[HN Gopher] We do not have sufficient links to the UK for Online...
___________________________________________________________________
We do not have sufficient links to the UK for Online Safety Act to
be applicable
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 277 points
Date : 2025-10-25 17:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (libera.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (libera.chat)
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| > Speaking of which, the memo implies that "significance" in this
| context is interpreted as being relative to the population of the
| UK, not relative to the user base of the service. We have seen
| risk assessments that take the other interpretation and consider
| their UK user base to be "significant" because it makes up a
| large portion of their overall user base, but the advice we
| received suggests we should not use this interpretation.
|
| Interesting - this implies that the vast majority of niche
| communities are not considered to be in scope, so long as they're
| not on a service like Discord I guess.
| delichon wrote:
| The frog wants a plan for when they inevitably turn up the heat
| by reinterpreting significance. The time to hop out may be now.
| kelnos wrote:
| Perhaps, but this sort of thing is a part of the problem: the
| law itself is written vaguely enough that Ofcom could at any
| time change their interpretation and decide that previously
| out-of-scope communities are now in-scope, and go after them.
|
| It's just a variation of selective enforcement.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Laws in general tend to leave a bit of room for
| interpretation, and then those are to be cemented in specific
| contexts/scenarios by precedents, that's how I understand
| many systems of law at at least, maybe it works differently
| where Libera.chat and Ofcom are based.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think its more about the degree.
|
| Some level of flexibility makes sense. That leaves room to
| enforce the intent instead of the technicalities.
|
| However if its too broad, then you've basically thrown away
| rule of law. If everyone is arguably in violation but a
| government official decides who to enforce, esentially you
| just have justice by decree.
| HotGarbage wrote:
| Does that mean a significant population of Britbongs are on
| 4chan?
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Really grateful that a project like this took on the task to ask
| for legal advice, and extra kudos for actually releasing a
| statement based on their understanding of the legal advice.
| Hopefully will be useful to lots of similar organizations.
|
| Libera.chat seems to say that even if Ofcom thinks they have a
| case, they don't as Libera's user base doesn't have enough UK
| users:
|
| > The exact fraction of the UK's online population that must use
| a given service to be considered "significant" is unknown, but
| based on our counsel's observations of Ofcom's previous
| regulatory actions, it appears to be much higher than our
| internal estimates of how large our UK user base is.
|
| Related submission with 788 comments from ~1 week ago: "4Chan
| Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45614148
| blibble wrote:
| significant can mean anything ofcom want it to
|
| their entire post is sophistry and wishful thinking, neither of
| which will work if ofcom decide to go after them
|
| the intention of the OSA is to attempt to regulate user-to-user
| communications services, of which IRC is one
|
| they're probably right that they're near bottom of the list
| though
|
| (at least until this blog post ends up on their desk monday
| morning)
| Daviey wrote:
| If they were persued, I assume they'd shut down. At the same
| time, a new IT service called "freechat" or "librenode" would
| start up.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > significant can mean anything ofcom want it to
|
| You're right in the sense that they can pursue whomever they
| want based on whatever interpretation of "significant" they
| may hold. But it is not Ofcom that ultimately decides on the
| meaning of the term, that is for a court to decide and that
| court would likely rely on the same authorities and
| principles that Libera's lawyers did in their advice.
| blibble wrote:
| > But it is not Ofcom that ultimately decides on the
| meaning of the term, that is for a court to decide and that
| court would likely rely on the same authorities and
| principles that Libera's lawyers did in their advice.
|
| assuming of course libera don't fold the moment they
| receive a nastygram ("enforcement notice")
|
| like they did when andrew lee commandeered freenode
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| They weren't in a strong legal position then: a few
| mistakes over the course of decades substantially
| weakened their ability to fight back against Andrew Lee
| (without significant personal expense). Libera's legal
| structure is much stronger, and (importantly) the Ofcom
| has nothing to gain from going after them. (Libera
| aren't, after all, part of the problem.)
