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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Online Safety Act shutting down forums LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)
I can’t afford what is likely tens of thousand to go through all the legal and technical hoops over a prolonged period of time
The author of this article is correct. There’s no way to safely run a web page with user interaction in the UK.
Addendum added by the editorial pantheon:
The official samizdata position to this is… they can go fuck themselves. It is unlikely we are important enough to attract official attention but if we do, samizdata has lawyers plus the actual site is hosted in USA.
So for the avoidance of doubt… the laughably misnamed Online Safety Act will be completely ignored.
We will continue to remove/reject comments we personally find offensive (or just inane/pointless) but under no circumstances will we remove a comment we do not find offensive just because someone else might.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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So, you’re quitting? Just let the State win?
Don’t get me wrong: my safety and finances are not at risk so easy for me to say this!
Still a very chilling development.
Of course it goes without saying that MPs will now have all their personal communications, at least those conducted via “user to user” services, scrutinized for inappropriate content. Yes?
Let’s try to find a silver lining: perhaps this will push people to start communicating the way they used to, person to person, you know, in-person. We’d gain a lot from a resurgence of that. But losing our ability to communicate via the web…that cannot be allowed to stand.
As Britain spirals toward North Korea….
“Of course we don’t need a written constitution. We have a thousand years of tradition that make Britain what it is. We guard jealously the historical and traditional rights of the Englishman.”
Oh, mother Britannia. What have you become?
I wonder if it would be possible to site their servers in a certain corner in Hyde park?
I very much doubt that anyone in The Blob is losing any sleep about this. In fact it’s almost certainly a feature not a bug.
Looks like the United Kingdom will be a big market for advanced VPNs and encryption – with British people writing under false names.
It is a banal decline into totalitarianism – with no violent Revolution or vicious Dictator. Just an education system dominated by the doctrines that there are no rights AGAINST the state (that rights are goods or services from the state) and that the only guide for policy is that of Jeremy Bentham (he of the proposed 13 Departments of State covering just about everything) “the greatest good of the greatest number”.
Once educated officials and experts convince themselves (and they are easy to convince) that a new bit of statism would be a “good thing” (TM) elected politicians, if required to do so, rubber stamp it.
And so liberty continues to decline.
If you complain about the decline of liberty – you are a child sex abuser, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, a Transphobe, a Covid idiot (“anti vaxer”), and a climate denier.
“We will continue to remove/reject comments we personally find offensive (or just inane/pointless) but under no circumstances will we remove a comment we do not find offensive just because someone else might.”
How very libertarian of you.
Indeed it is. My place, my rules.
“How very libertarian of you”
Indeed it is. My place, my rules.
This. How is this not understood? Say what you want, when you want, where you want, but don’t require me to sustain it let alone publish it.
It’s like visiting people who expect you to take off your shoes as you enter their house. Not something I do or expect in my house, but I cheerfully do it in theirs.
It lost a lot of cachet when people claiming this as their principle also asserted that people who expected you to take off all your clothes & shave your hair when you entered their houses were doing no such thing; it was just a few extremists with persecution complexes complaining.
Don’t get me wrong; I’d much prefer “Say what you want, when you want, where you want, but don’t require me to sustain it let alone publish it” to be the standard. Unfortunately, to get that in a culture, the pro-freedom need to spend a lot of time researching to make their decisions — which inevitably means spending a lot of time investigating cases that end up just being a few extremists with persecution complexes complaining.
It’s left me sympathetic both to people who had unreasonable demands made upon them & were then told that those demands never happened, and to people who don’t really care & just want to chat with a few strangers. It’s also left me cynical about the latter being sustainable in my lifetime.
Plus, the BlogFather lives in Prague.
Just remember to wear socks with no holes, or else it becomes less cheerful.
Fred de Fossard at CapX has a good article on this:
It is important to remember that the OS legislation was introduced by a Conservative government – albeit with wholehearted support from the Labour Party in opposition, which is often a bad sign. As we consider what a shambolic start the Starmer administration has had, let’s not forget just how crap the previous Conservative one was. Not least in encouraging laws and regulations that expand the role of the State, such as a new regulator for football, for goodness sake.
Another thing to remember is to have the servers of an internet site in a safe place.
The British state may be incompetent – but it is also ruthless. Do not base computer servers (or other things of value) in the reach of the British bureaucracy (such as “Ofcom”), or the British courts – any lingering faith in the British courts died in 2024, the mask of impartial justice is very much off.
The classic French “peasant” (normally actually an owner occupier) is said to have two rules – have physical gold hidden in a secret place, and have a firearm and ammunition also, if need be, hidden away.
