I made a habit of posting information I found about the UK Online Safety Act (and similar laws to it) in a previous discussion thread on the subject. This thread will continue that as a way of keeping users informed on it. I will try my best to post relevant information about the bill, ways other sites are reacting to it, government official’s comments on it, official policy positions made by governments in response to it, among other things that I believe are relevant to ADISC regarding how the bill effects the internet. Other users are welcome to contribute their own findings too.
**As a request, please keep discussion around the topics to a minimum unless they’re related to how ADISC can deal with the results of the bill or questions/answers/clarifications about what certain information means or implies. This thread is largely meant to be informational and matter-of-fact for ease of reading. **
Very interesting. I’ll be watching to see how this plays out. I recently heard the news that Android is going to start restricting the ability to “sideload” apps starting next year. Let’s just say I am getting more concerned.
“45. If the Court determines that Ofcom is an instrumentality of the UK, then Ofcom’s activities constitute “commercial activity” carried on in the United States under 28 USCS §1605(a)(2), and Ofcom is not immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States for such activity. Therefore, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act would not bar this suit regardless of whether Ofcom is viewed as a corporation or as a state actor.”
Why can’t 4chan just block UK access like this site did?
Im pretty sure if many websites blocked UK access, it might get the law reversed. It’s happened before. Remember learning about when alcohol was illegal in the US? How did that work?
they could, but they do not want to be deputized by the UK government in enforcing their laws, especially since OFCom is demanding they pay fines and royalties to them as apart of compliance. They want to prove they’re not obligated to censor on behalf of the UK.
If 4chan (and Kiwifarms) are successful in their lawsuit, it would mean the majoriry of hosters online (since the USA basically dominates the internet) would not have to follow this law.
That would mean it’d be on OFCom to block the sites in the UK, which will lead to the same exact effect as you described.
Most big tech companies are enforcing this UK law on US citizens too, hiding content until an ID is shown even if you’re American, meaning Americans are having content censored because of a law that their congress didn’t even pass.
The goal here is to prove that the United States government will not enforce anything the UK threatens, and thus there’s no consequences to not complying with the law in the USA. That means that only UK services will have to comply with the censor, and American services will have to be blocked in totality by Ofcom. This frees website operators in the USA from having to maintain UK blocks and instead puts it on the duty of Ofcom to do it instead.
That was reversed because the amount of crime that spawned from people not complying was worse than just regulating and taxing alcohol.
Social attitudes also shifted over time as well and as Congress represented the will of the people on that subject, so when there was enough support in the House and Senate, and prohibition was removed from the constitution.
I’m not a legal or historical expert on this subject, so I’d suggest doing your own research on it as well.
Also there can be a result that if Ofcom tries to fine or otherwise hurt anything in the USA, that actually means they are doing business in the USA so they are not immune from US court decisions, so those companies can sue Ofcom back. It seems Ofcom is not the UK government, it’s a private organization. It even could result that USA simply bans Ofcom out from its territory.
It would be very strange if a company that does business in the UK or the EU or Australia wouldn’t need to comply with the regulations in the country they do business. If a country or a group of countries impose regulations on businesses to check if a user is of a certain age or they should be honest about the data they collect and how they use that data the company should comply. Otherwise don’t do business in those countries. There are a lot of companies that change their policies and things like that because they want to do business in other parts of the world. This is bully behavior 101 and very typical
I think the Internet is special because normally a website can be visited from anywhere in the world. Small websites, which don’t perform any business in other countries simply won’t be able to comply and pay local lawyers everywhere if all countries start to impose their arbitrary rules on the Internet.
The argument is that neither 4chan or Kiwifarms are not doing business in the UK. They’re in the United States with no assets or business registration in the UK, because of that, they’re not subject to the jurisdiction of the UK. The United States thus has no reason to respect the demands of the UK government as the UK has no control over what happens in America.
That said, the UK government can pressure their own internet service providers to blacklist or block noncomplying services from UK based companies (like internet service providers), but that’s the job of the UK, not the United States, to enforce as that’s their law enacted by their Parliament in their territory, not a law enacted by a federal or state Congress in the United States.
the golden dome
