish random drive-by
| comments. Only comments that relate to my blog are ever
| going to be published. Am I making sense?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Does anyone in your blog comments ever discuss
| circumvention of DRM?
|
| That's a criminal offence in the UK (two year prison
| sentence in some circumstances). Do you have a good
| feeling for what might count as incitement in those
| circumstances?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Its very much intended. It's easier for the powers that be to
| deal with a few favored oligarchs. They're building a great
| British firewall like china.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It seems like governments around the world are shifting their
| priorities away from their domestic economies.
| logicchains wrote:
| Shifting their priorities towards stifling the speech of anyone
| who tries to complain about the domestic conditions.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| So, how does all this apply to community discords, slacks, Matrix
| rooms, IRC chats, etc?
|
| Is it discord's responsibility to comply, the admin/moderators,
| or all of the above?
| twinkjock wrote:
| Yes, at least for platforms like Discord, they bear the
| responsibility based on my non-lawyer reading of the plain
| English. YMMV, IANAL.
| kelnos wrote:
| The hosting platform is responsible for compliance. For Discord
| or Slack it's easy, but for Matrix, it might be more fuzzy.
| Certainly the homeserver that is hosting a room would be
| responsible, but would other homeservers that have users who
| are members of the room also be responsible?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You know what's really rich about the OSA?
|
| One of the exemptions is for "Services provided by persons
| providing education or childcare."
| ColinWright wrote:
| Do you have an explicit reference for that?
|
| Not doubting it, but if you have a reference to hand it will
| save me having to search.
|
| If it's just something you remember but _don 't_ have a
| reference then that's OK, I'll go hunting based on your clue.
| bazzargh wrote:
| In the text of the act, schedule 1 part 1 paragraph 10 https:
| //www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/schedule/1/para...
|
| ... unlike the issue of what size of service is covered, this
| isn't a pinky swear by Ofcom.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Super ... many thanks.
| tac19 wrote:
| Safety from dissent, for an authoritarian government. This is
| just weaponized "empathy".
| sepositus wrote:
| Doesn't this act effectively create a new form of DDoS? A bad
| actor can sufficiently flood a platform with enough hate content
| that the moderation team simply cannot keep up. Even if posts
| default to not show, the backlog could be enough to harm a
| service.
|
| And of course, it will turn into yet another game of cat and
| mouse, as bad actors find new creative ways to bypass automatic
| censors.
| riwsky wrote:
| Aka a "heckler's veto":
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler's_veto
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| This already happens but attackers go after hosts and
| registrars.
| maxed wrote:
| Is Hacker News also affected by this act?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Yes.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, but I don't really understand how the UK can expect to
| enforce this law against non-UK entities that don't have any
| employees or physical presence in the UK.
|
| HN/YC could just tell them to go pound sand, no? (Assuming YC
| doesn't have any operations in the UK; I have no idea.)
| milesrout wrote:
| pg lives in Britain if I'm not mistaken.
| mattvr wrote:
| Should order this list by number of affected rather than
| alphabetical IMO. The 275K monthly user platform is almost hidden
| relative to the 49 and 300 user examples.
| v3xro wrote:
| Just another bad UK law not worth knowing about ;)
| logicallee wrote:
| The State of Utopia has published this report on the source of
| funding of Ofcom, the U.K. statutory regulator responsible for
| enforcing the Online Safety Act:
|
| https://medium.com/@rviragh/ofcom-and-the-online-safety-act-...
| cgcrob wrote:
| I am part of a small specialist online technical community. We
| just moved it over to a Hetzner box in Germany and someone there
| is paying for it instead of it being hosted in the UK.
|
| What are you going to do Ofcom?
| kelnos wrote:
| If you live in the UK and can still be linked as an
| operator/organizer of the site (or if it's not you, other UK
| residents), can't they still come after you directly? I don't
| know about you, but I don't think running an online community
| would be worth huge fines to me.
| cgcrob wrote:
| There are no UK residents involved in the organisation or
| operation of it now even though we came up with it.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Non UK sites should IP block UK IPs and create a block page that
| advertises VPNs.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread: _Lobsters blocking UK users because of
| the Online Safety Act_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178
| darnthenuggets wrote:
| What concept allows the UK to (attempt to) enforce this against
| non citizens whose business or life has no ties to their country?
| Plenty of small countries have odd censorship laws but have
| escaped similar legal hand wringing.
| JFingleton wrote:
| The Chaos Engine forums - a site for game developers to discuss,
| moan, and celebrate fellow and former colleagues... Now moved to
| Discord due to this act. It really is a strange time we are
| living through.
|
| https://thechaosengine.com/index.php
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