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United Kingdom Government The Internet

UK's Online Safety Bill On Pause Pending New PM (techcrunch.com) 24

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A major populist but controversial piece of U.K. legislation to regulate internet content through a child safety-focused frame is on pause until the fall when the government expects to elect a new prime minister, following the resignation of Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader last week. PoliticsHome reported yesterday that the Online Safety Bill would be dropped from House of Commons business next week with a view to being returned in the autumn. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) denied the legislation was being dropped altogether but the fate of the bill will clearly now rest with the new prime minister -- and their appetite for regulating online speech.

Reached for comment, DCMS confirmed that the bill's final day of report stage will be rescheduled to after the summer recess -- suggesting it had lost out to competing demands for remaining parliamentary time (without specifying to what). The department also made a point of reiterating that the legislation intends to deliver on the government's manifesto commitment to make the U.K. the safest place in the world to be online while defending freedom of speech. But critics of the bill continue to warn it vastly overreaches on content regulation while saddling the U.K.'s digital sector with crippling compliance costs.

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UK's Online Safety Bill On Pause Pending New PM

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  • by suss ( 158993 ) on Thursday July 14, 2022 @11:20PM (#62704232)

    How about making the UK the safest place to be Offline first?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It will take a decade to fix, and realistically fixing it won't start until at least the next election which is probably late 2024, new government starting January 2025.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      How about making the UK the safest place to be Offline first?

      Not to excuse the utter conservative brain shart of a disaster that is the "UK Online Safety Bill" (AKA. Do something that sounds scary to uninformed Daily Mail readers) but the UK is already a fairly safe place to live in. We don't have regular shootings or even B&Es. The notion that you'd ever be in the position to need to defend your home is utterly alien to most people here and for those that it isn't, it's usually because they live in a paranoid fantasy land.

      If someone were to break into my hou

  • by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @01:48AM (#62704348)

    Remember when we were told dropping trade barriers and embracing China would encourage the Chinese government to create a freer, more open society? It seems as though this has worked exactly backwards, and all the Free World democracies are trying as hard as they can to emulate the terrifying surveillance society China has inflicted on its people.

    • It seems as though this has worked exactly backwards

      Just like all other neoliberal fairy tales.

    • The problem is that conservative parties don't have much to offer the average working-class citizen, so they push imaginary issues to rile up their base. Usually it involves taking away rights from some minority segment of the population that can't/won't effectively fight back.

      Here in the USA, our speech and guns are sacred, so our right-wing politicians go after women, LGBTQ+, and brown people. Of course, after they get done with that, they probably will decide you have a few too many rights, too.

    • Did you mean the Chinese trying to emulate the Five Eyes' (USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, & Australia) total surveillance states?
      • You raise a good point, but I don't believe Five Eyes social impact is even a fraction as coercive. I'm not saying they're perfect...far from it. However, the type of social engineering I'm talking about would be driven more by Google's willingness to hand over Ring video data to police without a warrant, or the owners' knowledge or consent.

        • Ever heard of credit ratings, background checks, CVs/resumés & references? Every society has some kind of social reputation system. What difference does it make if the social engineering you're speaking of is implemented by the government or by corporations?
  • If Boris can't change mathematical reality and break encryption without, you know, breaking encryption, then who can?

    I mean, he failed ant many things but you can't say he wasn't an efficient and vaguely convincing liar.

    • Replying to my self here: i was wrong in above comment, this one is not concerned with encrypted comms, more about mandating content moderation (e.g. self harm content on Instagram) etc., also age verification for online pr*n etc.
  • You need access to uncompromised encryption and the option of anonymity in order to be the safest place in the world to be online.
  • Was another pearl-clutching "think of the children" thing. Good intentions massively overblown, lack of understanding of the scale, lack of understanding of the tech...
  • I think that the bill is very important, and I hope that actions will be taken as soon as possible. Nowadays, cyber security is one of the most important issues, especially when it comes to kids. They are more vulnerable online and can face a lot of danger there. Some time ago, I finished a project dedicated to that issue, and here is one source https://studydriver.com/cyber-... [studydriver.com] where I managed to find different cyber security essay samples, which helped me consider this issue from different angles. And I d

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