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I think you are putting too much faith in the courts. They
| are independent, but they have shown time and again that
| they will interpret the law how they like. They don't live
| in a vacuum and they certainly aren't free from, or blind
| to political considerations that influence their decisions,
| like the rest of us. Ofcom are very clearly the sort of
| people who want to apply the most open ended and widespread
| use of the powers they can in a misguided effort to save
| the public from themselves and i have very little
| confidence that our judges are not cut from the same cloth.
| I won't go so far as to say they would collude with ofcom,
| but i do think they are more likely to side with them over
| the defendants, however weak the case may be.
|
| The problem is the law is worded in the vaguest way
| possible and ofcom in exceptionally bad faith have refused
| to give any clear guidance on what they will and won't
| prosecute. Our politicians in their arrogance have passed
| this law, so expect no help from them.
| cedws wrote:
| Not sure why your comment has been received negatively when
| it seems to be obviously true. Yes, "significant" is
| ambiguous and I wouldn't be surprised if the intention is to
| give themselves discretion to go after whoever they choose.
| The OSA is insidious.
| cft wrote:
| In these games involving companies with no physical presence
| in the UK, OfCom has only two realistic enforcement
| strategies:
|
| 1. Arrest the founders or officers at the UK border if they
| attempt to enter.
|
| 2. Direct UK ISPs to block access to their services.
|
| Let's see if they are so PR-insensitive that they will want
| to actually do that.
| pmontra wrote:
| 3. Ask for extradition.
| cft wrote:
| "No US citizen was extradited for an alleged crime while
| the person was based in the US"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_t
| rea...
| f33d5173 wrote:
| According to tfa they're based in sweden
| betaby wrote:
| libera.chat servers are hosted by volunteers. Most of the
| libera.chat infra are the the same servers which were
| switched from freenode in 2021. Existence of the non-
| profit in Sweden changes nothing, that entity can be
| closed without any adverse effect for the IRC.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Many flights connect through London.
| bccdee wrote:
| Right, but that's option 1 (arrest them if they enter the
| uk).
| neilv wrote:
| Good insights.
|
| 1. Do you think that getting the legal advice was a good
| defensive measure?
|
| (Something to point to, to establish that they were being
| responsible, if ever challenged.)
|
| 2. And do you think that publicizing it was a good idea?
|
| (Probably they are drawing fire on Monday morning, like you
| said. But maybe it's a plausibly good tactical move because,
| just speculating here, someone now takes the time to pay
| attention to who they are, rather than them later land on
| some poorly-informed list of non-compliants that gets rubber-
| stamped for action.)
| consumer451 wrote:
| For anyone who read the post title incorrectly, as I did
| initially:
|
| Libera.chat: an IRC network
|
| LibreChat: an open-source chat application that supports multiple
| AI models and provides a UI similar to ChatGPT
|
| I was only familiar with the latter, which is a very cool and
| useful project. Currently reading up on the prior.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| It used to be that a lot of free and open source developers
| would hang out on Freenode IRC to communicate with users; then
| things happened, and Libera was forked from Freenode.
| immibis wrote:
| I guess you're one of today's 10,000 learning about IRC.
|
| It used to be as well known as HTTP. How times have changed.
| kelnos wrote:
| I was expecting/hoping that the legal advice was that an IRC
| network isn't subject to the law, but it seems like the only
| advice here was "you're based in Sweden and have only trivial
| ties to the UK, so the UK/Ofcom can't reasonably go after you".
|
| That feels like a kinda "duh" thing? Even though the UK believes
| they can enforce this law abroad, if I were running a service
| outside of UK jurisdiction that would otherwise be subject to the
| Online Safety Act, I certainly wouldn't comply with it.
| deadbabe wrote:
| If you step foot in the UK, you would be arrested on the spot.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There's a lot of non-UK world to walk around in.
