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IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act

313 points by pinkahd 11mo ago

anigbrowl 11mo ago
When a country transitions from manufacturing to services, it ends up trying to export its legal system.
- pessimizer 11mo ago
  One of the big things I've been wondering about the decision of the Anglosphere to all switch to a service economy: why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries? The UK (nor the US) has no advantage in providing services, all it can do is demand that other people be prevented from providing them.
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    > why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries? Given that, shouldn't you be able to answer the question?
  - narcraft 11mo ago
    You're the smartest, most clever, most physically fit, but why does nobody else seem to realize it?
    - HPsquared 11mo ago
      It's the UK that is going North Korea on everyone. Closing off the internet, restricting speech and so on. Edit: that's not to say it isn't a valid strategy; NK has a big stability buff.
  - tim333 11mo ago
    It wasn't a decision to switch to services - I'm in the UK - it's just left to the market and that's where the money is mostly. It's kind of irrelevant if your population is large or small etc.
  - bee_rider 11mo ago
    One advantage English speaking countries have WRT the service economy is that most of the world speaks English at this point. English became the language of international trade, of course, because we’re all just so adorably stupid, and our countries are tiny and harmless. Plus it is such an easy language to pick up…
  - estimator7292 11mo ago
    Because capitalism can't accept the inevitable fact that infinite exponential growth is literally impossible. It's not a "service economy" it's a "rent extraction" economy. Capitalists need more growth and more returns now and since innovating, producing goods, and providing customer service costs money, we simply charge people a monthly fee to use their heated car seats. This is what the brutal, messy end of capitalism looks like. Relentless self-cannibalization, burning billions of dollars tomorrow to make one cent today. If nothing makes sense, that's because it doesn't. There is no logic or reason or planning involved. It's more money now, period. Consequences don't matter because we get more money right this second. Capitalists are apparently unaware of what happens when they've extracted all possible money from the economy.
    - tavavex 11mo ago
      Your concerns are true, but I'm not sure if this answers the question above. After all, the shift to service economies started a very long time before the crisis ramped up to what it's like today. And even today, under a crust of rent-seeking businesses, circular investing and outright scams, there's plenty of quiet, boring businesses that provide actually important and relevant services. It can (and probably will) still get so, so, so much worse than this. So clearly, there's more factors in play here that made most of the first world transition to providing services, since we weren't remotely close to running out of ways to extract and sell goods then (and still aren't, not yet).
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  The USA has been exporting its legal system for decades. And the UK still makes plenty of stuff. I really don't think this is valid. There is a close analogy though, companies that end up losing in the marketplace tend to become legally active to try to extract a tax from those that did better.
  - anigbrowl 11mo ago
    I fully agree that the US does the same thing, as do other countries- that's why I framed it as a general observation. I agree about the similar corporate behavior. I don't think it's a healthy development, but it's not easy to develop a general model of how this kind of thing plays out.
  - MangoToupe 11mo ago
    > The USA has been exporting its legal system for decades With enormous damage to global society, I might add
deleted 11mo ago
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ranger_danger 11mo ago
I do not have "UK trying to take back the US" on my bingo card... let's hope it doesn't actually escalate to that in the future.
themafia 11mo ago
> They’re definitely not treating it like a public safety matter, where they know how to reach us and know that I generally respond within the hour. 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.
- toyg 11mo ago
  > This is clearly [...] about controlling American corporations Not exactly. On the surface, it's about kowtowing to pearl-clutching UK NGOs that are empowered by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids; and underneath, the real agenda is about restricting the influence of unsanctioned sites that could influence UK discourse - influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves.
  - themafia 11mo ago
    > could influence UK discourse Is 4chan attempting to unfairly or unduly influence UK "discourse?" Or are they just _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum? > Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids Which actually are an attempt to influence UK discourse. The framing errors are interesting.
    - toyg 11mo ago
      > _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum Your naivete is endearing. Every general-purpose public forum, these days, is heavily manipulated by bots.
  - reaperducer 11mo ago
    influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves. I could see that last century. But do they even care about influence anymore? Isn't the money all they care about now?
kingsleyopara 11mo ago
The most frustrating part here is that this car crash of a policy had cross party support so there wasn’t even a way for UK people like me to vote against it.
- OhioMan2943 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- spacebanana7 11mo ago
  Even in Reform, I get the sense that Zia Yusuf was the only person campaigning seriously against it. Going on a one man crusade to force Farage to criticise it and put fully repealing the act on their manifesto.
  - youngNed 11mo ago
    It was a Reform politician who championed it in: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0004/220004.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0004... WITH A RAP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ql6tGu9aWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ql6tGu9aWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=r4mRo2M5VMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=r4mRo2M5VMA
    - spacebanana7 11mo ago
      Yeah they really shouldn’t have let Nadine Dorris into the party. For the sake of online freedom, thankfully Zia outranks her (as she holds no official position) but even so it’s not an ideal situation.
    - mike_hearn 11mo ago
      Yes, but she is now allied with a party that has committed to repealing it. This seems to be the result of pure political calculation by all involved. Dorries is unfortunately quite popular with certain demographics that aren't natural Reform supporters (i.e. the sort who love the OSA), so bringing her in probably does help them. But they know they can't absorb too many former Tories without undermining the justification for their own existence.
deleted 11mo ago
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morkalork 11mo ago
Interesting that it's the existence of the suicide discussion forum that's too much to bare for the UK. Really drives home the point that in the state's eyes: your self, your body and ultimately your life, don't belong to you.
- pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
  Interesting to compare with the OpenAI story about the LLM offering moral support for someone seeking suicide.
- crazydoggers 11mo ago
  Is it not possible that there is concern for individuals well beings in the midst of a mental health crisis? It’s one thing to be talking about suicide or assisted suicide because you’ve decided it’s right for you and your situation. It’s another to be dealing with depression from trauma, unable to get help and have no support system, and then be coerced by individuals on forums with ulterior motives. I’m not saying I am in support of the UKs attempts, but it’s also not helpful to paint everything black and white on either side. Real solutions require dealing with the grays and the details. edit: And for reference I have spoken to people in the later situations who have found all too many toxic individuals online who will say things like “you should definitely just kill yourself” in the midst of such situations, who after therapy consider those people to have been committing even more trauma (most likely because they get off on the control of another persons life, playing out murder fantasies etc, and who use the internets anonymity to further traumatize people at their most vulnerable)
  - 13415 11mo ago
    I doubt Ofcom are motivated by "concern for individuals well beings in the midst of a mental health crisis", but even then, it is clear in the context of the current discussion that they should be concerned with enforcing their legislation in their own country. The UK is free to build The Great Firewall of the United Kingdom and block half of the internet if their concern is so great. What they cannot be allowed to do is tell organizations in other jurisdictions that they now suddenly fall under UK jurisdiction. There are 195 countries in the world. If all of them followed a policy like UK's Ofcom, the internet would be gone in no time and world-wide user-to-user communication would become impossible for legal reasons. It's obviously not a sane position.
beejiu 11mo ago
I don't really understand the concern. The UK objects to suicide forums and American operators of suicide forums are protected by the First Amendment of extradition to the UK. So if you want to operate a suicide forum from America, just don't travel to the UK and you're okay.
- x3n0ph3n3 11mo ago
  It's not clear to me that the UK even has a mechanism to discover the operators of such sites. If I found myself in such a position, I imagine I wouldn't even bother trying to block UK IPs and let them sort out their own internet blocking.
- mcny 11mo ago
  First of all, I anal and also this is more of a question than a statement but a us person could travel to a country x and that x could send this us person to a UK prison? I don't know if doing so would be legal but when the rubber hits the road, each country x is technically sovereign and does not have to honor the first amendment of the US constitution. So even if it might be frowned upon to extradite foreign (US) nationals in country X (such as Canada or India) to the UK, they could do it anyway to send a message?
  - beejiu 11mo ago
    Your First Amendment rights only apply within the United States, this should be obvious. Nonetheless, extradition treaties generally require that a crime be considered a crime within both jurisdictions.
    - holowoodman 11mo ago
      Most of Europe does have similar thought-crime and censorship laws as the UK now have. Also, the crime of "hindering an official investigation" could be interpreted into this, and this exists practically anywhere. The only further question would be if the country is friendly enough with the UK to extradite.
Alex2037 11mo ago
