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UK internet censoring
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MrMobodies:
https://www.irishnews.com/news/uknews/2023/07/06/news/wikipedia_could_shut_down_in_uk_after_online_safety_law_passes_government_told-3416017/

--- Quote ---Wikipedia could shut down in UK after online safety law passes, Government told
Abbie Llewelyn, PA political staff
06 July, 2023 18:07

Wikipedia could be forced to shut down in the UK due to the regulatory burdens placed on it by a new Bill cracking down on illegal and harmful content online, the Government has been warned. There are concerns that the Online Safety Bill, which imposes new legal requirements on tech companies, could prove too difficult to meet for certain public interest organisations.

There are also fears that it could lead to “age-gating” – requiring age verification and blocking children’s access – although Wikipedia has said it will not do this. Peers have suggested adding a regulatory exemption for sites which are considered low risk for harm and provide a public good.

London Cyberspace Conference
Lord Richard Allan was Facebook’s director of policy for Europe (Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA)
Lord Allan of Hallam, who was Facebook’s director of policy in Europe for 10 years, argued that sites should be exempt from the scope of the Bill if they are for the purpose of public information, present minimal risk of harm, are non-commercial and have limited user-user functions.

The Liberal Democrat peer said: “There is a material risk that, without further amendment or clarification, then Wikipedia and other similar services may feel they can no longer operate in the United Kingdom.”

Tory backbencher Lord Moylan suggested a similar exemption for public good services, as well as the ability for Ofcom to remove an exemption.

He said he found it “remarkable” that the Government has not made changes to the Bill to try and address the problem of overly burdensome regulations on public interests services.

Independent crossbench peer Baroness Kidron: “I am very concerned… I read the headline ‘The Online Safety Bill age-gates Wikipedia’.

“And I can’t see how it doesn’t by virtue of some of the material that can be found on Wikipedia.

“And I think what we’re trying to say is that there are some services that are inherently in a child’s best interests or in a child’s best interests according to their evolving capacity – if we had been allowed to put children’s rights into the Bill.” However, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, a minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, argued that regulatory burdens will be “proportionate” to the risk of harm of a given site and the capacity of the organisation.

He said: “I am, of course, sympathetic to the arguments that we must avoid imposing disproportionate burdens on regulated services and particularly that the Bill should not inhibit services from providing valuable information which is of benefit to the public.”

However, he said the Bill “has a broad scope in order to capture a range of services, but it has exemptions and categorisations built into it”.

He added: “The requirements for platforms will be proportionate to the risk of harm and as such we do not expect the requirements for Wikipedia to be unduly burdensome.”

The minister added that the Government wants to keep the Bill flexible and future-proof.

He said: “It’s impossible for me to say that a particular service will certainly be categorised in one way or another, because that would give it carte blanche and we don’t know how it may change in the future, estimable though I may think it is at present.”
--- End quote ---

If they force Wikipedia to shut down in the name of children will that have gone too far?

I do not want to have to prove my age to do anything.
tggzzz:
Send an email to your MP, highlighting the key points.

I have.
Stray Electron:
Quote There are also fears that it could lead to “age-gating” – requiring age verification and blocking children’s access – although Wikipedia has said it will not do this. Peers have suggested adding a regulatory exemption for sites which are considered low risk for harm and provide a public good. end quote

 
    Well there's the problem isn't it?  WHO gets to decide what's harmful for the children, or who gets to decide who should be exempt from the regulations because they"quote" Provide a public good "unquote"?

     A quote from a fairly recently political movement in the US: "Ban XYZ because if it saves even one child, it's worth it."  I suppose that someone could use exactly the same argument to completely ban automobiles, the entire internet, knives and forks, and virtually everything in today's world.
voltsandjolts:
In my view, young children are viewing armful content online and it is causing damage. Societal damage. More worrying is that I see so clear path to a better, safer internet for younger folks. Age verification will probably be of limited benefit to the younger generation and a PITA to the rest of us. But we gotta do something. Firewalled internet (China style) for different age groups under 16? Under 10's limited to fifty websites? Fuck knows.
Infraviolet:
"I do not want to have to prove my age to do anything."
VPN, increasingly many providers even free oens are now looking to create cloacked VPN protocols too, so a regime cannot tell that you're even using  VPN, your traffic under those new protocols looks like normal http/https. You're absolutely right that never should prove your age to access services, such would in all practical implemtnations mean proving your identity (whatever nonsense politicians try to spout about magic unicorns the same way they talk about crypto backdoors), which would mean centralised ID databases which would be a very attractive target for hackers and blackmailers. Wrongful and stupid laws need defying, a VPN is the best way to do that initially*.

*If the labour party are to be believed they'd try to completely block VPNs as well, but I suspect VPN providers would be several steps ahead by that time. So long as there is a defiant and moral community of geeks and open-sourcing enthusiasts somewhere in the world, a way around technical censorship of the wider internet will always exist, eternal cat and mouse. There is ofcourse trouble with so much of the internet no longer being the wider internet, but being inside the walled gardens of facebook and other megacorporations, who have mostly proven all to willing to assist crooekd regimes in censoring things within their platforms.

I'm glad to see that Signal is pledging that if that corrupt and illegitimate bill passes then it will not comply with it, and Signal has now stated they'll provide proxying and other anti-censorship tools to ensure UK users can reach their services if the government blocks it, just they way they already do for the likes of Iran, Russia and China. I wish wikipedia would show this spirit of defiance too, refusing to comply and stating they'll find ways to still make themselves accessible in the UK, we need tech people to tell governments precisely where they can stick their totalitarian impulses. I just wish Signal would make a desktop standalone linux client (I make a point of not having a smartphone) so I could actually use their service.
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