| iamnothere wrote:
| That seems like not a big deal? I never intend to travel to
| Russia either, or even go near its airspace.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| In what universe is that "not a big deal?" That makes an
| entire country a no-go zone. Worse if it's an offense they
| could reasonably extradite for.
|
| I don't intend to ever travel to Russia or North Korea, but
| that's not some trivial anecdote about modern life, those
| are regimes so hostile to rule of law and individual safety
| that it's not reasonable to travel there.
|
| What if there's a conference you want to go to, but it's in
| the UK? Or you have friends you want to visit? Or family,
| or whatever.
|
| That's also an egregious degradation of the UK's position
| with regard to Western-norms around personal liberties,
| which itself is worthy of remark.
| mantas wrote:
| Some people have friends/family/etc in Russia too yet it
| does not make it less of a shitty country. Here in
| Lithuania we there's at least one or two sob stories
| every year about somebody visiting relatives in (bela)rus
| and ending up in prison there.
|
| I'm more afraid that anglosphere is showing the way for
| the rest of west-y world. Looking at chat control stuff
| and all that jazz, it's matter of time same stuff becomes
| a thing in the rest ,,free" world.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > those are regimes so hostile to rule of law and
| individual safety that it's not reasonable to travel
| there
|
| And now the UK joins the ranks as well. I should add that
| the US is also a member of this club if you're foreign or
| you appear to be foreign, we are no paragon of virtue
| either.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| The uk is "so hostile to the rule of law and individual
| safety that it's not reasonable to travel there" because
| ... if you break the UK's laws they might arrest you?
|
| Is this a Poe's Law comment?
| iamnothere wrote:
| Vietnam has extremely strict laws about drugs, but they
| have the good sense to limit the applicability of those
| laws to Vietnamese soil. I have no problem traveling to
| Vietnam just because I might have once smoked a doobie in
| the US, because Vietnam also has no problem with that.
| While on VN soil, respect VN laws. Fine by me.
|
| The UK on the other hand seems to have forgotten this
| basic, common approach to international relations and
| criminal jurisdiction, so if you work on any foreign
| technology or content that could be targeted by the UK
| government, it's better to stay away.
|
| (Yes I am aware that the US also doesn't obey this
| principle, but that doesn't make it right.)
| Vespasian wrote:
| I (a layman) believe that part of the "global" scope of
| the law is to enable actions at home (and some pressure).
|
| If they want to order ISPs to block services there needs
| to be some legal framework to do so. "We contacted them,
| they didn't respond, now we need to revert to blocking"
| sounds pretty convincing to me.
|
| For your other argument I'll ask the question I ask
| anytime this comes up: How would you propose
| laws/regulations on online services are enforced if not
| (at least in principle) globally?
| iamnothere wrote:
| Order local ISPs to block the site, forbid companies
| and/or individuals with local presence from doing
| business with the site, or I dunno, maybe require
| everyone in the country to install an MITM cert like some
| backwater autocracy. Not really my problem how you want
| to run your own country. No country should have the right
| to enforce laws globally.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Most UK domestic ISP's are part of the IWF (Internet
| Watch Foundation) where your net passes through a
| transparent squid proxy. [0]
|
| As well as "family friendly filters" that block rouge
| sites via their own DNS.
|
| [0] https://www.blocked.org.uk/about
|
| And if you're a person of interest your connection is
| routes through GCHQ Cheltenham.
|
| So it wouldn't be to hard for Ofcom to apply a filter. If
| they did expect domestic ISPs will comply but hopefully
| independent ISPs won't.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Ironically, as a UK citizen who _may_ have once smoked a
| doobie, I could be prevented from entering the US, even
| though it is 'more legal' there than here. It hasn't
| stopped me before, of course; what's stopping me now is
| the current administration and a fear I may be abused by
| the US authorities for any manner of reasons (including
| none).
|
| I find it interesting how the shrinking of the world via
| the internet may result in more international isolation
| because of conflicting online laws.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > even though it is 'more legal' there than here.