>If we concede even a scintilla of our constitutional rights, we fail. 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.
- pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
  It comes across as unhinged with the current regime daily infringing the [USA] Constitutional rights of USA citizens and the UK in not way seeking to inhibit those rights.
  - bigstrat2003 11mo ago
    > the current regime daily infringing the [USA] Constitutional rights of USA citizens That has been happening for decades at this point. That doesn't make today's violations ok, but neither are they something new. The people of the USA gave up on freedom after 9/11.
- deleted 11mo ago
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- tchalla 11mo ago
  Slippery slopes have existed in all western parts of the world disguised as freedom since eternity. This isn’t something new.
garaetjjte 11mo ago
He seems very confused about what First Amendment is about. How it would be even possible for UK government to violate it?
- spacebanana7 11mo ago
  If the British government can pressure international payment processors or service providers to cut off a website, they can pressure those websites to do stuff.
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    The USA has been doing this with VISA and MC since about forever.
    - ranger_danger 11mo ago
      Do you have a source for the USA pressuring VISA and MC?
      - superkuh 11mo ago
        https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/visa-mastercard-win-suit-over-wikileaks-block https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/visa-mastercard-wi...
      - jacquesm 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        ranger_danger 11mo ago
        > Is google down again? Damn. Sorry man, I'd try again in a couple of hours. "The burden of proof lies upon the person making empirically unfalsifiable claims." Beyond that, I find your comment to be extremely rude and condescending, and a violation of this site's guidelines. Science says being generous, thoughtful and kind is a sign of high intelligence, so let's all try to be nicer.
mzajc 11mo ago
> The primary one is that the notion of a “UK based IP” is nonsense. Geolocation databases work by figuring out where people log in from and only after doing a lot of pattern recognition do those addresses get associated with that location. 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 These are actual per-country allocations, not interpolations from access patterns.
- flumpcakes 11mo ago
  Yeah, geo-IP is not perfect, but it's not built on pure guessing like the author implies.
  - philipwhiuk 11mo ago
    Yeh it's the sub-country data that's often bad, not the national stuff.
    - tankenmate 11mo ago
      Not true, IP addresses are sold on, or even from time to time IP addresses are even leased (they can be transferred from RIRs, temporarily or permanently). Some times IP address ranges are registered with RIR but used in a different geography / region. Geo-IP databases are mostly accurate, emphasis on mostly.
      - miki123211 11mo ago
        And then there's the case of mobile roaming. In the overwhelming majority of cases, mobile roaming traffic uses "home routing", not "local break-out". This means it is routed to the country where the user normally resides, not where they currently are. This means: - For people visiting the UK (and potentially staying there for a long time, if on a permissive roaming plan), their IP address won't show up as UK despite long-term residence / citizenship. - British people visiting other countries will still be subject to OSA, even when they should not be. - People (including British people!) who buy British AirAlo SIMs may not get a British IP. AirAlo often uses SIMs registered in a different country than the one you're visiting, and the "exit node" (P-GW) may be located in a different country altogether. I suspect this last option will become quite attractive if VPN bans ever actually come into effect. This is pretty much unfixable without major changes in how LTE roaming is conducted worldwide, and the UK isn't important enough to make that happen.
flumpcakes 11mo ago
[flagged]
- School-Cotton 11mo ago
  It’s of course reasonable to rank principles that way, and I’d probably agree with you, but it’s not true that it’s “not a free speech issue”. It is a free speech issue, you’re just saying you value other concerns above absolute free speech in certain cases.
  - flumpcakes 11mo ago
    'Absolute free speech' doesn't exist anywhere. Would you be arrested if you told national secrets? What would happen if you told everyone at work (unfounded) that your boss abuses their children?
    - School-Cotton 11mo ago
      > 'Absolute free speech' doesn't exist anywhere You’re right, but I never claimed it did. Even the famously expansive US freedom of speech protection is not absolute. > Would you be arrested if you told national secrets? What would happen if you told everyone at work (unfounded) that your boss abuses their children? Yes you would be arrested, which is a freedom of speech issue, however banning this speech, despite harming freedom, is justified by other factors that are more important in these cases.
- josephcsible 11mo ago
  > I would lump these people into the same place we put child molesters and murderers. So would I, but freedom of speech doesn't have an exception for bad people, no matter how bad they are. Remember the Skokie affair, where a Jewish lawyer defended the Nazi Party's right to free speech? That's what really believing in free speech looks like.
8note 11mo ago
the bravado makes for some great irony. worrying and feeling ultra-superior about the UK government, while letting the tiktok ban and forced sale go through unchallenged. 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
- jsheard 11mo ago
  > worrying and feeling ultra-superior about the UK government, while letting the tiktok ban and forced sale go through unchallenged. And more to the point, many US states passing or attempting to pass laws which aren't all that different to the UKs OSA. Mississippi's version is in some ways even more onerous to enforce as it requires social networks to age-check all of their users, not just those who want to access adult or "harmful" content. Bluesky notably went along with the OSA but considered Mississippi's demands to be over the line and geoblocked them instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
  - dmix 11mo ago
    > And more to the point What's the point exactly? That some US states also did something similar re porn so therefore it's a nothingburger and we shouldn't care about this lawyers campaign to protect the internet from censorship?
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    I think Bluesky probably went along with the OSA because the population of the UK is like 20x that of Missisipi. Wake me up when they geoblock California.
crtasm 11mo ago
>This is demonstrably false. 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.
- vitus 11mo ago
  The combative stance that he's taking really doesn't do him any favors in resolving the issue. Lawyer: "I've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is blocked." Regulators: "We've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is not blocked." In what world is the correct response "Dear regulators, you're incompetent. Pound sand." instead of "Can you share the IP address you used so my client can address this in their geoblock?"
  - holowoodman 11mo ago
    > In what world is the correct response "Dear regulators, you're incompetent. Pound sand." instead of "Can you share the IP address you used so my client can address this in their geoblock?" That would imply that the client actually would like to be contacted every time Ofcom found a leak in the geoblock. Not a good idea imho.
    - crtasm 11mo ago
      It sounds like they would welcome that, e.g. in the update to the post >They’re definitely not treating it like a public safety matter, where they know how to reach us and know that I generally respond within the hour.
      - Hizonner 11mo ago
        They don't agree that it is a public safety matter, or at least they've clearly taken the position that they don't care about that kind of public safety. He's just pointing out that Ofcom's behavior is inconsistent with Ofcom sincerely believing it's a public safety matter either.
  - 11mo ago
bbor 11mo ago
So the story behind the title is that the UK gov claims that the IP block wasn't working? And the author agrees that IP blocks can't really work, even? 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. Isn't that how laws work...? Like, it's illegal to be gay in some countries. Theoretically, those countries could open proceedings against every openly-gay person in the world, and try them in absentia. That would be evil and silly of course, but I don't understand what legal principle it would be violating? 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?
- rootusrootus 11mo ago
  > I don't understand what legal principle it would be violating? Jurisdiction? Don't you first have to commit the crime in the jurisdiction in question?
  - Hizonner 11mo ago
    A government can claim jurisdiction over anything worldwide. A different government can disagree. The two may negotiate over that, in which case common sense ideas like "they didn't do it in your territory" may make one side look foolish, which may in fact have a real influence over the outcome of the negotiations. If they can't come to an agreement, then it may become a matter of whether the "offender" happens to travel somewhere where they can be grabbed. In the end, jurisdiction is about who has the power to enforce their laws. There's no universally-agreed-upon uber-legal system to make it otherwise.
- Arch-TK 11mo ago
  Let's say hosting a website for cat pictures is illegal in the UK, but I am based in the US (alas, I am not). I put up my cat picture website but because the UK is a tiny and barely known country, I don't realise that this cat website would be breaching laws there. My website gets popular and I receive a strongly worded legal letter from an entity in the UK claiming that they want to take me to court and fine me for providing this website to their citizens. I am like: WTF? Just fucking block it from your perspective if you don't want your citizens to see it? And I seek legal advice from my lawyer who says: Well, they have no jurisdiction here, so you can ignore this letter, but if you want to minimise hassle, you could just geoblock the UK and hopefully they'll stop coming to you. So I implement basic geoblocking, which works 99.99% of the time (at least when it comes to figuring out which country an IP is in). The UK entity acknowledges this in a letter and tells me that this is a sufficient solution for now, but they'll keep watching me. I go about my business, for some reason or another I make a mirror, which I also implement the geoblocking on, now proactively, because I don't want any more annoying letters from the UK. Some time later, the UK entity sends another letter claiming they're continuing the proceedings because someone in the UK told them that they could still access my cat website and provided evidence. Within 10 minutes myself and my lawyer both use VPNs to verify the geoblock is still working, and we're confused. We ask the UK entity WTF, and they say: We have evidence, the fact that it's clearly still working from _our_ perspective is irrelevant, I bet you just geoblocked our IP address. What do you do in this case?
