<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/22/the-uks-online-safety-bill-would-be-a-complete-and-utter-disaster-for-an-open-internet/>
"We already knew that the UK’s Online Safety Bill was going to be an utter
disaster for the open internet, because that had been made clear early on. Last
week, the government finally unveiled the latest version of the Online Safety
Bill and it’s perhaps even worse than expected. It’s 225 pages of completely
misunderstanding the internet, and thinking that if they just threaten
companies to fix the internet, that will magically make the world work. Last
year, when an initial draft was released, we noted that it was a near identical
copy to the way that China’s Great Firewall initially worked, because it just
sort of handwaves the idea that online service providers need to stop bad
stuff… or else. And rather than recognize that’s a problem, the Online Safety
Bill leans into it.
There’s a
lot in this bill, and it’s going to take a while to dig through the
whole thing and find all the many problems with it, but as UK lawyer Graham
Smith highlights, the bill leans
hard on giving the government the power to
order websites to monitor and filter content.
As that shows the regulator OFCOM will now have the power to order websites to
use “proactive technology” (i.e., monitoring/filtering) to deal with illegal
content, children’s online safety, and “fraudulent advertising.” Of course,
anyone who knows anything about any of this would recognize the problems. How
do you build a monitoring tool that recognizes “illegal content”? Or content
that is a risk to children’s safety? It’s not like there’s some clear
definition. Normally, to declare something illegal, you have to have a full
adjudication. But here, the UK may be demanding that service providers just
figure it out, and never get it wrong. That’s going to work out great."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