|
| Using cannabis is 100% illegal in every part of the US.
| The idea that it's legal in some states is a common
| misconception, but not true.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Are you saying that if you sell drugs into Vietnam as the
| supplier and origin and person who profits, then you go
| there, they won't arrest you?
|
| If you forge Vietnamese money but you do it outside their
| border, they won't arrest you if you go there because
| (from your other comment) "No country should have the
| right to enforce laws globally"?
|
| This seems unlikely, and like you are cherry picking the
| UK because the example is digital and this is HN.
| iamnothere wrote:
| If I open a store in my home country where I sell goods
| that are legal (for me) and a citizen of a _foreign_
| country travels to me to purchase something that is
| illegal (for them), I should not be legally liable, no.
|
| Whether that travel happens physically or digitally is of
| no concern to me.
|
| I suppose you may make the argument that the internet is
| more like shipping a package than handing something over
| a counter to a traveler. I don't think this applies. At
| _most_ it's like the customer sends a neutral
| intermediary to make a purchase /pickup, where that
| intermediary tells me nothing about the customer except a
| vague idea of their location (which may be inaccurate).
| In this case it's the intermediary, or one of the many
| intermediaries in the chain, who actually "imports" the
| item.
|
| If you want to block content, start there with the
| "importer". China already understands this well, I don't
| know why the UK hasn't caught on other than a desire to
| force its own local standards on Americans. We won't
| stand for it.
|
| (Your example about forged currency is as absurd as an
| example about nuclear weapons or attempting to organize
| revolution. Yes, some things cross the threshold into a
| critical economic/military issue and all bets are off at
| that point.)
| betaby wrote:
| > That makes an entire country a no-go zone.
|
| There are plenty of countries like that.
|
| > but it's in the UK? Or you have friends you want to
| visit? Or family, or whatever.
|
| Then yes, if on a individual level that affects you, you
| have to be careful. Like citizens of China or Russia, or
| Saudi Arabia. Welcome to the club, UK, I guess?
| dalmo3 wrote:
| What if you're flying to France and your plane has to make
| an emergency landing in the UK?
|
| Genuine question.
| iamnothere wrote:
| After what happened to Durov I'm not so eager to travel
| there either. Frankly, given the escalating hostility of
| the EU to technological freedom, it's becoming a no-go
| zone for me. Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and NZ are still
| nice to visit, though. It's a big world.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Only a small minority of people use planes in the first
| place
| nmeagent wrote:
| You'd better carefully check the flight path of every
| longer distance route then, otherwise you may find yourself
| unexpectedly crossing the airspace of countries like Russia
| (e.g. IME Newark to Hong Kong flew over the polar region
| and right through the middle of Siberia).
| iamnothere wrote:
| This is trivial to check, but yes it's a good idea to
| check this for anyone who works on sensitive technology.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Honestly though, I've done almost all the travel to the UK I
| need. It would be kind of an outlaw badge if honor to be
| banned from a first world country for something like sharing
| memes they don't like.
| jszymborski wrote:
| IANAL and this is a genuine question: do you have personal
| liability in this case if your website is owned and operated
| by a corp?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| In a democracy, the question is "it depends on your
| pockets, aka how much money you have for a lawyer" -
| intentional / felony level misconduct can pierce corporate
| veils.
|
| In an autocracy, you're at God's mercy.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| Yes . Controlling individuals also are liable. https://www.
| ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli...
| msla wrote:
| The King of Thailand is an asshole.
|
| There. Now I can't go to Thailand.
|
| Why do people act like breaking British law is a bigger deal
| than breaking Thai law?
|
| At least nobody's acting like it's obvious British law
| applies everywhere, like they tend to do with the GDPR.
|
| Turns out, laws end at the limits of the jurisdiction's
| ability to enforce them! What a concept!
| tjpnz wrote:
| Unless you're from China.