phendrenad2 11mo ago
The absolute confidence Ofcom has in its ability to impose laws on US citizens is kind of strange. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe in 2028 we get a president who is willing to let US citizens be extradited based on laws like this.
- snickerbockers 11mo ago
  EU and/or Britain has been telegraphing they want to have some limited jurisdiction over the United States for a few years now. GDPR also claims to be able to charge you for a crime even if you've never been to Europe (FWIW its mostly aimed at large corporations and I don't believe I've heard of them using it for anything other than civil fines but on paper they claim to have that authority even outside of their own borders) and during the big riots in UK last year there were law enforcement agencies threatening to prosecute Americans for inciting the riots remotely over the internet (once again they didn't actually do it but they do claim to have that authority and have threatened to use it).
- deleted 11mo ago
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olirex99 11mo ago
When content involves self-harm or illegal activity, the discussion isn’t just about geolocation, it’s about platform responsibility, user safety, and effective remediation. Striking the balance between free expression and preventing real harm is why platforms use content policy teams, abuse reporting, and multidisciplinary responses (moderation + outreach + law enforcement where warranted).
- bad_username 11mo ago
  Different countries may have different ideas about the balance you've mentioned. One country should not impose its version on another (with threats of jail time). This is what the discussion is about.
13415 11mo ago
We're aggressively blocking UK IPs before we even have our product ready, neither our website nor our software will work for visitors from the UK, our ToS will prohibit use of our software for UK residents, and we will not sell or offer the software in the UK. Ofcom would have to put a lot of effort to circumvent these measures to even know we exist. In a nutshell, I'm moderately confident that this will suffice to keep Ofcom away.
Hizonner 11mo ago
You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular. That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. 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.
- mlhpdx 11mo ago
  I don’t agree that choosing to host a website without limiting the audience is innocent. It’s a choice, and has been the default for a long time, but it means one has chosen to speak outside the borders of their own country and that comes with rules, like them or not.
  - landl0rd 11mo ago
    No, one has chosen to make something available for contact within one country. One is not actively himself reaching across borders to do so. One cannot reasonably be required to take any affirmative action to fulfill the whims of a foreign government. Also, Britain isn't important enough to make this stick against e.g. an American. If someone writes me a letter asking a question about material that is prohibited in his own country, that is not my problem. It is his responsibility to comply with local law and that of local government to seize material that is illegal there. They cannot deputize me to act, unpaid and without consent, on their behalf.
    - gpm 11mo ago
      What is having your web server send IP packets with an IP address addressed to an overseas address to your ISP who you have signed a contract with to have them deliver those packets to the designated address if not actively reaching across borders? That's what happens when you respond to a request after all. (Up to very minor nits, e.g. you might be paying a cloud provider instead of an ISP).
dom96 11mo ago
> Ultimately, what Ofcom is doing here is the perfect modern-day lesson lesson for why the First Amendment exists in the first place 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.
ultra_nick 11mo ago
[flagged]
- mtoner23 11mo ago
  Idk man look around america rn. People in my neighborhood are getting dragged into unmarked vans off the street
- sergiotapia 11mo ago
  Read somewhere the fighting age men with stones died by a lot during the world wars.
  - Yokolos 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - codeguro 11mo ago
      [flagged]
    - hunterpayne 11mo ago
      [flagged]
- Yokolos 11mo ago
  This is specific to the UK. What does it have to do with Europe? So, that's a laugh and a fucking half coming from what's likely an American. The US is already as close to a fascist dictatorship as you can get in a democracy with extraordinary rendition and the indiscriminate disappearing of thousands of people without due process. Why is the US so in love with authoritarianism that you embrace it so eagerly and tear apart your own constitution for it? Pot meet kettle.
web3-is-a-scam 11mo ago
Don’t give a f*ck about the UKs laws. Don’t like it, the UK should block ME.
mlhpdx 11mo ago
Isn’t compliance just as easy as asking where the visitor is from (or more specifically if they are from or in the UK), perhaps even just once per IP they visit the site from? Yes, they may lie, but that’s their problem not the site operator’s.
- Hizonner 11mo ago
  There's no sign that Ofcom wouldn't want to treat user lies as the site's problem. I suspect they would.
- snickerbockers 11mo ago
  IDK but I'm more concerned with the principle that a foreign government is claiming to have jurisdiction far beyond its borders, especially on a matter which is considered a fundamental human right in the United States.
mrlonglong 11mo ago
I don't understand this. 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?
- HotGarbage 11mo ago
  They're not blocking them, they're actively seeking fines, even after the site takes it upon themselves to block the UK.
  - mrlonglong 11mo ago
    Ah, now that's silly of our dear UK Govt. Bit of an overreach there, and oh definitely they'll get bitch slapped.
    - chihuahua 11mo ago
      It would be a lot easier for the UK to just block any site they don't like. Especially when the concern is ostensibly to protect UK citizens from harm.
      - mrlonglong 11mo ago
        They already block the pirate bay website. Could have done the same thing with these sites but ...
- Arch-TK 11mo ago
  But Ofcom is in fact saying that you are _not_ free to run those websites from the UK and they expect _you_ to implement a perfect blockade of UK IP addresses. On the other hand, if Ofcom receive a tip-off from a random charity claiming they found a UK IP address which doesn't get blocked for 10 minutes or whatever the hell happened here then they will try to extrajudicially internationally fine you for it.
pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
So the author repeats that the SaSu site was geoblocked but simultaneously note that all UK are idiots that don't realise a geoblock is imperfect and claim... >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.
- Arch-TK 11mo ago
  If SaSu is voluntarily implementing a UK geoblock instead of fighting Ofcom. Ofcom is claiming it's everyone on the planet's responsibility to implement their own geoblocks of the UK rather than for the UK to set up a GFW. If SaSu was trying to circumvent some UK originated blockade of their website, your comment would make sense, but they weren't. Even if you hate how this guy writes, which I can agree is questionably professional at times. There's no real way to read this other than that Ofcom, instead of simply complaining that an IP wasn't geoblocked correctly, took the first opportunity they could find to restart their extraterritorial attack on SaSu. All that to avoid the presumably incredibly bad optics of implementing a GFW. Although honestly I would be the least surprised if the UK implemented a GFW soon.
  - pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
    >If SaSu was trying to circumvent some UK originated blockade of their website, your comment would make sense, but they weren't. What's all the business about the mirror and the 'the mirror is none of your business' prose - which sounds very much like 'do not look behind the curtain'. It really sounds a lot like the reason the gov 'went after' SaSu was they brought up a mirror that didn't block the UK access in the manner of the principle site. But I can't see how that's verifiable for us. This (attempted circumvention of the block with a mirror; like pirate sites do) seems more likely to me than it being a vendetta; perhaps you have more info that would suggest otherwise?
gethly 11mo ago
Sounds like UK problem to me. No one can be expected to know or abide laws of another country. In person or in the digital realm. If UK has some laws, then UK citizens should abide them, not the rest of the world. In other words, say betting is illegal in UK and I as a UK citizen go and make a bet via website that is run by a business in Panama. The Panamanian company should not concern itself with anything but rather it is me whom is breaking the law.
- beejiu 11mo ago
  > No one can be expected to know or abide laws of another country. If this is your view, do not travel or do business in other countries. It's simple.
  - tim333 11mo ago
    Or post on the web in case it annoys some country.
  - gethly 11mo ago
    You must be an extra special kind of thick. I'm obviously not talking about me travelling to the UK and not abiding by their laws FFS.
sergiotapia 11mo ago
I'm in the USA - can't I just wipe my ass with this thing just like I would from a lawsuit from Zimbabwe?
- chihuahua 11mo ago
  Up to a certain point, yes - if you never leave the U.S. and don't anticipate that the U.S. government will at some point extradite you to the UK. And if you travel to other countries, one of those could decide to extradite you to the UK. That is less likely with a lawsuit from Zimbabwe than a lawsuit from the UK. In other words, it depends on how much international influence the country in question has.
- josephcsible 11mo ago
  Only if you're okay with never visiting or transiting through the UK, or any other country that would be willing to extradite you there, for the rest of your life.
hardlianotion 11mo ago
This is how the UK government, faced with pressing issues, chooses to waste its time and destroy its remaining reputation for competence. 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.
- TacticalCoder 11mo ago
  [dead]
matt-p 11mo ago
I honestly still cannot believe that a simple blogger needs to potentially comply with the regulations of some ~200 countries. What happens when the law of two countries conflicts? What if the UK say I need to verify everyone's age, but another country rules I cannot collect peoples IDs? Well I could geo fence the best I can and serve two different paths right? Nope, it seems not. 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.
jalapenos 11mo ago
Why is it that every mention of the UK government I hear in the news, I think "wow, those guys are absolute scum!". They should just hand it back to the king, the democracy experiment has failed there.
- dgroshev 11mo ago
  That's how filter bubbles and propaganda work. Take this case: the law was enacted two years ago by a different government, the regulator follows the law as enacted, and yet no one cares about this little nuance. In reality, it's a decent technocratic government trying to reverse a decade of mismanagement and fighting about five hundred fires at the same time. It's OK to good.
