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Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

I'm really confused about what would realistically happen if Wikimedia just decided to ignore those regulations.

They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?

I have the same confusion about Signal's willingness to leave Europe if chat control is imposed[1], while still providing anti-censorship tools for countries like Iran and China. What makes the European laws they're unwilling to respect different from the Iranian laws they're unwilling to respect?

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> They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?

The UK has the authority to arrest them (anyone who owns a website) if they ever set foot in the UK if they feel they either haven't censored it adequately enough or refuse to do so.

It's one of the reasons why Civitai geoblocked the country.

A variety of things could happen:

- Employees become accountable for their company's actions - Wikimedia could be blocked - Other kinds of sanctions (e.g. financial ones) could be levied somehow

In practice what will likely happen is Wikimedia will comply: either by blocking the UK entirely, making adjustments to be compliant with UK legislation (e.g. by making their sites read-only for UK-users - probably the most extreme outcome that's likely to occur), or the as-yet unannounced Ofcom regulations they've preemptively appealed actually won't apply to Wikimedia anyway (or will be very light touch).

What if they simply don’t pay any sanctions?

They might ban the CEO and employees from entering their country or arrest them when they travel.

Having moved out of the uk many years ago, being banned from there, may not be such a bad thing.

The worst thing is, people will vote out the labour government, and the tory bastards (who will say they are 'the party of freedom) will tell the country "Well, it wasnt us".

Its worth noting of course, that this is Tory law which was given a grace period before implementation. Labour have chosen to continue its implementation and not repeal it.

Yes, there are unilateral policies and treaties that let the US and the UK collaborate in legal action (going through US institutions to judge them), some of them referenced in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies -- a keyword might be letters rogatory

Wikimedia also seems to have a presence in the UK https://wikimedia.org.uk/ that presumably would be affected.

In most cases they might have enough pull to get folks blacklisted by payment processors, but wikimedia in particular might win that one.

They don't apply. Delivering this kind of thing is obviously allowed in the US, so there's presumably no mutual criminality.

.... so far it is. Current politicians are certainly working at the state level to stop anonymous internet usage. Currently limited to pr0n sites, but you can bet that's just the first notch of increased heat on that poor frog in the cooking pot

I'm reasonably sure several articles and uploaded artworks violate various US state regulations on adult content, though the states would be idiots trying to enforce them against Wikipedia; that'd only increase the risk of some kind of higher court declaring the law unconstitutional.

Geographically speaking, about half the US has "think of the kids" laws that are similar to the UK's.

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