| bawolff wrote:
| That's not how i read the article.
|
| The crux of it was not that libera has no ties to the uk - they
| appearently do, allegedly some of their servers and staff are
| there - its that they have insufficient market penetration.
| busymom0 wrote:
| > TL;DR: the legal firm we've engaged has sent us a memo
| indicating that in their opinion we can reasonably argue we do
| not have sufficient links to the UK for the Online Safety Act to
| be applicable to us. They also believe we would be at low risk of
| attempted enforcement action even if Ofcom does consider us to be
| in-scope for the OSA. We will continue to ensure that this is the
| case by keeping internal estimates of our UK user base and by
| continuing with our current efforts to keep Libera.Chat
| reasonably safe. We have no plans to institute any ID
| requirements for the forseeable future.
|
| Is it just me or is this not super confidence inspiring for what
| happens in the future? This just seems like an arbitrary time in
| future when they either have enough UK users or if Ofcom suddenly
| lowers or entirely removes the arbitrary "size" estimate, OSA
| will become applicable? As far as I can tell, we don't even know
| what this arbitrary "size" estimate is?
| toast0 wrote:
| Sure, but if you're forward looking, the rules could change and
| it's not predictable.
|
| This kind of a memo is a useful CYA. An interpretation of the
| current situation and likely risk factors, and _when_ the
| situation changes in the future, an artifact that justifies
| their current non-compliance. Will Ofcom /courts accept it and
| not require compliance if the situation changes? No, but it
| might eliminate or reduce penalties for non-compliance.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think the goal is not to provide confidence (at least not
| artificially so). The situation is just not great. This letter:
|
| * At least reassures their users that _they_ are doing their
| best, at least, even though that might not be much.
|
| * Emphasizes the difficulty of the situation that the UK
| created.
|
| * Shares, at least, a description of the advice they got
| (properly caveated that they or their lawyers weren't giving
| anybody actual legal advice).
| portaouflop wrote:
| > end result is the same: a denial of service to people in the UK
| solely because of the country they live in.
|
| This would also probably help sway the public opinion in the UL
| to stop electing representatives that come up with laws like this
| - so a win either way.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Are you making a common mistake of assuming laws like this
| don't represent public opinon?
|
| https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...
|
| Middle England is conservative and authoritarian.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| To steel-man this - the public have become more wary of the
| internet's influence on society generally:
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/technology/trackers/how-
| optimist...
|
| If you consider all we know about the excesses and influences
| of big tech companies, and then blunt that down to a more lay
| perspective, it's pretty easy to understand why we've landed
| up here.
|
| People have lost faith in us.
| NanoCoaster wrote:
| > People have lost faith in us.
|
| That's a very powerful way to sum up what I've been feeling
| for a while.
|
| People did lose faith, and to be honest, I can't really
| blame them. From a layman's perspective, it's not obvious
| that there's a distinction between "Big Tech" and other so-
| called "providers of services" (the term itself feels kind
| of icky) in the internet. Throw the "Tech Bro" term in
| there and things get even more difficult.
|
| I'm guessing a lot of people never really knew about
| forums, chat communities and other things like that
| existing outside of the big social media companies' mostly-
| walled gardens. Maybe they heard some scary things about
| 4chan, well, that'll help.
|
| To many of them, it's the little man vs. the big tech
| companies that skirted regulations for way too long. That
| there's a possible third party (or rather, category)
| involved is not obvious from the outside.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Yeah, sadly the average thought on this law starts and ends
| with "think of the children" and "it's just like buying
| alcohol"
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Nobody wants this law but it's very common in the UK and
| Europe to pretend consultations make it a democratic process
| with good representation when it's just the typical power
| hungry politicians, security forces and corporate lobbyists
| getting their way. It's not middle England or
| "conservatives". It's usually approved by the parliamentary
| monoparty of the current time and the entire pretense on
| dissent is usually performance for different set of BS.
