UK Online Safety Act comes into force today | Hacker News Reader

UK Online Safety Act comes into force today

ofcom.org.uk

32 pointsintunderflow12 comments

The solution is to geoblock the UK, prohibit sales to UK citizens, and strictly forbid any use of your software by UK citizen anywhere in the world.

as a way to coerce the UK government into changing course or are you suggesting it as some sort of punishment... i don't quite get what you mean by "solution"

Presumably to comply with the law in an expedient fashion.

Sometimes, when the law, your code of ethics and/or the license(s) you are operating under conflict, your best/only option under those given circumstances might be to not operate at all .

Lots of US sites geo blocked EU countries as we were not their main audience and it saved them the effort of complying with gdpr.

In my case it is to prevent UK lawsuits or at least being able to show in court that everything was done to comply with UK laws. The products I'm working on use end-to-end encryption and I cannot afford to remove that feature just because one country doesn't allow it.

I would love to offer them to UK citizens, of course.

Seen instances on Lemmy deal with it like this because they feel it’s too difficult to comply even if they could understand what compliance looks like. Total UK user bans.

Is UK slowly committing a suicide? First leaving the EU, now introducing Stasi-like spying practices on its citizens and royally screwing every small business in the IT?

Oh we've been introducing Stasi-like laws for a long time now. I think if we weren't a member of five-eyes most other countries would probably consider us an oppressive state by now.

how are we supposed to identify "Hate Speech"? If someone says something nasty about someone is it hate speech? what if they say it about a group of people? what if they express an opinion about a group of people (like bankers or sailors, or perhaps immigrants from a certain region)? is it bigotry, hate, debate, discourse? this only leads to self-censorship.

The entire point is to induce self-censorship.

The OSA definition of hate is what was already illegal under the 1986 Public Order Act.

That’s technically correct but the act does mention “insulting language” and “intent”. These are subjective outside of a court. Here is the text of the act:

1. Racial Hatred (Part III, Sections 18–23) • Section 18: It is an offense to use threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior, or to display, publish, or distribute written material, if it is intended to stir up racial hatred or if racial hatred is likely to be stirred up. • Section 19-21: Cover publishing, broadcasting, and public performance of material that stirs up racial hatred. • Section 23: Covers possession of inflammatory material with intent to distribute it.

2. Religious and Sexual Orientation Hatred (Part IIIA, Sections 29B–29F) • Section 29B: It is an offense to use threatening words or behavior (but not merely abusive or insulting ones) to stir up religious hatred or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. • Intent is required for conviction (i.e., it must be proven that the person intended to incite hatred).

When this law is left for the CPS and the courts to rule on then that’s fine. When it’s left for private businesses to adjudicate it, it’s outsourcing state censorship.

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