These are not bad rules for the troubled times the Western world is about to enter.
Will they be filtering out the non-UK sites which have no reason to agree to such terms?
Or do they only care that horrid things not be uttered within the UK?
(I suppose there is the third choice, of prosecuting people within the UK who access and read horrid things from beyond.)
It is beyond difficult. It’s fucking ridiculous. Try using an AI site like NightCafe (which is HQed in Queensland) and you are watching your own shadow. It (and it’s mods – both human and robot) will take offense at almost anything. I expect this is because the Aus/QL govs will come down on them like a brick dunny. This is made worse, of course, by the “fact” generative AI is entirely used to create Kiddie Frankie Vaughn. I was using it to create Christmas cards recently. One of which I sent to the local parish church. We are not all prompting Dall-E3 with, “Show The Princess of Wales as an 8 year (old doing it:1.5) with an Alsation reverse asian cowgirl-style”. How in God’s name can we get so prudish that you can’t create an artistic nude of the sort fond in galleries around the World because everyone, particularly the service providers, is terrified.
I wonder when the English courts were at their peak – it is common to point at the time when Sir Edward Coke was Chief Justice, such cases as that of Dr Bonham (1610) – where Coke ruled that it was not a crime to practice a trade or profession without a “license” regardless of what King or PARLIAMENT said.
But I would point to a later time – to the time when Sir John Holt was Chief Justice (1689 to 1710) – that, I believe, is when Constitutional Jurisprudence, the limits on Parliamentary power, were best understood – before Sir William Blackstone claiming that any ravings (say – everyone with blue eyes to be hanged) that Parliament came out with – were law. Once it was understood that “crime” is an aggression against the body or goods of someone else – not “a crime is whatever those in power say it is” – which is more Thomas Hobbes rather than a student of the Common Law of England (see the dialogue written by Thomas Hobbes – between “A Philosopher and a student of the Common Law of England”).
The irony in making Parliament, supposedly, all powerful, is that if Parliament can do “anything” it can give-its-own-powers away.
The American Congress has powers under the Constitution – powers that, Constitutionally, it is not allowed to give away – but no such restriction limits our Parliament, so it has given away most of its powers to various “experts” and official bodies.
If this process continues the ultimate irony will be achieved – Sir William Blackstone and others, by making Parliament (supposedly) all powerful – will have ended up making Parliament powerless, impotent.
As Edmund Burke said, citing his son (who tragically died young), of the French monarchy – Louis XIV had made it all powerful – but that had ended up leading to the monarchy having no power at all, what had started in omnipotence ended in imbecile incapacity.
Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom will not decide what is and is not allowed on the internet – they have handed this power to “Ofcom” and other (lunatic) official bodies. And Members of Parliament will themselves end up censored (and their colleagues will not help them – quite the opposite, they will say they are shocked and horrifed by this or that Member of Parliament “breaking the law”). Even more impotent than they are now.
NickM – at the start of the 1970s some American conservatives considered going to Australia because, they believed, it had more liberty than the United States – where even the “Republican” Richard Nixon was pushing price controls and endless other statism.
Such a claim, that Australia had more liberty than the United States, would attract laughter now. Gun laws, censorship – on and on.
After all “misinformation” and “propaganda” can not be allowed – as the Romanian Supreme Court says, as this might lead to people voting the “wrong” way – and if the people have already voted the “wrong” way, well then just cancel the election. And interference by the European Union and the United States is NOT “foreign interference” – as they are good people, only a certain other nation is capable of “foreign interference” – because they are bad people.
I am sure the Australian and British courts would agree.
Paul,
A few months ago… I needed to buy some interdental brushes. A surprisngly difficult task. In the end I went to a local dentist. Yes, they sold them but I was aksed if I was registered with them. I said I wasn’t. I’m registered with a dentist in a nearby town. There was much huffing and puffing and the shop assistant* went out the back for a conflab with her boss. Eventually I got them. I have no idea why this simple transaction was so convoluted and felt oddly dodgy. Yeah, “dodgy”. It felt dodgier than buying cannabis from a right geezer round the back of a pub in Stepney. That was a vastly more normal feeling transaction. Odd that.
I no longer buy cannabis. I do buy interdental brushes. I buy them from Amazon using PayPal. In Jeff & Elon We Trust!
*In this context “assistant” is a wholly inapprorpiate word…
@Johnathan Pearce quoting Fred de Fossard at CapX
Ofcom has announced a litany of 40 new requirements for all online platforms to follow, proudly saying that ‘this is just the beginning’ and they should expect more rules in the years to come.