|
| Of course it's useful to have people like you make it about
| fake left v right tribalism so you don't realize how far from
| a democracy these parliamentary systems are.
| Nursie wrote:
| It seems to come up a lot in reference to laws like the UK
| one, the Australian social media ban for under 16s and all
| sorts of similar measures around and about.
|
| It's the end of democracy in country X! The government's
| taking away the people's rights to x, y and z!
|
| I mean, kinda, but it's also hugely popular. Regular folks
| want their kids protected from some of this stuff, don't
| believe that Silicon Valley and allied tech bros have their
| best interest at heart (and shouldn't) and will readily vote
| for it.
|
| Heck, I don't have kids and I'm broadly in favour of the
| principle of keeping kids off social media, it's just very
| hard to answer "what exactly do you mean by social media?" or
| "how are we going to do this without impacting adults'
| ability to interact freely?"
| donohoe wrote:
| Not a lawyer but from depths of GDPR meetings and implementation
| work years ago, my understanding was if you do not have any
| exposure in a given jurisdiction (typically office or employees
| etc) then you can tell them to get lost.
|
| UK should not be able to regulate nature of photons being sent
| from outside of their borders.
|
| What am I missing?
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| I've wondered why more people don't talk about this approach.
| Is it because you might get arrested if you ever do step foot
| in the UK?
| bee_rider wrote:
| It comes up in every thread about this sort of thing. It is
| basically true, although keep in mind that the UK is
| basically a "friendly" country to most of the other countries
| that are in the sort of... liberal/capitalist/democracy
| clique, so hypothetically it wouldn't be that surprising if
| some of our countries ended up with some reciprocity some day
| for the fines or whatever.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| If you physically transit through UK jurisdiction then they
| could arrest you through a Commonwealth wide warrant. Say, you
| go to the Bahamas then your name might pop up on the computer
| and you get collared and deported to Britain. If you're an
| executive then they will happily grab you.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There's no reason to assume that a totally different law in a
| different country works the same way as GDPR does.
| bn-l wrote:
| I really don't get it. Just blanket block all UK ips. All sites
| should be doing this--large or small. I'm going to on my small
| blog even.
| gary_0 wrote:
| The Internet no longer interprets censorship as damage and
| routes around it[0]. Instead, it is interpreted it as an
| opportunity to raise the barrier of entry for competitors, and
| embraced.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_(activist)#Activi...
| antihero wrote:
| There's like 70m of us and most people will just use
| competitors as opposed to bothering with VPNs. So you're
| shooting yourself in the foot, financially.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Sucks for people trying to make money then, but that's hardly
| a sympathetic case. Sounds like the UK are the ones truly
| shooting themselves in the foot. Again.
| FlameRobot wrote:
| There is a huge amount of UK infra now that is dependant on
| US companies either directly or indirectly (AWS,
| Microsoft/Azure). Code, data and infra is locked into US
| platforms. When US-EAST-1 when down last week, it halted our
| whole operations at our workplace. Looking at freelancer
| groups I am part of (whatsapp, slack etc), they had the same
| experience.
|
| The UK being blocked from the outside won't happen anyway.
| The large tech giants will just either cut a deal (this
| already happen with Apple/iCloud), or they will comply with
| the new acts. The sites that don't comply won't be big enough
| for anyone to care in normie land and thus there will be no
| real pressure on the UK gov.
| loeg wrote:
| Oh no, our websites will only be accessible by 99.15% of the
| world's population and 97% of its economy. Irreparable
| financial harm.
| tremon wrote:
| Given that the average adult height in the UK is slightly
| below 1m70, that means there's almost 42 of you!