  - rgblambda 11mo ago
    I agree with you on the decade of mismanagement and five hundred fires, but Labour (and the Lib Dems) supported this bill when it was being voted on.
    - dgroshev 11mo ago
      They didn't: https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1416 https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1416
      - rgblambda 11mo ago
        Here's every vote on the Online Safety Bill: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons?SearchText=Online+Safety+Bill&FromDate=01%2F01%2F2021&ToDate=01%2F06%2F2025 https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons?SearchText=Online+... Labour & Lib Dems may have voted against the exact text presented to the house on a number of occasions, but it's well documented that they not only supported the general principle of the bill but wanted it to go further. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-12/debates/81853BB7-375E-45C0-8C9D-4169AC36DD12/OnlineSafetyBill https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-12/debates/818... >I agree with the Minister that this is a groundbreaking Bill, but we must be clear that there are still gaps. - Debbie Abrahams (Labour)
sunshine-o 11mo ago
It is getting really hard to follow their logic. 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.
- arlcode 11mo ago
  Of course not. But this is very useful to a) show they are enforcing this shiny new law and b) lay the legal groundwork that blocking it on their side (thruough UK ISPs) is warranted.
- gpm 11mo ago
  > 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 Ofcom appears to agree that geoblocking UK residents would satisfy the requirements of this law. They also however appear to believe the OPs clients are simply lying about actually geoblocking UK residents - and Ofcom appear's to be the quasi-judicial entity which decides (at least as a first step). I can't imagine OP's response to Ofcom that "we aren't doing that, but we won't explain what we were doing when we created the domain you think we created to do that" was particularly convincing. > aren't they just declaring war on the entire world? No, that would only happen if they started attempting to enforce the law by going into "the entire world" by force. Just declaring that some foreign entity broke your laws and owes you money and maybe that you'll arrest them if they come to your country isn't an act of war. Acts of war look like drone striking alleged drug smugglers in some other countries territorial waters without that other countries permission.
  - Hizonner 11mo ago
    > They also however appear to believe the OPs clients are simply lying about actually geoblocking UK residents They don't seem to claim that. They claim the block is imperfect, and they demand perfection. Since perfection is in fact impossible, that means there's no reasonable, actually available action you can take to keep them from fining you, or at least trying to.
gtrevorjay 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  You're saying that the UK's porn laws are "actively attacking the sovereignty" of the US in a way that is comparable to breaking a military alliance. Do I have that right? Further, you're implying this activity is NOT something that the US has historically and regularly done to other countries, including its allies in NATO?
  - gtrevorjay 11mo ago
    Of course I am. A military alliance is contingent on the other party remaining an ally. Even Democrats would expect NATO to be dissolved if by some shenanigans Putin was elected PM. That the US abuses it's position as the primary military power on earth to violate other nation's sovereignty is wrong and might matter "in the final calculus" but doesn't change how wrong this UK action is in isolation. It does bring up another absurdity particular to interactions between the US and UK which is that the US extended an insane amount of courtesy of not "finishing the job" once it was the predominant world power.
    - Aeolun 11mo ago
      > It does bring up another absurdity particular to interactions between the US and UK which is that the US extended an insane amount of courtesy of not "finishing the job" once it was the predominant world power. I don’t think that’s courtesy. I think that’s just realizing how useless and hard fighting a cross-atlantic war is.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- fukka42 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 11mo ago
throwaway1109a 11mo ago
Adding this as a throwaway. 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.
fukka42 11mo ago
[flagged]
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  [flagged]
calvinmorrison 11mo ago
Lets all point and laugh
dmitrygr 11mo ago
It is so rare and nice to see such clear defense of free speech, with full admission that it is precisely the unpopular speech that needs it. The ACLU used to do this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...), but no longer does (https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams-organizations-new-agenda/ https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...). I am glad to see someone still does Thank you
matt-p 11mo ago
For a particular (suicide related) site I know that it was 'made known' to resi-ISPs here and as far as I know everyone with existing capability to do so blocked it (though for some smaller ISPs just at the DNS level, so essentially superficially). Though that was just on the honour/good will system, I don't think any had to be forced. 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).
anothernewdude 11mo ago
Why would I need to comply with foreign laws?
mellosouls 11mo ago
A quote from Preston Byrne today on X: 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.
- hexbin010 11mo ago
  > the American is right and X is wrong Well colour me surprised by that opinion
biglost 11mo ago
An italian woman should not post her Photos in instagram because afghanistan and iran? Something seems weird here
Danjoe4 11mo ago
As if I'm going to comply with any UK laws. They still have the delusion they're some sort of empire. Good luck suing my American company
sleepybrett 11mo ago
The UK should build a national 'firewall' and prosecute anyone who gets around it via vpn. I'm sure the citizenry will fucking love that and then they can proceed to repeal the law.
- zamadatix 11mo ago
  Public sentiment in the Uk is actually pretty supportive of this law. I wouldn't be surprised if the firewall did happen eventually, but with support from the public instead of outcry.
  - sleepybrett 11mo ago
    their funeral.
    - zamadatix 11mo ago
      Sure about that too? ;) I think it'll be depressing as hell, but I don't know if "an internet with borders" is really as big a death sentence as I'd like it to be, or if we just got unusually lucky with the internet lasting as it has so long and the other way will be what people 200 years from now consider the sane approach leading to the most success. Time will tell, in the meantime the only thing I know is it's depressing for me to think about.
seydor 11mo ago
Why doesnt the UK block the website? They do this for plenty of sites. The legal target should be UK telecom companies
jmward01 11mo ago
Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb and this is a clear example of exactly why. Increasingly the digital world -is- the world and arbitrary geographical boundaries are causing nothing but problems. We are taking the ideas of physical borders and passports and, badly, applying that broken idea to a virtual space with typical results. It blows me away that the real problem with strictly enforced borders, virtual or physical, is that they almost always are used to enforce political ideology and rarely do they actually afford protection in any other way. Strict boarders should be looked at highly skeptically and always viewed as a temporary solution that should be solved diplomatically and/or socially. We don't need things like this going from city to city, county to county, state to state but wherever we see an entity that puts a strict boarder in place, virtual or physical, we suddenly see conflict and political games. There are real issues to consider here but the UK is definitely wrong, and creating more long term problems, with this 'solution'.
- Razengan 11mo ago
  > Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb This. It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs. And that's how it was for like 99% of the time that humans have existed. When did keeping people locked inside "borders" even become a thing? I'm guessing post World War 1? Looking up history on Wikipedia says documents for "citizenship" existed maybe as far back as Ancient Egypt but there doesn't seem to be anything that forced people to remain within the nation of their birth. The West literally bombed Japan and China to open their borders for "tRaDe" then pushed for strict borders after the world's worst wars that they started.
  - bad_username 11mo ago
    > It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs The "as long as you can" is exactly the reason. There is no way to ensure the travelers or migrants can (and want) to do that, if you don't have a border.
soueuls 11mo ago
Sure then I don’t comply, so what? 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.
chopete3 11mo ago
>>If any censorship demand gets through our border, we fail. 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?
scott_w 11mo ago
This post is really mixed up which, for a lawyer, is really disappointing to read. 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).
- kassner 11mo ago
  I guess the case he’s making is that not even Ofcom knows, because it has nothing to do with the block itself. They want to make a scene, however possible.
  - scott_w 11mo ago
    You can’t infer that from the statement posted. In fact, all Ofcom have done is say they’re investigating. Do you expect a regulatory body to not investigate a report from a serious suicide prevention charity? In addition, such an inference flies in the face of the fact that Ofcom have sent staff to conferences for pornographic websites to talk to them about compliance: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/21/were-here-to-help-how-ofcom-is-urging-porn-sites-to-follow-the-online-safety-act https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/21/were-here-to...
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
hexbin010 11mo ago
Oh god not another post attracting dozens of hypocrites: Americans decrying others about policing the world. Like bees to honey
Arch-TK 11mo ago
Common misunderstanding in these comments: 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.
ksec 11mo ago
Considering All UK Internet user have to use UK ISP one way or another, why not have a list of banned site and force ISP to block it? It really should be the UK side responsibility and not an US company to have to block it. And considering how UK is cosy up to China they might as well ask the Chinese to help them setting up Great Firewall. 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.
morshu9001 11mo ago
"deliberate strategy by Ofcom: pick the most radioactive free speech targets in the world" That's typical. What's their real target then, anti-Israel content like in the US TikTok forced-sale?