What does this mean practically? Obviously most of the internet doesn’t care one bit what Ofcom thinks and so will carry on. The only people who will be affected are those that host in Britain or responsible parties residing in Britain. Which means we should expect the collapse of any non local British hosting in Britain, and the flight to other countries of “responsible parties” who currently reside in Britain but think that living free in Canada, or France or Mexico is considerably better than living in Blemarsh prison.
Of course Ofcom can also filter out any such offending web sites. So the people of Britain get cut off from the Internet. And you, unfortunate Brits, should you say something verboten in some far distant corner of the galaxy, should it come to the attention of PC Plod you might want to bring a pillow. Those cells in Belmarsh are pretty uncomfortable I hear.
So congratulations Britain. You have new legislation that lets the government filter the internet as to what you can see, puts you in jail for speaking out of turn or being disrespectful to your betters, your going to lose lots of jobs in web hosting (Europe sure looks a better place to be), and large numbers of your business leaders — the people who create innovation and jobs — will move overseas to do the same for a country more willing to accept their creative energies.
And you kids are still going to be able to look at nakid pics of ladies doing naughty things because the average 12 year old boy knows more about the internet than the average government quango bureaucrat. But at least you won’t be able to see viewpoints that disagree with government policy. Thank God for that small mercy!!
They seem to forget Gilmour’s law: “The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.”
What to expect? Here, the most British of blogs is hosted in the US and run by a guy in who moved to Prague. Sounds about right.
(FWIW, although PdH reserves the right to delete content he doesn’t like, it seems to me that he very rarely does. He disagrees with many of my dumb ideas and has never censored me once. I for one appreciate him for providing an open forum that allows all sides to speak, even if we are doing it effectively in his “front room”.)
Paul,
I think a lot of the power is in vagueness. What is an “indecent image”? Making things illegal under such vague terms helps the powers because they can destroy you on a whim. More to the point you never know the borderline so live in constant fear. Is it Eastasia or Eurasia we’ve always been at war with? Can I walk around the female changing rooms of a swimming pool with an erect penis? No! But, yes if I claim to be a woman! This total arbitary “law” is not law. It’s despotism. If you can legally call someone with a penis a woman then you do anything!
Fraser,
North of the Border, they don’t have PC Plod, The have Mac Plod. Much worse.
Somebody had to say it.
NickM – yes the regulations get worse (and more insane) every year, and in Britain regulations do not need to be shown to serve any purpose, they are sacred-in-themselves.
“If it is not compulsory, it is forbidden” is our modern motto. And even being a nightwatchman now requires a license – and to get that license one must pass a test, I used to be a security guard (in my youth) so I looked up that test (there were no licenses “in my day”) – it was full of DEI (in Britain EDI) stuff, one now has to have the “correct” political and cultural opinions to be a nightwatchman, no wonder so many people just give up on employment and sign up for mental health benefits – I am being driven into mental illness myself, so I may well be eligible for these benefits.
Frasor Orr – it is not just the United Kingdom, it is (basically) every nation on Earth with the exception of the United States, and if Harris/Walz had won the election, they would have appointed judges who would have exterminated the 1st Amendment.
The “freedom” that Harris/Walz stood for was the freedom-of-the-government to do whatever it liked to crush “right wingers” – we have lots of that sort of “freedom” here. And it is becoming an international agenda – the “Cultural” part of United Nations Agenda 2030.
You want vagueness? Here’s vagueness.
Long ago, in the dawn of the internet, I represented some people accused of “possession of KP”, on their computers. “Possession” had a normal sentence of five years.
But then they upgraded the charges to “creation of KP”. Normal sentence of up to fifteen years! I was a bit baffled when I received the amended complaint.
Ah, but . . . When you view an internet image, you are creating a new file in your computer. It has a “creation date” listed in the attributes. Even if you don’t intentionally save it, you have created that file.
So, the fed’s theory was that if you had a pile of paper pictures of KP, it was possession, but if you had the same images on your computer, it was “creating.” Three times the penalty.
None of my clients being rich enough to fight such a ruling in the appellate courts, they all pled out.
I’ve not kept up enough to know if the same theory still exists, but that was very arbitrary treatment of similar conduct.
@NickM
North of the Border, they don’t have PC Plod, The have Mac Plod. Much worse.
That’s true. I suppose the only comfort you English can have is in saying: “Well at least we don’t live in Scotland.”
Says I, who loves Scotland enough to really hate what it has become.
Reading through the Ofcom requirements, it looks like they have taken the power to – as a constitutional theorist once put it – prosecute an American for smoking in Washington DC.
