The IFTF lawyer says IFWiki just needs a content policy saying we do not allow any of the things that are not allowed … We don’t need an age gate
Like I did with IF Archive, I’d personally pressure you to block the UK rather than changing site policies in any other way.
Still, that’s better than the alternative (age gating) and IF hopefully other sites can do similar things.
But that would screw over all UK-based users…
We have not proposed changing the IF Archive’s content policy. We are proceeding with the plan described at the top of this thread, which is a tagging policy for our content.
@zarf We are proceeding with the plan described at the top of this thread, which is a tagging policy for our content.
IF Archive adding new tags, especially age tags, to its content is part of the site’s content policy by any reasonable definition.
However, I realize that my wording conflates it with IF Wiki disallowing certain content and I’ve edited my post.
The bottom line is that simply blocking UK users indefinitely would resist the OSA in a compliant way by leaving either site’s content exactly in tact until the dust settles, unlike either current plan.
@tabitha But that would screw over all UK-based users…
A geoblock can be done as long as it’s sustainable — that is until it’s totally clear that the law will not be reversed or modified in the coming months. Some other sites are blocking the UK rather than making other changes.
I’d support a geoblock on my own country if/when it passes similar laws, even if it means I’m blocked from certain IF sites for a while.
This isn’t feasible for real-time stuff IF Comp and the forums, obviously. But long-term projects like IFDB, IF Archive, and IF Wiki? Why not see what people think? Maybe I’m wrong and an extended geoblock would be totally unpopular, as @tabitha says.
I’m personally of the opinion that geoblocks should never be used and that punishing users for the bad behavior of their government is bad form.
Is the IF Archive even subject to UK laws if it isn’t based there?
I’m in favor of ignoring insane laws, but that’s just me.
I’d be more supportive of this idea if I thought that it might make the slightest bit of difference—if Wikipedia had blocked the UK as they had briefly threatened to, for example, that would have attracted some media attention for sure. But the IF Archive is so niche, all this would accomplish would be screwing over UK-based IF fans for zero gain. When you talk about seeing whether the law will be reversed or modified in the coming months: even if the political will were there, we’d be looking at years, not months, for any changes, and at the moment the government is very much standing by the legislation in any case.
Our lawyer says we are. Thus this entire thread.
I’m certainly not a lawyer but that seems strange. Did they happen to explain how?
I don’t think my understanding of the law is sufficient to provide a correct explanation. That’s why we pay a lawyer.
This is a very complex topic, but a basic principle in the Anglo-American system, at least, is that domestic law can regulate activity that impacts their citizens, at least above a de-minimus level. Before the age of telecommunications, this was pretty intuitive – if you punch someone in London, obviously it would make sense that you could be prosecuted for that (subject to diplomatic arrangements with host governments), or if you export something to be sold in Manchester, it’s similarly logical that they’d be able inspect it to make sure it conforms with domestic commercial or health and safety laws, right?
But in the age of the Internet, when you can put something online without any clear intent or even knowledge that someone in a particular country will access it, things get much murkier! So there are a variety of different standards – some set by statute, some prudential common-law tests – that determine whether a law can operate on a foreign actor, all more or less aimed at the question of whether the actor has enough connection to warrant applying domestic law to them. This can include economic activity (how much money is an organization making off the country’s residents, or what proportion of their market share is coming from that country?), evidence of intent (is the organization specifically marketing to people in the country?), operations (does the organization have infrastructure like servers or data centers physically located in the country, or does it run events in the country?), staffing (are there employees or directors who live there?), and so on. In some cases there are hard and fast rules – if you have at least X dollars in sales, that’s enough – while in others there are standards and rules of thumb that have been refined through caselaw.
Once you’ve established that a domestic law does apply to a foreign actor, there’s also a question of what remedies or penalties are available. In general, the idea is that liability under a country’s law shouldn’t exceed the scope of their operations in that country, both as a matter of equity but also because that’s where the country’s courts can enforce a ruling – it’s a lot easier for UK courts to compel payment of monies in a UK bank than to demand US banks (or Swiss ones…) to do the same.
Anyway, this is a lot of words to reiterate that it’s complex and listening to a lawyer is the right thing to do – but in general, the flip side of operating a service that’s open to the world is that the rest of the world might have some say in what you do.
I should say that the wording of the law is straightforward: it applies to any service that “has a significant number of UK users, if the UK is a target market, or it is capable of being accessed by UK users and there is a material risk of significant harm to such users.” (And it’s their definition of risk, not ours.) (UK doc here)
What I don’t pretend to understand is the enforcement mechanism, i.e. the process by which the UK government brings us to court and fines us approximately a thousand times as much money as we have in our bank account. As Mike Russo just said, this is messy and you have to understand the legal system to talk about it.
If it’s for money, perhaps; otherwise I’d say they can go pound sand. But that’s just me.
I’m sure listening to your lawyer’s advice is a good idea.
It’s definitely true that “what are you going to do, stab me?” is a perfectly logical approach to compliance in some circumstances – but per Zarf I don’t think there’s currently a lot of clarity on exactly what the stabbing risk actually looks like, save that even defending against an enforcement action would almost certainly shut the IFTF down.
I get it, and I don’t blame anyone for following advice of legal counsel. It just feels wrong (not the reaction, but the having to comply at all).
well, common or Roman right, something is curious, if not really off, in my eyes, because everyone in int’l jurisprudence studies, both common and Roman, question our institution of trial in absentia
(taking the punch in London as example, if I punched someone on the docks of London and immediately after I jump aboard an Italian ship (Italian territory) UK justice can’t do nothing save filing an extradition request, and waiting for the rendition. In the opposite case, if someone punches me on the docks of Naples and immediately jump under the cover of the Red or White Ensign, the trial here can start, and go through, even up to the final sentencing, without waiting for the rendition of the culprit, who can’t set foot in Italy without being arrested on the spot) and that UK laws can have a similiar out-of-jurisdiction reach seems strange…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Criminal law and civil law are obviously very different, so even in Anglo-American/common law systems there are places where civil judgments can be levied in absentia – here, I think the way enforcement is meant to work is that the UK regulator pursues compliance in the first instance, and can issue fines and so forth, but if an organization doesn’t comply, the regulator can go to court to enforce the judgments and even make criminal referrals in especially egregious cases. But those court cases would have all the same procedural requirements and protections as per usual, including notice, ability to defend yourself, etc.
In discussions elsewhere on this topic, people have focused on this part:
Which is taken to mean at least that UK ISPs will be asked to block access to offenders just like with pirate sites etc. I guess we’ll find out how much further than that they’ll be able to take it…
Good point. I might be expecting the upcoming parliament debate (which appears to still be pending despite getting an initial government response) to have more of an immediate impact than it actually will.
As for possible repercussions, I can think of several websites hosting pirated content that have been forced by providers to take it down (including a pirated choice of games site and several pirated manga sites). They get a message from their service provider saying, ‘take this down or we turn off the website’. Most providers have a mechanism for receiving reports of illegal content.
It doesn’t really matter if ifarchive and ifdb feel like following British law or not, it matters if the hosting providers (who are typically international companies) feel like following it. I believe that asking a qualified lawyer for advice on how to proceed and following it is very sensible, and I’m glad that’s what’s happening.
On another note, this kind of censorship has always happened, it’s just a question of degree. IFComp refused to host the game Breaking the Code, which was nothing but the DeCSS code for letting people play DVDs that were region blocked (or something similar). We don’t host child pornography. So this isn’t a question of, “Should we follow the laws that regulate us?” it’s, “how strictly should we follow the laws that regulate us, and should we continue to follow new laws as they are passed.”