313 points by pinkahd 11mo ago

anigbrowl 11mo ago

When a country transitions from manufacturing to services, it ends up trying to export its legal system.

pessimizer 11mo ago
One of the big things I've been wondering about the decision of the Anglosphere to all switch to a service economy: why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries? The UK (nor the US) has no advantage in providing services, all it can do is demand that other people be prevented from providing them.
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  > why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries? Given that, shouldn't you be able to answer the question?
- narcraft 11mo ago
  You're the smartest, most clever, most physically fit, but why does nobody else seem to realize it?
  - HPsquared 11mo ago
    It's the UK that is going North Korea on everyone. Closing off the internet, restricting speech and so on. Edit: that's not to say it isn't a valid strategy; NK has a big stability buff.
- tim333 11mo ago
  It wasn't a decision to switch to services - I'm in the UK - it's just left to the market and that's where the money is mostly. It's kind of irrelevant if your population is large or small etc.
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  One advantage English speaking countries have WRT the service economy is that most of the world speaks English at this point. English became the language of international trade, of course, because we’re all just so adorably stupid, and our countries are tiny and harmless. Plus it is such an easy language to pick up…
- estimator7292 11mo ago
  Because capitalism can't accept the inevitable fact that infinite exponential growth is literally impossible. It's not a "service economy" it's a "rent extraction" economy. Capitalists need more growth and more returns now and since innovating, producing goods, and providing customer service costs money, we simply charge people a monthly fee to use their heated car seats. This is what the brutal, messy end of capitalism looks like. Relentless self-cannibalization, burning billions of dollars tomorrow to make one cent today. If nothing makes sense, that's because it doesn't. There is no logic or reason or planning involved. It's more money now, period. Consequences don't matter because we get more money right this second. Capitalists are apparently unaware of what happens when they've extracted all possible money from the economy.
  - tavavex 11mo ago
    Your concerns are true, but I'm not sure if this answers the question above. After all, the shift to service economies started a very long time before the crisis ramped up to what it's like today. And even today, under a crust of rent-seeking businesses, circular investing and outright scams, there's plenty of quiet, boring businesses that provide actually important and relevant services. It can (and probably will) still get so, so, so much worse than this. So clearly, there's more factors in play here that made most of the first world transition to providing services, since we weren't remotely close to running out of ways to extract and sell goods then (and still aren't, not yet).
jacquesm 11mo ago
The USA has been exporting its legal system for decades. And the UK still makes plenty of stuff. I really don't think this is valid. There is a close analogy though, companies that end up losing in the marketplace tend to become legally active to try to extract a tax from those that did better.
- anigbrowl 11mo ago
  I fully agree that the US does the same thing, as do other countries- that's why I framed it as a general observation. I agree about the similar corporate behavior. I don't think it's a healthy development, but it's not easy to develop a general model of how this kind of thing plays out.
- MangoToupe 11mo ago
  > The USA has been exporting its legal system for decades With enormous damage to global society, I might add

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

ranger_danger 11mo ago

I do not have "UK trying to take back the US" on my bingo card... let's hope it doesn't actually escalate to that in the future.

themafia 11mo ago

> They’re definitely not treating it like a public safety matter, where they know how to reach us and know that I generally respond within the hour. 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.

toyg 11mo ago
> This is clearly [...] about controlling American corporations Not exactly. On the surface, it's about kowtowing to pearl-clutching UK NGOs that are empowered by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids; and underneath, the real agenda is about restricting the influence of unsanctioned sites that could influence UK discourse - influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves.
- themafia 11mo ago
  > could influence UK discourse Is 4chan attempting to unfairly or unduly influence UK "discourse?" Or are they just _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum? > Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids Which actually are an attempt to influence UK discourse. The framing errors are interesting.
  - toyg 11mo ago
    > _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum Your naivete is endearing. Every general-purpose public forum, these days, is heavily manipulated by bots.
- reaperducer 11mo ago
  influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves. I could see that last century. But do they even care about influence anymore? Isn't the money all they care about now?

kingsleyopara 11mo ago

The most frustrating part here is that this car crash of a policy had cross party support so there wasn’t even a way for UK people like me to vote against it.

OhioMan2943 11mo ago
[flagged]
spacebanana7 11mo ago
Even in Reform, I get the sense that Zia Yusuf was the only person campaigning seriously against it. Going on a one man crusade to force Farage to criticise it and put fully repealing the act on their manifesto.
- youngNed 11mo ago
  It was a Reform politician who championed it in: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0004/220004.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0004... WITH A RAP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ql6tGu9aWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ql6tGu9aWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=r4mRo2M5VMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=r4mRo2M5VMA
  - spacebanana7 11mo ago
    Yeah they really shouldn’t have let Nadine Dorris into the party. For the sake of online freedom, thankfully Zia outranks her (as she holds no official position) but even so it’s not an ideal situation.
  - mike_hearn 11mo ago
    Yes, but she is now allied with a party that has committed to repealing it. This seems to be the result of pure political calculation by all involved. Dorries is unfortunately quite popular with certain demographics that aren't natural Reform supporters (i.e. the sort who love the OSA), so bringing her in probably does help them. But they know they can't absorb too many former Tories without undermining the justification for their own existence.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

morkalork 11mo ago

Interesting that it's the existence of the suicide discussion forum that's too much to bare for the UK. Really drives home the point that in the state's eyes: your self, your body and ultimately your life, don't belong to you.

pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
Interesting to compare with the OpenAI story about the LLM offering moral support for someone seeking suicide.
crazydoggers 11mo ago
Is it not possible that there is concern for individuals well beings in the midst of a mental health crisis? It’s one thing to be talking about suicide or assisted suicide because you’ve decided it’s right for you and your situation. It’s another to be dealing with depression from trauma, unable to get help and have no support system, and then be coerced by individuals on forums with ulterior motives. I’m not saying I am in support of the UKs attempts, but it’s also not helpful to paint everything black and white on either side. Real solutions require dealing with the grays and the details. edit: And for reference I have spoken to people in the later situations who have found all too many toxic individuals online who will say things like “you should definitely just kill yourself” in the midst of such situations, who after therapy consider those people to have been committing even more trauma (most likely because they get off on the control of another persons life, playing out murder fantasies etc, and who use the internets anonymity to further traumatize people at their most vulnerable)
- 13415 11mo ago
  I doubt Ofcom are motivated by "concern for individuals well beings in the midst of a mental health crisis", but even then, it is clear in the context of the current discussion that they should be concerned with enforcing their legislation in their own country. The UK is free to build The Great Firewall of the United Kingdom and block half of the internet if their concern is so great. What they cannot be allowed to do is tell organizations in other jurisdictions that they now suddenly fall under UK jurisdiction. There are 195 countries in the world. If all of them followed a policy like UK's Ofcom, the internet would be gone in no time and world-wide user-to-user communication would become impossible for legal reasons. It's obviously not a sane position.

beejiu 11mo ago

I don't really understand the concern. The UK objects to suicide forums and American operators of suicide forums are protected by the First Amendment of extradition to the UK. So if you want to operate a suicide forum from America, just don't travel to the UK and you're okay.

x3n0ph3n3 11mo ago
It's not clear to me that the UK even has a mechanism to discover the operators of such sites. If I found myself in such a position, I imagine I wouldn't even bother trying to block UK IPs and let them sort out their own internet blocking.
mcny 11mo ago
First of all, I anal and also this is more of a question than a statement but a us person could travel to a country x and that x could send this us person to a UK prison? I don't know if doing so would be legal but when the rubber hits the road, each country x is technically sovereign and does not have to honor the first amendment of the US constitution. So even if it might be frowned upon to extradite foreign (US) nationals in country X (such as Canada or India) to the UK, they could do it anyway to send a message?
- beejiu 11mo ago
  Your First Amendment rights only apply within the United States, this should be obvious. Nonetheless, extradition treaties generally require that a crime be considered a crime within both jurisdictions.
  - holowoodman 11mo ago
    Most of Europe does have similar thought-crime and censorship laws as the UK now have. Also, the crime of "hindering an official investigation" could be interpreted into this, and this exists practically anywhere. The only further question would be if the country is friendly enough with the UK to extradite.