Fraser Orr:
Obviously most of the internet doesn’t care one bit what Ofcom thinks and so will carry on. The only people who will be affected are those that host in Britain or responsible parties residing in Britain.
So that’s alright then. The clampdown on the internet in the world’s seventh-largest economy is something not to get unduly fussed about? The problem with such a view, if I may be blunt, is that it creates incentives for even worse things to happen. Slippery slopes.
What you seem to be overlooking is that such moves spawn imitators. True, the US is (hopefully) moving in a different direction now (Hail Musk!) but others aren’t. I am sufficiently “British” to think that it matters when a country that was once associated with free speech is losing that association, for the kind of reasons stated in other comments, such as from the Sage of Kettering, Paul Marks.
“Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?”
This is just the low priority offences, not the front page stuff. Broad does not begin to cover it.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/schedule/7
@Johnathan Pearce
So that’s alright then. The clampdown on the internet in the world’s seventh-largest economy is something not to get unduly fussed about?
I don’t know how you got that from what I said. On the contrary, for British people it is terrible, like the end of Britain’s thousand year story. Magna Carta, The Bill of Rights, the Reform Act, all the great constitutional legislation ends not with a bang but with a whimper of submission to Ofcom. I mean Ofcom, FFS. At least Cromwell had a big army.
But I think you overestimate the influence of Britain on other countries. Both because other countries are often further down the road to tyranny, and for the first world countries they tend to reject British influence either because they are pissed off about Brexit, or they are pissed off about being former colonies. So the French will not follow Britain for sheer bloody mindedness, and the Aussies want to be their own country without worrying too much about the mother country.
I think the US has gone way down the tubes but the one thing it has going for it is the first amendment protections on free speech. In that, and perhaps in that alone, the US continues to be a shining city on a hill.
I don’t think Samizdata is necessarily affected by the Online Safety Act. See Schedule 1 paragraph 4 for details. However, it’s a bit vague at para. 4(2), and probably depends on levels of editorial control. A lot of the Act is pretty vague, in fact, and reads as if written by someone unencumbered with any actual knowledge of the internet. At one point I concluded (based on an earlier draft, but it probably still applies) that DNS services would actually be “in scope” – not intentionally, of course.
Ian Rons,
“However, it’s a bit vague at para. 4(2), and probably depends on levels of editorial control. A lot of the Act is pretty vague, in fact, and reads as if written by someone unencumbered with any actual knowledge of the internet”
Never put down to ignorance what can be attributed to malice when it comes to government. It’s an enabling act. It enables THEM to make illegal whatever they don’t like on the fly. Why do you think much of the media has been branding anyone to the right of Tony Benn “far right”? It’s so they van then be branded as fascists and the tumbrils will roll…
Weird. Interdental brushes are sold in Boots.
Did I misunderstand something?
@NickM
Never put down to ignorance what can be attributed to malice when it comes to government.
That’s sometimes true. But you should also not underestimate the stupidity and ignorance of these people. Often though that stupidity has the “serendipitous” effect of offering extra levers of tyranny.
Let’s be clear — anyone who thinks that Ofcom can prevent kids from looking at pictures of naked ladies, or that it will in any way stop KP, or that they will stop cyber bullying just simply doesn’t understand the technologies involved or the degree of motivation of the participants. Are they stupid or malicious? Both, probably.
The one thing I’ll say though is that if this act causes SM platforms to withdraw from the UK then you actually will have a revolution. Unusually, not since Joan D’Arc, has a revolution been led by teenage girls.
@Fraser: …the Aussies want to be their own country without worrying too much about the mother country. – how right you are! I vividly recall the incandescent anger of a faction of Australian leftist opinion in the late 1980s when a four part Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary billed as being about the future of the left in Europe, was actually devoted to what the British Labour Party could learn from the left in Europe. It wasn’t the proposed lessons that offended them; it was the assumption that they were interested in British politics.
bobby b – it is the same here, and no one has to prove that you wanted child pornography on your computer or electronic telephone – it being there is the offence. As it can be, and is, sent without the person at the other end of the electronic transmission being aware of it, it is reasonable to assume that EVERYONE has this stuff on their computer – if the authorities looked hard enough.
In short the government, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, can send anyone to prison that it does not like – and say “nothing to do with political and cultural dissent – they are a child-sex fiend”
This is what such laws are really for.
And it goes back a long way – Sir Robert Walpole three-hundred-years-ago pushed censorship of the theater, claiming that plays supported rape and murder – indeed he showed such a play to the House of Commons (he had paid to have it written). The real aim of Prime Minister Walpole was political censorship – but it was dressed up as “we must protect women and children from the vile…..”
