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The most disturbing thing about this saga is that websites that have no physical/legal/business presence in the UK are proactively geoblocking UK-origin IPs. C

The most disturbing thing about this saga is that websites that have no physical/legal/business presence in the UK are proactively geoblocking UK-origin IPs. Censorious governments have always been a thing since the beginning of the internet. Websites (especially non-corporate ones like 4chan or R34) preemptively surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new.

mytailorisrich 1y ago
This is because nowadays everything has to be zero-risk and "over-lawyered." We have seen the same with the GDPR and now also with the UK Internet Safety Act.
- pr337h4m 1y ago
  There is absolutely zero risk as long as you stay out of the UK. Even if you do travel to the UK, there is no practical risk for the foreseeable future.
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    And yet we're seeing websites panicking and blocking all UK visitors... which is my point. Also, thinking that there might be a risk if you travel to the UK because your random website on the other side of the world does not comply with a specific UK law is rather overestimating your importance and the British authorities.
  - pyman 1y ago
    High school kids cannot buy weapons in the UK? They can't even watch porn? Jesus Christ, stay away from that country!!
    - harvey9 1y ago
      Actually some idiot politician tried to blame Amazon for knife crime in the UK. Never mind that most kids can find kitchen knives (the type used in a recent crime when the politician made the statement) in the kitchen where they live.
      - pyman 1y ago
        US politician?
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I decided to do some legwork here. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9q7r4wpep0t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9q7r4wpep0t TL;DR: UK politician
        pyman 1y ago
        From what I read this politician didn't blame Amazon, she criticised the government's failure to monitor the attacker: > She says he was referred to counter-terrorism scheme Prevent three times, but his case was not referred onwards She also said that regulating the sale of large knives could help reduce stabbings, in the same way strict gun laws helped stop school shootings. Honestly, in South (and North) America, everyone's carrying a gun. I wish we were talking about knife control instead. IMO, we need to look at what countries like the UK and China are doing, where civilian gun ownership is almost completely banned.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  The GDPR is designed to protect citizen's right to privacy and prevent websites from just plundering and selling people's private information. We need more places to implement GDPR style laws to ensure that companies don't think that they own people's data.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  Mainly because, I think, these services are doing the calculation of the risk vs the proportion of users they have from the UK (already small) and that cannot figure out how to use a VPN (even smaller)
- mid-kid 1y ago
  Unlike the UK Internet Safety Act, the GDPR is really easy to comply with for small independent websites. It was aimed at the big companies and companies unethically mining data, and it didn't do much outside of that scope.
Quarrel 1y ago
> surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new Many countries, including the US, claim jurisdiction if you are providing services to their citizens. Some claim jurisdiction if someone in that country sees your web page (ie you've now "published" it there). You've been blissfully unaware, perhaps, but this has been a thing for a long time. You have probably seen sites having sections of their TOS tailored specifically for Californian users- this is not that different. I think the UK legislation here is hamfisted and very harmful, but the jurisdiction argument is nothing new.
- piker 1y ago
  Classic case of Wolfenstein 3d being banned in Germany in the 90s rings a bell.
  - harvey9 1y ago
    Germany has laws about displaying nazi emblems. The same game design reskinned would be fine.
    - piker 1y ago
      Right, but the point was there is precedent for laws affecting American operations when distributing software into a jurisdiction.
      - pyman 1y ago
        Regulators are fed up with billionaires in the US turning a blind eye to porn just to make more money off it, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards. Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest. The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They've shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online. Now that the UK forced these reckless billionaires to update their software to comply with the rules, every government should do the same.
ataru 1y ago
The world-wide-web is becoming more and more only-your-country-web.
louthy 1y ago
You don’t get to sidestep a country’s laws just because you happen to sit outside of the country. If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws. If you’re unwilling to accept this, then you must be extremely careful when you travel internationally or turn off access to that country altogether. This is true for every country on Earth. This is the price of doing business internationally.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ghusto 1y ago
  > If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws Agreed, and I like to point out the same when talking of Apple and Co. not liking EU laws. This however, is very different. It's more akin to me publishing a book in my own country, then another country's book importers importing that book and me getting in trouble for putting into print ideas that are not allowed there. Remember, I'm not the one importing the book (the ISP in the case of a website), nor did I ask for it to be done.
  - louthy 1y ago
    Whilst I appreciate your point, I'm not sure the analogy works. Your 'book' (website) is being deployed from your warehouse (web server) and you could chose to not deliver to the customer (the client web browser) based on their location, because of local (to the customer) laws that ban the book. I think it'd be difficult to argue against that unless someone else was a proxy middleman during the delivery of the book (VPN).
    - andrewpolidori 1y ago
      Your analogy falls flat because they have to connect to the website, not the other way around. You can't argue that someone requesting access to a page is the same as delivering a book into their borders. They can choose to block access but the website doesn't operate there or owe them anything. They choose to be apart of the connected network, no one forces them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jlarocco 1y ago
There's the possibility that some of the users of these sites voted for these laws and want the verification in place.
- pyman 1y ago
  Millions of worried parents, perhaps? Parents who are worried about the negative effects of gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and porn?
  - patates 1y ago
    There are a lot of very advanced software one can use to limit access to those sites, as well as control the time spent online. I think many tablets/phones even have built in parental controls. Why do you think the government should be involved?
    - pyman 1y ago
      In theory, yes. In practice, not really. There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye if it means making more money from porn, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards. Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest. The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They’ve shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
        > There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye What does this have to do with enabling parental controls? You can define an allow list of websites to visit and disallow installing new applications. A billionaire turning a blind eye wouldn’t affect that, except in ways that would be very obvious to the parents like resetting the control settings.