Alex2037 11mo ago

>If we concede even a scintilla of our constitutional rights, we fail. 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.

pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
It comes across as unhinged with the current regime daily infringing the [USA] Constitutional rights of USA citizens and the UK in not way seeking to inhibit those rights.
- bigstrat2003 11mo ago
  > the current regime daily infringing the [USA] Constitutional rights of USA citizens That has been happening for decades at this point. That doesn't make today's violations ok, but neither are they something new. The people of the USA gave up on freedom after 9/11.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
tchalla 11mo ago
Slippery slopes have existed in all western parts of the world disguised as freedom since eternity. This isn’t something new.

garaetjjte 11mo ago

He seems very confused about what First Amendment is about. How it would be even possible for UK government to violate it?

spacebanana7 11mo ago
If the British government can pressure international payment processors or service providers to cut off a website, they can pressure those websites to do stuff.
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  The USA has been doing this with VISA and MC since about forever.
  - ranger_danger 11mo ago
    Do you have a source for the USA pressuring VISA and MC?
    - superkuh 11mo ago
      https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/visa-mastercard-win-suit-over-wikileaks-block https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/visa-mastercard-wi...
    - jacquesm 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - ranger_danger 11mo ago
        > Is google down again? Damn. Sorry man, I'd try again in a couple of hours. "The burden of proof lies upon the person making empirically unfalsifiable claims." Beyond that, I find your comment to be extremely rude and condescending, and a violation of this site's guidelines. Science says being generous, thoughtful and kind is a sign of high intelligence, so let's all try to be nicer.

mzajc 11mo ago

> The primary one is that the notion of a “UK based IP” is nonsense. Geolocation databases work by figuring out where people log in from and only after doing a lot of pattern recognition do those addresses get associated with that location. 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 These are actual per-country allocations, not interpolations from access patterns.

flumpcakes 11mo ago
Yeah, geo-IP is not perfect, but it's not built on pure guessing like the author implies.
- philipwhiuk 11mo ago
  Yeh it's the sub-country data that's often bad, not the national stuff.
  - tankenmate 11mo ago
    Not true, IP addresses are sold on, or even from time to time IP addresses are even leased (they can be transferred from RIRs, temporarily or permanently). Some times IP address ranges are registered with RIR but used in a different geography / region. Geo-IP databases are mostly accurate, emphasis on mostly.
    - miki123211 11mo ago
      And then there's the case of mobile roaming. In the overwhelming majority of cases, mobile roaming traffic uses "home routing", not "local break-out". This means it is routed to the country where the user normally resides, not where they currently are. This means: - For people visiting the UK (and potentially staying there for a long time, if on a permissive roaming plan), their IP address won't show up as UK despite long-term residence / citizenship. - British people visiting other countries will still be subject to OSA, even when they should not be. - People (including British people!) who buy British AirAlo SIMs may not get a British IP. AirAlo often uses SIMs registered in a different country than the one you're visiting, and the "exit node" (P-GW) may be located in a different country altogether. I suspect this last option will become quite attractive if VPN bans ever actually come into effect. This is pretty much unfixable without major changes in how LTE roaming is conducted worldwide, and the UK isn't important enough to make that happen.

flumpcakes 11mo ago

[flagged]

School-Cotton 11mo ago
It’s of course reasonable to rank principles that way, and I’d probably agree with you, but it’s not true that it’s “not a free speech issue”. It is a free speech issue, you’re just saying you value other concerns above absolute free speech in certain cases.
- flumpcakes 11mo ago
  'Absolute free speech' doesn't exist anywhere. Would you be arrested if you told national secrets? What would happen if you told everyone at work (unfounded) that your boss abuses their children?
  - School-Cotton 11mo ago
    > 'Absolute free speech' doesn't exist anywhere You’re right, but I never claimed it did. Even the famously expansive US freedom of speech protection is not absolute. > Would you be arrested if you told national secrets? What would happen if you told everyone at work (unfounded) that your boss abuses their children? Yes you would be arrested, which is a freedom of speech issue, however banning this speech, despite harming freedom, is justified by other factors that are more important in these cases.
josephcsible 11mo ago
> I would lump these people into the same place we put child molesters and murderers. So would I, but freedom of speech doesn't have an exception for bad people, no matter how bad they are. Remember the Skokie affair, where a Jewish lawyer defended the Nazi Party's right to free speech? That's what really believing in free speech looks like.

8note 11mo ago

the bravado makes for some great irony. worrying and feeling ultra-superior about the UK government, while letting the tiktok ban and forced sale go through unchallenged. 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

jsheard 11mo ago
> worrying and feeling ultra-superior about the UK government, while letting the tiktok ban and forced sale go through unchallenged. And more to the point, many US states passing or attempting to pass laws which aren't all that different to the UKs OSA. Mississippi's version is in some ways even more onerous to enforce as it requires social networks to age-check all of their users, not just those who want to access adult or "harmful" content. Bluesky notably went along with the OSA but considered Mississippi's demands to be over the line and geoblocked them instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
- dmix 11mo ago
  > And more to the point What's the point exactly? That some US states also did something similar re porn so therefore it's a nothingburger and we shouldn't care about this lawyers campaign to protect the internet from censorship?
- IshKebab 11mo ago
  I think Bluesky probably went along with the OSA because the population of the UK is like 20x that of Missisipi. Wake me up when they geoblock California.

crtasm 11mo ago

>This is demonstrably false. 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.

vitus 11mo ago
The combative stance that he's taking really doesn't do him any favors in resolving the issue. Lawyer: "I've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is blocked." Regulators: "We've confirmed that at least one UK IP address is not blocked." In what world is the correct response "Dear regulators, you're incompetent. Pound sand." instead of "Can you share the IP address you used so my client can address this in their geoblock?"
- holowoodman 11mo ago
  > In what world is the correct response "Dear regulators, you're incompetent. Pound sand." instead of "Can you share the IP address you used so my client can address this in their geoblock?" That would imply that the client actually would like to be contacted every time Ofcom found a leak in the geoblock. Not a good idea imho.
  - crtasm 11mo ago
    It sounds like they would welcome that, e.g. in the update to the post >They’re definitely not treating it like a public safety matter, where they know how to reach us and know that I generally respond within the hour.
    - Hizonner 11mo ago
      They don't agree that it is a public safety matter, or at least they've clearly taken the position that they don't care about that kind of public safety. He's just pointing out that Ofcom's behavior is inconsistent with Ofcom sincerely believing it's a public safety matter either.
- 11mo ago

bbor 11mo ago

So the story behind the title is that the UK gov claims that the IP block wasn't working? And the author agrees that IP blocks can't really work, even? 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. Isn't that how laws work...? Like, it's illegal to be gay in some countries. Theoretically, those countries could open proceedings against every openly-gay person in the world, and try them in absentia. That would be evil and silly of course, but I don't understand what legal principle it would be violating? 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?

rootusrootus 11mo ago
> I don't understand what legal principle it would be violating? Jurisdiction? Don't you first have to commit the crime in the jurisdiction in question?
- Hizonner 11mo ago
  A government can claim jurisdiction over anything worldwide. A different government can disagree. The two may negotiate over that, in which case common sense ideas like "they didn't do it in your territory" may make one side look foolish, which may in fact have a real influence over the outcome of the negotiations. If they can't come to an agreement, then it may become a matter of whether the "offender" happens to travel somewhere where they can be grabbed. In the end, jurisdiction is about who has the power to enforce their laws. There's no universally-agreed-upon uber-legal system to make it otherwise.
Arch-TK 11mo ago
Let's say hosting a website for cat pictures is illegal in the UK, but I am based in the US (alas, I am not). I put up my cat picture website but because the UK is a tiny and barely known country, I don't realise that this cat website would be breaching laws there. My website gets popular and I receive a strongly worded legal letter from an entity in the UK claiming that they want to take me to court and fine me for providing this website to their citizens. I am like: WTF? Just fucking block it from your perspective if you don't want your citizens to see it? And I seek legal advice from my lawyer who says: Well, they have no jurisdiction here, so you can ignore this letter, but if you want to minimise hassle, you could just geoblock the UK and hopefully they'll stop coming to you. So I implement basic geoblocking, which works 99.99% of the time (at least when it comes to figuring out which country an IP is in). The UK entity acknowledges this in a letter and tells me that this is a sufficient solution for now, but they'll keep watching me. I go about my business, for some reason or another I make a mirror, which I also implement the geoblocking on, now proactively, because I don't want any more annoying letters from the UK. Some time later, the UK entity sends another letter claiming they're continuing the proceedings because someone in the UK told them that they could still access my cat website and provided evidence. Within 10 minutes myself and my lawyer both use VPNs to verify the geoblock is still working, and we're confused. We ask the UK entity WTF, and they say: We have evidence, the fact that it's clearly still working from _our_ perspective is irrelevant, I bet you just geoblocked our IP address. What do you do in this case?

phendrenad2 11mo ago

The absolute confidence Ofcom has in its ability to impose laws on US citizens is kind of strange. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe in 2028 we get a president who is willing to let US citizens be extradited based on laws like this.

snickerbockers 11mo ago
EU and/or Britain has been telegraphing they want to have some limited jurisdiction over the United States for a few years now. GDPR also claims to be able to charge you for a crime even if you've never been to Europe (FWIW its mostly aimed at large corporations and I don't believe I've heard of them using it for anything other than civil fines but on paper they claim to have that authority even outside of their own borders) and during the big riots in UK last year there were law enforcement agencies threatening to prosecute Americans for inciting the riots remotely over the internet (once again they didn't actually do it but they do claim to have that authority and have threatened to use it).
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

olirex99 11mo ago

When content involves self-harm or illegal activity, the discussion isn’t just about geolocation, it’s about platform responsibility, user safety, and effective remediation. Striking the balance between free expression and preventing real harm is why platforms use content policy teams, abuse reporting, and multidisciplinary responses (moderation + outreach + law enforcement where warranted).

bad_username 11mo ago
Different countries may have different ideas about the balance you've mentioned. One country should not impose its version on another (with threats of jail time). This is what the discussion is about.

