> UK's Online Safety Act 2023 would require us to do a prohibitively complicated risk assessment for our service. We're talking reading through thousands of pages of legal guidelines.
> We're a volunteer operation and would likely be held responsible as individuals. There is talk of fines up to 18 million GBP which would ruin any single one of us, should they get creative about how to actually enforce this.
> Our impression is that this law is deliberately vague, deliberately drastic in its enforcement provisions, and specifically aimed against websites of all sizes, including hobby projects. In other words, this seems to us to be largely indistinguishable from an attempt to basically break the internet for all UK citizens.
> If we could afford to just hope for the best, we'd love to.
The way I understand this is that it's not feasible for them to assess how the legislation impacts them, so they would rather stay safe than risk having their lives destroyed.
Its such a ridiculous law and this outcome is entirely predictable, but bring this up with the proponents of it and they stick their head in the sand, to the point where I think they are perfectly happy with the UK not having a working Internet.
The reaction is entirely reasonable. The only way they can reasonably ensure they protect themselves is to ensure nobody in the UK can access their site.
I'm not deep into this subject, so what's obvious to you isn't so obvious to me. Would you mind explaining a bit more on what's so obvious and why it's particularly unhinged?
> UK's Online Safety Act 2023 would require us to do a prohibitively complicated risk assessment for our service. We're talking reading through thousands of pages of legal guidelines.
> We're a volunteer operation and would likely be held responsible as individuals. There is talk of fines up to 18 million GBP which would ruin any single one of us, should they get creative about how to actually enforce this.
> Our impression is that this law is deliberately vague, deliberately drastic in its enforcement provisions, and specifically aimed against websites of all sizes, including hobby projects. In other words, this seems to us to be largely indistinguishable from an attempt to basically break the internet for all UK citizens.
> If we could afford to just hope for the best, we'd love to.
The way I understand this is that it's not feasible for them to assess how the legislation impacts them, so they would rather stay safe than risk having their lives destroyed.