Fraser Orr – who knows what Australians “want” remember Australia does not have Freedom of Speech – and no party who can win an election will end censorship, or “gun control”, or the C02 is evil agenda. And, of course, “Diversity” and “Inclusion”.
Without free discussion how can there be free conclusions? And as the big political parties, the ones with the money and lots of positive media coverage, all push the same policies – what is the point of voting, other than, in Australia, it is compulsory.
Still Australia can still feed its population and it has lots (and lots) of natural resources.
Neither is true of the United Kingdom – the future of this land is going to be horrific.
@Paul Marks
what is the point of voting, other than, in Australia, it is compulsory.
Completely off topic but yes, that’s true. I did a bit of work for the Victoria Election Commission few years back and these guys are serious about it. They have this massive super creepy database of all Australians and they track if you vote or not. And if you don’t they fine you. Not just in theory but they do fine thousands of people each election for not voting, up to a couple of hundred bucks.
Besides the fact that it is super creepy that they track you and your voting habits, I also find the basic underlying premise horrible. “We are politicians and you MUST give your imprimatur to ONE of us”? I guess you can spoil your ballot, but the whole thing seems really creepy and weird to me. So much I stopped working for the VEC.
I can see the point in measures designed to bring more people into the process.
The most disaffected and disempowered of social groups are the ones least likely to go out of their way to take part in the democratic process. But, government should be working for those people just as much as it works for those of us who vote. It should reflect and serve their needs as much as it does my needs.
That was really the entire point of our current mail-vote madness. Make it as easy as possible for people to participate in democracy.
“Screw ’em if they don’t care to show up” has always sort of been my philosophy, but then, a lot of them have never been inculcated in showing up, and many of them are too challenged to understand why it’s important. So, I get this impulse of the socialist set.
(If we could find a way to handle mailed voting in a completely secure manner, I’d have no problem with it. But we haven’t.)
Yes, in Australia everyone has to turn up and get their name ticked off the roll. You can put a blank form in if you want, or write none of the above. The forms are anonymous – they know you turned up, not how you voted.
**shock horror** they have people from all sorts of organisations (not just political parties) standing outside the polling stations with “How to vote” cards. Illegal in NZ where I now live.
And, good people of the US, they manage to count ever ballot ON THE DAY, not fucking six weeks later when they get round to it.
The only skullduggery I can recall about Aussie election was around candidate selection (branch stacking etc) and some iffy statements – I’ve never heard of concerns about the actual process of counting votes.
The election is gazetted, you have a couple of weeks (from memory) to get your details updated on the electoral roll. You dont need ID to vote in Australia (I think thats correct, its 15 years since I voted in Oz).
Its all paper based….
@SkippyTony
And, good people of the US, they manage to count ever ballot ON THE DAY, not fucking six weeks later when they get round to it.
You’ll get no argument from me that the US voting system is screwed up. And that six week delay — as far as I can see it is there basically to facilitate fraud. The first Elections I voted in were here not at all like that. If Florida can count all their votes in a couple of hours a few weeks after being hit by two hurricanes there is no reason California can’t. Not logistically anyway. It is just more time to fiddle with the results. And Arizona? FFS I wouldn’t be surprised if they still haven’t finished.
bobby b – the Australian government will not allow the people to speak or write freely (or to read or listen to the opinions of people the establishment, and its courts and tribunals, regards as spreading “hate”), but it insists that they vote. Still there are some people worth voting for in Australia – and some even have seats in Parliament.
Fraser Orr – as you know Victoria is the worst Australian State.
In the United States there are arguments about which is the worst State – is it New York, is it California, is it New Jersey (and on and on) – in Australia there are no arguments, everyone knows that Victoria is the most Collectivist State.
Fraser: I misread you a bit here; it seemed dismissive, but reading it again, yes, I fully get that you realise that this is shit for the UK, but other countries will not be directly affected, much.
But I think you overestimate the influence of Britain on other countries. Both because other countries are often further down the road to tyranny, and for the first world countries they tend to reject British influence either because they are pissed off about Brexit, or they are pissed off about being former colonies. So the French will not follow Britain for sheer bloody mindedness, and the Aussies want to be their own country without worrying too much about the mother country.
That is all true up to a point. That said, the more that certain nations with free speech traditions choose to weaken them, the more this accelerates a trend and demoralises those who want to defend it. I am not deluded into thinking that the rest of the world cares all that much about the UK, but it is at the margins, with the opinion-forming chattering classes, that this has an effect.
The lion has not roared for a long time. Our reputation on a number of fronts is in decline, whether it be in kowtowing to China over Hong Kong, apologising for our colonial past long after any issues apply, or now free speech.