13415 11mo ago

We're aggressively blocking UK IPs before we even have our product ready, neither our website nor our software will work for visitors from the UK, our ToS will prohibit use of our software for UK residents, and we will not sell or offer the software in the UK. Ofcom would have to put a lot of effort to circumvent these measures to even know we exist. In a nutshell, I'm moderately confident that this will suffice to keep Ofcom away.

Hizonner 11mo ago

You shouldn't even be expected to geoblock. If I'm operating a Web site in country A, I should not have to care about country B's laws unless I am taking specific action intended to attract users in country B in particular. That's doesn't mean just to target the whole world, either. If you don't want your citizens to access something in another country, take it up with your citizens. 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.

mlhpdx 11mo ago
I don’t agree that choosing to host a website without limiting the audience is innocent. It’s a choice, and has been the default for a long time, but it means one has chosen to speak outside the borders of their own country and that comes with rules, like them or not.
- landl0rd 11mo ago
  No, one has chosen to make something available for contact within one country. One is not actively himself reaching across borders to do so. One cannot reasonably be required to take any affirmative action to fulfill the whims of a foreign government. Also, Britain isn't important enough to make this stick against e.g. an American. If someone writes me a letter asking a question about material that is prohibited in his own country, that is not my problem. It is his responsibility to comply with local law and that of local government to seize material that is illegal there. They cannot deputize me to act, unpaid and without consent, on their behalf.
  - gpm 11mo ago
    What is having your web server send IP packets with an IP address addressed to an overseas address to your ISP who you have signed a contract with to have them deliver those packets to the designated address if not actively reaching across borders? That's what happens when you respond to a request after all. (Up to very minor nits, e.g. you might be paying a cloud provider instead of an ISP).

dom96 11mo ago

> Ultimately, what Ofcom is doing here is the perfect modern-day lesson lesson for why the First Amendment exists in the first place 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.

ultra_nick 11mo ago

[flagged]

mtoner23 11mo ago
Idk man look around america rn. People in my neighborhood are getting dragged into unmarked vans off the street
sergiotapia 11mo ago
Read somewhere the fighting age men with stones died by a lot during the world wars.
- Yokolos 11mo ago
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  - codeguro 11mo ago
    [flagged]
  - hunterpayne 11mo ago
    [flagged]
Yokolos 11mo ago
This is specific to the UK. What does it have to do with Europe? So, that's a laugh and a fucking half coming from what's likely an American. The US is already as close to a fascist dictatorship as you can get in a democracy with extraordinary rendition and the indiscriminate disappearing of thousands of people without due process. Why is the US so in love with authoritarianism that you embrace it so eagerly and tear apart your own constitution for it? Pot meet kettle.

web3-is-a-scam 11mo ago

Don’t give a f*ck about the UKs laws. Don’t like it, the UK should block ME.

mlhpdx 11mo ago

Isn’t compliance just as easy as asking where the visitor is from (or more specifically if they are from or in the UK), perhaps even just once per IP they visit the site from? Yes, they may lie, but that’s their problem not the site operator’s.

Hizonner 11mo ago
There's no sign that Ofcom wouldn't want to treat user lies as the site's problem. I suspect they would.
snickerbockers 11mo ago
IDK but I'm more concerned with the principle that a foreign government is claiming to have jurisdiction far beyond its borders, especially on a matter which is considered a fundamental human right in the United States.

mrlonglong 11mo ago

I don't understand this. 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?

HotGarbage 11mo ago
They're not blocking them, they're actively seeking fines, even after the site takes it upon themselves to block the UK.
- mrlonglong 11mo ago
  Ah, now that's silly of our dear UK Govt. Bit of an overreach there, and oh definitely they'll get bitch slapped.
  - chihuahua 11mo ago
    It would be a lot easier for the UK to just block any site they don't like. Especially when the concern is ostensibly to protect UK citizens from harm.
    - mrlonglong 11mo ago
      They already block the pirate bay website. Could have done the same thing with these sites but ...
Arch-TK 11mo ago
But Ofcom is in fact saying that you are _not_ free to run those websites from the UK and they expect _you_ to implement a perfect blockade of UK IP addresses. On the other hand, if Ofcom receive a tip-off from a random charity claiming they found a UK IP address which doesn't get blocked for 10 minutes or whatever the hell happened here then they will try to extrajudicially internationally fine you for it.

pbhjpbhj 11mo ago

So the author repeats that the SaSu site was geoblocked but simultaneously note that all UK are idiots that don't realise a geoblock is imperfect and claim... >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.

Arch-TK 11mo ago
If SaSu is voluntarily implementing a UK geoblock instead of fighting Ofcom. Ofcom is claiming it's everyone on the planet's responsibility to implement their own geoblocks of the UK rather than for the UK to set up a GFW. If SaSu was trying to circumvent some UK originated blockade of their website, your comment would make sense, but they weren't. Even if you hate how this guy writes, which I can agree is questionably professional at times. There's no real way to read this other than that Ofcom, instead of simply complaining that an IP wasn't geoblocked correctly, took the first opportunity they could find to restart their extraterritorial attack on SaSu. All that to avoid the presumably incredibly bad optics of implementing a GFW. Although honestly I would be the least surprised if the UK implemented a GFW soon.
- pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
  >If SaSu was trying to circumvent some UK originated blockade of their website, your comment would make sense, but they weren't. What's all the business about the mirror and the 'the mirror is none of your business' prose - which sounds very much like 'do not look behind the curtain'. It really sounds a lot like the reason the gov 'went after' SaSu was they brought up a mirror that didn't block the UK access in the manner of the principle site. But I can't see how that's verifiable for us. This (attempted circumvention of the block with a mirror; like pirate sites do) seems more likely to me than it being a vendetta; perhaps you have more info that would suggest otherwise?

gethly 11mo ago

Sounds like UK problem to me. No one can be expected to know or abide laws of another country. In person or in the digital realm. If UK has some laws, then UK citizens should abide them, not the rest of the world. In other words, say betting is illegal in UK and I as a UK citizen go and make a bet via website that is run by a business in Panama. The Panamanian company should not concern itself with anything but rather it is me whom is breaking the law.

beejiu 11mo ago
> No one can be expected to know or abide laws of another country. If this is your view, do not travel or do business in other countries. It's simple.
- tim333 11mo ago
  Or post on the web in case it annoys some country.
- gethly 11mo ago
  You must be an extra special kind of thick. I'm obviously not talking about me travelling to the UK and not abiding by their laws FFS.

sergiotapia 11mo ago

I'm in the USA - can't I just wipe my ass with this thing just like I would from a lawsuit from Zimbabwe?

chihuahua 11mo ago
Up to a certain point, yes - if you never leave the U.S. and don't anticipate that the U.S. government will at some point extradite you to the UK. And if you travel to other countries, one of those could decide to extradite you to the UK. That is less likely with a lawsuit from Zimbabwe than a lawsuit from the UK. In other words, it depends on how much international influence the country in question has.
josephcsible 11mo ago
Only if you're okay with never visiting or transiting through the UK, or any other country that would be willing to extradite you there, for the rest of your life.

hardlianotion 11mo ago

This is how the UK government, faced with pressing issues, chooses to waste its time and destroy its remaining reputation for competence. 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.