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I agree 100% and say that as somebody from Britain. The
| population needs to feel the pain of restrictions so that they
| will force the Labour government to rescind this law. Simply
| doing what this website is doing is simply going along with the
| problem. A blanket ban from the rest of the world will cause
| uproar (hopefully).
| FlameRobot wrote:
| I don't think that would happen. Most of the large tech
| platforms will essentially just comply or come to a deal e.g.
| The IPA Demand for the UK gov to have a global backdoor
| iCloud was only rescinded when some deal was made between the
| current US administration and the UK gov.
|
| The smaller companies like 4chan are going to court to have
| the matter settled. If that is settled in 4chan's favour,
| legally the UK won't be able to do anything.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| That might work if it was an instantaneous global move.
| Unfortunately, we're far more likely to be boiled like frogs.
| b800h wrote:
| Agree (as a Brit). If Wikipedia blocked the UK, it would
| cause an absolute storm.
| w14 wrote:
| You don't need to do this for your blog. Comments on "provider
| content" are out of scope. [1] This was done mainly to protect
| legacy press and media comments sections but it applies equally
| to a blog comments section.
|
| [1] - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/55
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| We should fight this injustice rather than submit to it.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > We have a few servers in the UK, but they can be migrated on
| short notice.
|
| You should do that as soon as possible. You don't escape past
| "violations" by dealing with them when they are discovered. Plus
| the presence of servers in the UK is easily enough for Ofcom to
| go after you, even if they ultimately lose their case. There's no
| benefit to keeping those UK servers.
|
| > we can reasonably argue we do not have sufficient links to the
| UK for the Online Safety Act to be applicable to us.
|
| > keeping internal estimates of our UK user base
|
| The fact that you know you have UK users is also almost certainly
| enough for Ofcom to go after you. Did 4chan have any stronger
| links to the UK? I don't think so.
|
| I'm not saying they should give in and follow the OSA but I think
| they're being pretty naive about how reasonable Ofcom is.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| What a waste of limited resources. What happened to the libre
| anti copyright hackers and piraters from the 90s? It's effete,
| getting a lawyer. Better to draw a picture of Steimer covered in
| feces and fax 10000 copies to parliament
| immibis wrote:
| What happened is that governments successfully figured out how
| to police the internet. Except for Tor. For some reason though,
| we're still not layering everything on top of Tor.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I don't really think libera has or has ever had that kind of
| ethos or aesthetic. It is used by a lot of serious people and
| projects that are not directly involved with copyright politics
| and have no interest in cosplaying as ThePirateBay.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| the 150,000 or so people who still actively use IRC networks
| absolutely have a major crossover with these.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Sure, no argument there.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| There is an interesting sentence in the post that shows why you
| want to ask actual lawyers, even if the law actually meant what
| one would think based on a common-sense reading of the text (it
| often doesn't) and you could read it (you often can't, because
| you might not know about a second law that also applies):
|
| > For the time being, services like ours do not appear to be
| Ofcom's priority.
|
| Lawyers don't just tell you how the law is interpreted, but also
| how it's applied _in practice_. Often, bad law is worked around
| by the legal system rather than fixing it, and while one could
| rightfully lament this, if your goal is to get something done
| rather than fix the country 's legal system... ask a lawyer and
| you might find yourself unblocked, or be told about a way to
| avoid the issue, or at least have a better understanding how big
| the risk is _in practice_ , allowing you to make an informed
| decision.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, the purpose of regulators applying law differently in
| practice is so that government administrations can play
| kingmaker and receive appropriate rewards.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they can't visit the UK right ? As the UK has
| jurisdiction over them , if they are physically there.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Several comments here are interpreting this as the common "we
| just don't care about the UK's jurisdiction". That is not what
| Libera.chat is saying. They have staff in the UK, users in the
| UK, and are, in their interpretation, _abiding by the terms of
| the OSA_. Their interpretation is that the ID verification
| requirement doesn 't apply to their service, for the reasons they
| outline in the article.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| That's great, what about when Europe does the same?
|
| https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...
|
| It's a corporate lobbyst push and UK/Australia are just the
| canaries in the coalmine.
|
| You won't escape it by being "they didn't quite come for me yet".
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