Online Safety Bill Is Official. Now We See What Enforcement Looks Like
from the uk-censorship-bill-activated dept
After being discussed for years and years, the Online Safety Act in the UK is now law, after receiving “royal assent” last week. Hilariously, the UK’s announcement declared that children and adults will now be safer online, as if that’s absolutely true. It’s not, though. The law includes many provisions that will make both children and adults less safe, including age verification (a privacy nightmare), potential limits on encryption, and tools that can lead to the suppression of important speech. What the law actually does is let the political class claim they made the internet safer, without actually doing so.
The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the agency in charge of enforcement (which is a very different role than it has had historically, where it has generally been roughly equivalent to our FCC), has announced that it is moving to implement the law. Over the last few years, I know that Ofcom has staffed up quite a lot in preparation for this, but it’s still not clear how it will actually work.
Throughout the process, every time people pointed out the many, many, many problems with how the law was written, people would say that Ofcom was a more “friendly” regulator, and one that would take a more collaborative approach to enforcing the Online Safety Act, rather than the aggressive crackdown that some feared.
Of course, even if true, that also leaves Ofcom with a tremendous amount of discretion, which itself can be abused. And frankly, even with the various changes, the final version of the bill remains a complete mess.
It’s so stupid that to get the bill over the finish line, the government basically had to say that it wouldn’t even enforce the part of the law that effectively would outlaw encryption, even though that section of the law remains in place. In other words, it’s all about discretion, and that will depend heavily on who is running Ofcom.
But the encryption stuff is hardly the only problematic aspect of the Online Safety Act. There are still issues regarding age verification, duties of care, transparency mandates, and more — each of which has a tremendous amount of nuance, and where the details of the implementation matter quite a bit.
While the EU is still starting to figure out how the DSA will work in practice, now the UK will have to figure out how the Online Safety Act will work, and so there are now two different, equally confusing and questionable approaches on that side of the Atlantic, both of which are likely to lead to the suppression of protected speech if only due to the chilling effects of the way these laws have been written.
For what it’s worth, I don’t doubt that those running Ofcom now honestly do believe that they will be the more “friendly” regulator on these issues. I just don’t think it’s likely to remain that way over the long haul. And I can’t see how this will do anything good for the internet startup scene that had been growing up in and around London, which will now face a potentially catastrophic compliance regime to deal with.
Filed Under: age verification, duty of care, encryption, ofcom, online safety act, online safety bill, privacy
Comments on “Online Safety Bill Is Official. Now We See What Enforcement Looks Like”
At the moment porn site age verification consists of a dialogue asking the visitor to click ‘enter site’ if they are over 18.
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As it should be.
Thierry Breton to the rescue
If it’s all about discretion, they should just hire the EU chief Digital Services Act enforcer. Problem solved.
Ofcom can hardly do it job regulating tv channel like GB News, mow they’ve will write the rules and regulate some 20K UK companies that run “user-to-user” web services. good luck with that.
Said this many times before but whole bill/act is such a unworkable mess that it is likely to collapse under its own weight just look at the last UK age verification law that was delayed over and over again until it was quietly scraped.
Also want to point out online platforms will not need to immediately comply with all of their duties under the bill becasue Ofcom will publish draft codes of practice in three phases with the first dealing with illegal content set for the 7th and AV sometime before Christmas. (And there likely to be delays when they start to hit the many walls of reality)
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yea like will this only effect the uk?
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Not sure but there was talk about it.
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Having read the roadmap, they are being put out for consultation and the final versions that will be enforceable won’t be until Autumn next year. Alot of chances for the wheels to fall off.
'The public is much safer with all that 'privacy' nonsense out of the way...'
It’s so stupid that to get the bill over the finish line, the government basically had to say that it wouldn’t even enforce the part of the law that effectively would outlaw encryption, even though that section of the law remains in place. In other words, it’s all about discretion, and that will depend heavily on who is running Ofcom.
Two things come to mind:
1) If they didn’t plan on using that clause then they would have simply removed it in response to criticism. That they apparently didn’t says that they absolutely plan on using it.
2) If the only defense you can think of for a part of your bill is ‘don’t worry we pinky-promise we won’t actually use the power we just gave ourselves’ then you have no defense and you’re either admitting to wasting everyone’s time and effort on a useless clause/bill or lying through your teeth.
“Hilariously, the UK’s announcement declared that children and adults will now be safer online…”
Which is actually true. After all, there’s no way to be unsafe on a platform that’s inaccessible, amirite?
The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the agency in charge of enforcement (which is a very different role than it has had historically, where it has generally been roughly equivalent to our FCC), but apparently wants to be more like Roskomnadzor.
Well, what did you expect from the minds that brought you brexit?