TacticalCoder 11mo ago
[dead]

matt-p 11mo ago

I honestly still cannot believe that a simple blogger needs to potentially comply with the regulations of some ~200 countries. What happens when the law of two countries conflicts? What if the UK say I need to verify everyone's age, but another country rules I cannot collect peoples IDs? Well I could geo fence the best I can and serve two different paths right? Nope, it seems not. 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.

jalapenos 11mo ago

Why is it that every mention of the UK government I hear in the news, I think "wow, those guys are absolute scum!". They should just hand it back to the king, the democracy experiment has failed there.

dgroshev 11mo ago
That's how filter bubbles and propaganda work. Take this case: the law was enacted two years ago by a different government, the regulator follows the law as enacted, and yet no one cares about this little nuance. In reality, it's a decent technocratic government trying to reverse a decade of mismanagement and fighting about five hundred fires at the same time. It's OK to good.
- rgblambda 11mo ago
  I agree with you on the decade of mismanagement and five hundred fires, but Labour (and the Lib Dems) supported this bill when it was being voted on.
  - dgroshev 11mo ago
    They didn't: https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1416 https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1416
    - rgblambda 11mo ago
      Here's every vote on the Online Safety Bill: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons?SearchText=Online+Safety+Bill&FromDate=01%2F01%2F2021&ToDate=01%2F06%2F2025 https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons?SearchText=Online+... Labour & Lib Dems may have voted against the exact text presented to the house on a number of occasions, but it's well documented that they not only supported the general principle of the bill but wanted it to go further. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-12/debates/81853BB7-375E-45C0-8C9D-4169AC36DD12/OnlineSafetyBill https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-09-12/debates/818... >I agree with the Minister that this is a groundbreaking Bill, but we must be clear that there are still gaps. - Debbie Abrahams (Labour)

sunshine-o 11mo ago

It is getting really hard to follow their logic. 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.

arlcode 11mo ago
Of course not. But this is very useful to a) show they are enforcing this shiny new law and b) lay the legal groundwork that blocking it on their side (thruough UK ISPs) is warranted.
gpm 11mo ago
> 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 Ofcom appears to agree that geoblocking UK residents would satisfy the requirements of this law. They also however appear to believe the OPs clients are simply lying about actually geoblocking UK residents - and Ofcom appear's to be the quasi-judicial entity which decides (at least as a first step). I can't imagine OP's response to Ofcom that "we aren't doing that, but we won't explain what we were doing when we created the domain you think we created to do that" was particularly convincing. > aren't they just declaring war on the entire world? No, that would only happen if they started attempting to enforce the law by going into "the entire world" by force. Just declaring that some foreign entity broke your laws and owes you money and maybe that you'll arrest them if they come to your country isn't an act of war. Acts of war look like drone striking alleged drug smugglers in some other countries territorial waters without that other countries permission.
- Hizonner 11mo ago
  > They also however appear to believe the OPs clients are simply lying about actually geoblocking UK residents They don't seem to claim that. They claim the block is imperfect, and they demand perfection. Since perfection is in fact impossible, that means there's no reasonable, actually available action you can take to keep them from fining you, or at least trying to.

gtrevorjay 11mo ago

[flagged]

Terr_ 11mo ago
You're saying that the UK's porn laws are "actively attacking the sovereignty" of the US in a way that is comparable to breaking a military alliance. Do I have that right? Further, you're implying this activity is NOT something that the US has historically and regularly done to other countries, including its allies in NATO?
- gtrevorjay 11mo ago
  Of course I am. A military alliance is contingent on the other party remaining an ally. Even Democrats would expect NATO to be dissolved if by some shenanigans Putin was elected PM. That the US abuses it's position as the primary military power on earth to violate other nation's sovereignty is wrong and might matter "in the final calculus" but doesn't change how wrong this UK action is in isolation. It does bring up another absurdity particular to interactions between the US and UK which is that the US extended an insane amount of courtesy of not "finishing the job" once it was the predominant world power.
  - Aeolun 11mo ago
    > It does bring up another absurdity particular to interactions between the US and UK which is that the US extended an insane amount of courtesy of not "finishing the job" once it was the predominant world power. I don’t think that’s courtesy. I think that’s just realizing how useless and hard fighting a cross-atlantic war is.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
fukka42 11mo ago
[flagged]
- 11mo ago

throwaway1109a 11mo ago

Adding this as a throwaway. 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.

fukka42 11mo ago

[flagged]

hunterpayne 11mo ago
[flagged]

calvinmorrison 11mo ago

Lets all point and laugh

dmitrygr 11mo ago

It is so rare and nice to see such clear defense of free speech, with full admission that it is precisely the unpopular speech that needs it. The ACLU used to do this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...), but no longer does (https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams-organizations-new-agenda/ https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...). I am glad to see someone still does Thank you

matt-p 11mo ago

For a particular (suicide related) site I know that it was 'made known' to resi-ISPs here and as far as I know everyone with existing capability to do so blocked it (though for some smaller ISPs just at the DNS level, so essentially superficially). Though that was just on the honour/good will system, I don't think any had to be forced. 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).

anothernewdude 11mo ago

Why would I need to comply with foreign laws?

mellosouls 11mo ago

A quote from Preston Byrne today on X: 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.

hexbin010 11mo ago
> the American is right and X is wrong Well colour me surprised by that opinion

biglost 11mo ago

An italian woman should not post her Photos in instagram because afghanistan and iran? Something seems weird here

Danjoe4 11mo ago

As if I'm going to comply with any UK laws. They still have the delusion they're some sort of empire. Good luck suing my American company

sleepybrett 11mo ago

The UK should build a national 'firewall' and prosecute anyone who gets around it via vpn. I'm sure the citizenry will fucking love that and then they can proceed to repeal the law.

zamadatix 11mo ago
Public sentiment in the Uk is actually pretty supportive of this law. I wouldn't be surprised if the firewall did happen eventually, but with support from the public instead of outcry.
- sleepybrett 11mo ago
  their funeral.
  - zamadatix 11mo ago
    Sure about that too? ;) I think it'll be depressing as hell, but I don't know if "an internet with borders" is really as big a death sentence as I'd like it to be, or if we just got unusually lucky with the internet lasting as it has so long and the other way will be what people 200 years from now consider the sane approach leading to the most success. Time will tell, in the meantime the only thing I know is it's depressing for me to think about.

seydor 11mo ago

Why doesnt the UK block the website? They do this for plenty of sites. The legal target should be UK telecom companies

jmward01 11mo ago

Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb and this is a clear example of exactly why. Increasingly the digital world -is- the world and arbitrary geographical boundaries are causing nothing but problems. We are taking the ideas of physical borders and passports and, badly, applying that broken idea to a virtual space with typical results. It blows me away that the real problem with strictly enforced borders, virtual or physical, is that they almost always are used to enforce political ideology and rarely do they actually afford protection in any other way. Strict boarders should be looked at highly skeptically and always viewed as a temporary solution that should be solved diplomatically and/or socially. We don't need things like this going from city to city, county to county, state to state but wherever we see an entity that puts a strict boarder in place, virtual or physical, we suddenly see conflict and political games. There are real issues to consider here but the UK is definitely wrong, and creating more long term problems, with this 'solution'.

Razengan 11mo ago
> Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb This. It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs. And that's how it was for like 99% of the time that humans have existed. When did keeping people locked inside "borders" even become a thing? I'm guessing post World War 1? Looking up history on Wikipedia says documents for "citizenship" existed maybe as far back as Ancient Egypt but there doesn't seem to be anything that forced people to remain within the nation of their birth. The West literally bombed Japan and China to open their borders for "tRaDe" then pushed for strict borders after the world's worst wars that they started.
- bad_username 11mo ago
  > It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs The "as long as you can" is exactly the reason. There is no way to ensure the travelers or migrants can (and want) to do that, if you don't have a border.

soueuls 11mo ago

Sure then I don’t comply, so what? 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.

chopete3 11mo ago

>>If any censorship demand gets through our border, we fail. 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?

scott_w 11mo ago

This post is really mixed up which, for a lawyer, is really disappointing to read. 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).

kassner 11mo ago
I guess the case he’s making is that not even Ofcom knows, because it has nothing to do with the block itself. They want to make a scene, however possible.
- scott_w 11mo ago
  You can’t infer that from the statement posted. In fact, all Ofcom have done is say they’re investigating. Do you expect a regulatory body to not investigate a report from a serious suicide prevention charity? In addition, such an inference flies in the face of the fact that Ofcom have sent staff to conferences for pornographic websites to talk to them about compliance: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/21/were-here-to-help-how-ofcom-is-urging-porn-sites-to-follow-the-online-safety-act https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/21/were-here-to...
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hexbin010 11mo ago

Oh god not another post attracting dozens of hypocrites: Americans decrying others about policing the world. Like bees to honey

Arch-TK 11mo ago

Common misunderstanding in these comments: 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.

ksec 11mo ago

Considering All UK Internet user have to use UK ISP one way or another, why not have a list of banned site and force ISP to block it? It really should be the UK side responsibility and not an US company to have to block it. And considering how UK is cosy up to China they might as well ask the Chinese to help them setting up Great Firewall. 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.

morshu9001 11mo ago

"deliberate strategy by Ofcom: pick the most radioactive free speech targets in the world" That's typical. What's their real target then, anti-Israel content like in the US TikTok forced-sale?