mytailorisrich 1y ago

This is because nowadays everything has to be zero-risk and "over-lawyered." We have seen the same with the GDPR and now also with the UK Internet Safety Act.

pr337h4m 1y ago
There is absolutely zero risk as long as you stay out of the UK. Even if you do travel to the UK, there is no practical risk for the foreseeable future.
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  And yet we're seeing websites panicking and blocking all UK visitors... which is my point. Also, thinking that there might be a risk if you travel to the UK because your random website on the other side of the world does not comply with a specific UK law is rather overestimating your importance and the British authorities.
- pyman 1y ago
  High school kids cannot buy weapons in the UK? They can't even watch porn? Jesus Christ, stay away from that country!!
  - harvey9 1y ago
    Actually some idiot politician tried to blame Amazon for knife crime in the UK. Never mind that most kids can find kitchen knives (the type used in a recent crime when the politician made the statement) in the kitchen where they live.
    - pyman 1y ago
      US politician?
      - rpdillon 1y ago
        I decided to do some legwork here. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9q7r4wpep0t https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9q7r4wpep0t TL;DR: UK politician
        pyman 1y ago
        From what I read this politician didn't blame Amazon, she criticised the government's failure to monitor the attacker: > She says he was referred to counter-terrorism scheme Prevent three times, but his case was not referred onwards She also said that regulating the sale of large knives could help reduce stabbings, in the same way strict gun laws helped stop school shootings. Honestly, in South (and North) America, everyone's carrying a gun. I wish we were talking about knife control instead. IMO, we need to look at what countries like the UK and China are doing, where civilian gun ownership is almost completely banned.
ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
The GDPR is designed to protect citizen's right to privacy and prevent websites from just plundering and selling people's private information. We need more places to implement GDPR style laws to ensure that companies don't think that they own people's data.
rcxdude 1y ago
Mainly because, I think, these services are doing the calculation of the risk vs the proportion of users they have from the UK (already small) and that cannot figure out how to use a VPN (even smaller)
mid-kid 1y ago
Unlike the UK Internet Safety Act, the GDPR is really easy to comply with for small independent websites. It was aimed at the big companies and companies unethically mining data, and it didn't do much outside of that scope.

Quarrel 1y ago

> surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new Many countries, including the US, claim jurisdiction if you are providing services to their citizens. Some claim jurisdiction if someone in that country sees your web page (ie you've now "published" it there). You've been blissfully unaware, perhaps, but this has been a thing for a long time. You have probably seen sites having sections of their TOS tailored specifically for Californian users- this is not that different. I think the UK legislation here is hamfisted and very harmful, but the jurisdiction argument is nothing new.

piker 1y ago
Classic case of Wolfenstein 3d being banned in Germany in the 90s rings a bell.
- harvey9 1y ago
  Germany has laws about displaying nazi emblems. The same game design reskinned would be fine.
  - piker 1y ago
    Right, but the point was there is precedent for laws affecting American operations when distributing software into a jurisdiction.
    - pyman 1y ago
      Regulators are fed up with billionaires in the US turning a blind eye to porn just to make more money off it, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards. Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest. The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They've shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online. Now that the UK forced these reckless billionaires to update their software to comply with the rules, every government should do the same.

ataru 1y ago

The world-wide-web is becoming more and more only-your-country-web.

louthy 1y ago

You don’t get to sidestep a country’s laws just because you happen to sit outside of the country. If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws. If you’re unwilling to accept this, then you must be extremely careful when you travel internationally or turn off access to that country altogether. This is true for every country on Earth. This is the price of doing business internationally.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ghusto 1y ago
> If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws Agreed, and I like to point out the same when talking of Apple and Co. not liking EU laws. This however, is very different. It's more akin to me publishing a book in my own country, then another country's book importers importing that book and me getting in trouble for putting into print ideas that are not allowed there. Remember, I'm not the one importing the book (the ISP in the case of a website), nor did I ask for it to be done.
- louthy 1y ago
  Whilst I appreciate your point, I'm not sure the analogy works. Your 'book' (website) is being deployed from your warehouse (web server) and you could chose to not deliver to the customer (the client web browser) based on their location, because of local (to the customer) laws that ban the book. I think it'd be difficult to argue against that unless someone else was a proxy middleman during the delivery of the book (VPN).
  - andrewpolidori 1y ago
    Your analogy falls flat because they have to connect to the website, not the other way around. You can't argue that someone requesting access to a page is the same as delivering a book into their borders. They can choose to block access but the website doesn't operate there or owe them anything. They choose to be apart of the connected network, no one forces them.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jlarocco 1y ago

There's the possibility that some of the users of these sites voted for these laws and want the verification in place.

pyman 1y ago
Millions of worried parents, perhaps? Parents who are worried about the negative effects of gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and porn?
- patates 1y ago
  There are a lot of very advanced software one can use to limit access to those sites, as well as control the time spent online. I think many tablets/phones even have built in parental controls. Why do you think the government should be involved?
  - pyman 1y ago
    In theory, yes. In practice, not really. There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye if it means making more money from porn, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards. Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest. The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They’ve shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      > There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye What does this have to do with enabling parental controls? You can define an allow list of websites to visit and disallow installing new applications. A billionaire turning a blind eye wouldn’t affect that, except in ways that would be very obvious to the parents like resetting the control settings.