That's typical. What's their real target then, anti-Israel content like in the US TikTok forced-sale?

It was obvious from the minute that idiots started creating IP location databases in the first place that people would demand that they be used like that... and those demands seem to be winning out.

I really do think there should be a simple Cloudflare like services that ban all UK user as a form of protest. I say Cloudflare like and not Cloudflare because I am not sure if they are willing to risk supporting this feature.

I support the cause, but I don't think that's true. RIPE, the RIR responsible for UK, makes available a list of allocations per country. For UK:

  https://stat.ripe.net/data/country-resource-list/data.json?resource=gb

It's been exceedingly obvious but it's nice to know that Ofcom never thought that anyone would bother to fight back. This is clearly not about public safety but about controlling American corporations.

Parliamentary forces seem to be directly suborning this corruption.

There was never any chance that this would fly outside the country, least of all in the USA. Whoever gave Ofcom the extraterritorial power it has to pursue these goals clearly intended to ensure its failure, and for this I am grateful.

altogether, if you dont care about following this UK law, whats the need to carr what the UK government does? just dont go there or do business with people who care about the UK government. same as US sanctions and secondary sanctions. the UK at least is a small market

Ofcom expects _you_ the foreign entity to implement geoblocking perfectly. And if not, they will try to fine you first before they even consider implementing blocking on their end.

That's the core issue here.

This has nothing to do with foreign entities circumventing UK based blocking and getting Ofcom letters for it.

By testing from.. a single VPN IP?

And as noted in other comments here he doesn't seem to understand how geo ip databases are maintained. I sure won't be asking this guy to represent me anytime soon.

I think that essentially this is probably the best way to do it, IF we must go down this route (and I think in some cases we probably have to).

You're perfectly free to run these websites from the US. We just exercise our right to block these at our UK shores.

Where's the problem?

He can’t seem to decide if Ofcom’s position is that the geo blocking was disabled or that it’s not sufficient. He seems to flip flop between the two positions throughout the post.

This is really strange because he cites Ofcom’s statement! How can he not know what they’re investigating after he’s been told!

In addition, he seems under the impression that Samaritans (a suicide prevention charity) are either a part of Ofcom or if they’re a pro censorship pressure group.

Lesser issues are that he doesn’t understand the government operates out of Whitehall, not Westminster (which is Parliament) and that Parliament can put pressure on government organisations but ultimately it’s independent so Parliament and the government can only ask Ofcom to investigate (outside of passing legislation).

A handful of my friends work in the adult industry. This policy is an absolute failure and it's punishing websites that actually tried to be better.

Russian (etc) businesses are spinning up porn sites that have no age verification, but equally do not care about the content or any kind of laws. No worries if the UK blocks them, it's easy to spin it up with a new domain. People will find it (and Google will surface it) because people want free porn. It's whack a mole, you can't win, and the content isn't policed.

I'd love to say how this passed is beyond me, but talking to anyone with no tech literacy it makes sense to them. In practice it's just driving people to places they should be. Or VPNs.

A some point, if you do not have any relationship with the UK, go as far as blocking its residents but they still want you to abide by their law, aren't they just declaring war on the entire world?

This is something very deranged that have become very common with the world "becoming smaller": somes will go on a rampage for something happening on the other side of the planet. At the same time they will pretend not to notice that their own house in on fire.

I do not give a single solitary fuck what any Briton thinks of any American exercising their constitutional rights

If the American is lawfully exercising their rights, and the Briton has a reason to censor them, the American is right and the Briton is wrong

No exceptions

This probably sounds "cool" and correct to his supporters but this gung-ho black-and-white approach is hiding an important nuance:

The framing above (UK undermining US law) can immediately be reversed. The UK has laws (that we may disagree with) that are being undermined by US actors.

That's the nature of the internet, and the reason this is a complicated issue to resolve, not helped by showboating lawyers.

based.

as someone from a country that had reached the bottom of many slippery slopes in less than ten years, it's very disheartening to see the West following us.

That means we defend every site, however small or controversial it may be, from foreign attempts to infringe on their constitutional rights. It means not giving up so much as an inch of ground without a major fight, if those are the instructions. It means we must not ever lose.

--

That is a powerful pro-bono defense message by the US person doing it.

Just like the Trump says climate crisis is a hoax and wins elections, can't somebody in the UK say Online Safety Act is nonsense and win election and repeal it?

In a nutshell, I'm moderately confident that this will suffice to keep Ofcom away.

It's all total madness, and it's not just the UK there are even more crazy regulations coming from the EU. China, and others in Asia are well known for regulating too. A mess.

If the UK wants to go full totalitarian it’s alright, they can even consider me a criminal or ban me from entering the country.

I usually avoid traveling to countries doing non sense or that would arrest me for ideological reasons.

The UK would be no different.

But as far as I know, where I live, I am not under UK’s jurisdiction.

The First Amendment was created to protect against foreign governments impeding on your speech?

I feel like that's really missing the point of what this amendment is about, at a time when the First Amendment is at greatest threat from the current US government.

>The UK regulator has now publicly confirmed that the “mirror” site for my client’s site is not accessible in the UK.

The writer then proceeds to describe the way in which the spinning up of a mirror lead to the site becoming available for people in the UK. And the author protests that:

>The reasons why SaSu had a mirror are SaSu’s alone/none of Ofcom’s fucking business; [...]

The way it is written makes for a string suspicion that SaSu thought they could obviate OSA with a cheeky mirror (standard fare for torrent sites - who also wish to bypass censorship - I gather) and got caught. I can't see why else the author would be so vociferous, nor how the mirror wouldn't block the very same UK addresses as the main-site except by design.

Suicide is illegal here (there is movement on this, thankfully). Helping people do illegal things, also illegal. Facilitating such help, also illegal. There seems no need to stoop to imagining some weird conspiracy or blaming a cabal of shadowy figures.

I guess you could think of it like we treat helping people kill themselves like USA treats UK people facilitating copyright infringement.

Like bees to honey

They should just hand it back to the king, the democracy experiment has failed there.

Thank you

Separate from the free speech debate, the international law part of this seems pretty cut and dry. Here's the bolded parts:

  So, it appears, as with 4chan, Ofcom has elected to proceed with a mock execution... Ofcom is trying to set the precedent that... you have to follow its rules – even if you’re American and you’re engaged in constitutionally protected speech and conduct. To that end, Ofcom has renewed its previous threats of fines, arrest, and imprisonment, against SaSu and its operators – all Americans.

More pointedly: what is this lawyer actually "representing" these "clients" for? I don't see any mention of any US legal action, and presumably you need to be british to represent people in UK court. Isn't this just activism, not representation?