World's encyclopedia warns draft law could boot it offline in UK:
Wikipedia won't be age-gating its services no matter what final form the UK's Online Safety Bill takes, two senior folks from nonprofit steward the Wikimedia Foundation said this morning.
The bill, for those who need a reminder, styles itself as world-leading legislation which aims to make the UK "the safest place in the world to be online" and has come under fire not only for its calls for age verification but also for wording that implies breaking encryptiion, asking providers to make content available for perusal by law enforcement, either before encryption or somehow, magically, during.
The new legislation asks that platforms control risks for underage visitors, prompting the foundation to come out to say it won't age-restrict its entries.
In a statement to national UK broadcaster the BBC this morning, Rebecca MacKinnon, vice president of Global Advocacy at Wikimedia, said that to perform such verification would "violate our commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors."
Wikimedia UK chief Lucy Crompton-Reid told the Beeb it was "definitely possible that one of the most visited websites in the world - and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people - won't be accessible to UK readers (let alone UK-based contributors)."
The bill is currently in the committee stage at the House, where the peers are considering a "full package of amendments [that] defines and sets out the rules of the road for age assurance, including the timing of its introduction, and the definition of terms such as age verification and age assurance."
Though one can't predict how that will go, back in February, more than one of the Lords were disappointed that an earlier version of the Bill didn't stop children from accessing pornography, explicitly calling for age verification to be written into the face of the Bill to prevent this.
[...] Tech orgs have been incresingly stepping up to voice their concerns over the Online Safety Bill for weeks, with end-to-end-encrypted communication platforms Element, Session, Signal, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp and Wire urging the government to reconsider.
In an open letter earlier this month, the companies above branded the bill an "unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world." They said the move would embolden "hostile governments who may seek to draft copy-cat laws."
(Score: 2, Disagree) by inertnet on Tuesday May 02, @07:36PM (1 child)
... but also the most boring.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03, @01:51AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporting_of_child_pornography_images_on_Wikimedia_Commons [wikipedia.org]
Be careful of the Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia page.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Opportunist on Tuesday May 02, @08:12PM (2 children)
You can connect through my country so you get to Wikipedia, I connect through you so I can watch porn...
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday May 02, @10:52PM
Damn, we need a way to link tabs. This is funny+insightful.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Tuesday May 02, @11:16PM
Hey pal, that show ain't free.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday May 02, @08:54PM (12 children)
The UK legislature has shown that it is fully capable of passing laws that damage the national interest, possibly irreparably.
If having the worst performing economy of the OECD is not enough, legislating against end-to-end encryption will make the UK's jurisdiction unviable for many companies. It's a large-scale experiment, and it will be interesting and informative to see the consequences played out.
I'm really sad to see the collective loss of reason that has ended up here.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 02, @09:24PM (3 children)
Abandon all reason, ye who enter here. - Dante's Inferno
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02, @09:35PM (2 children)
Get a load of Captain Book-Ban over here.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03, @12:13AM (1 child)
Why, hello groomer! DeSantis wants to know how you're doing these days?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03, @12:45AM
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03, @07:49AM (7 children)
> worst performing economy of the OECD
Not true - it's the best or the worst, depending on the reporting period. Averaged over two years (say since Covid and Brexit) it is just average. Do some maths on this data, for example:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370625/g7-country-gdp-levels-per-capita/ [statista.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday May 03, @08:12AM (6 children)
Your link requires a login, which I don't have.
Can you point to freely available sources, please?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03, @02:12PM
It's unfortunate, the link seems to apply a blocking pop-up inconsistently. Sorry about that. I didn't manage to find a better link, but maybe you can do better than me?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03, @02:18PM (4 children)
Good ol' wikipedia (lol).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita [wikipedia.org]
Quoting numbers since Brexit formally happened, 2020. Compare with Germany, which is a random "Northern European" economy. But you can pick a different period and find UK has done better or worse compared to Germany or other G7.
Using 2020 - 2023
UK (28 % growth):
44,239 49,591 54,795 56,471
Germany (20 % growth)
55,059 59,017 63,816 66,132
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday May 03, @04:15PM (3 children)
OK.
Method.
Take starting point as 2008 (Global Financial Crisis), and finishing point 2022, using the figures from the Wikipedia link you gave.
OECD membership in 2008 was 30 members.
Looking at the change in GDP/Capita.
UK ranks 21 out of 30. So not the worst performer. Average is 162%, median is 156% UK increased by 148%
All increased. Top 5 are
Ireland: 296%
Turkey: 231%
Poland: 222%
South Korea: 188%
Hungary: 184%
Bottom 5 are:
Greece 121%
Norway 125%
Japan 138%
Mexico 140%
Italy 142%
So by this measure, the UK is not the worst performing member of the OECD in terms of growth in GDP/Capita - for this timescale. It's worse than the OECD average. Norway is dire, and Ireland spectacular. I think there are special reasons for Greece being so bad, but the Norwegian result really surprised me.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03, @04:28PM (2 children)
Just for context, in the UK there has been media noise about "UK is forecast to be the worst performing economy in 2023"; but buried in the same article is a statement like "UK was the best performing economy in 2022". There is some mumbling related to Brexit and it is all related to the election coming in 2024. So when someone says "UK is the worst performing economy" or some such, I just want to push back.
I don't think UK is especially good or bad, but the dire predictions that UK will turn into a puddle of poo following Brexit is not terribly visible (I am slightly pro-Brexit).
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday May 03, @05:20PM (1 child)
Well, as you point out, where you choose the start and finish points makes a big difference to the results. It's for that reason, in my follow-up analysis, I chose to take a long-term baseline from a point which affected all the economies (the Global Financial Crisis) to try and strip out some of the short-term confounders. Comparing GDP from year to year doesn't really work, but comparing long-term trends does. Even then, performance like Greece or Ireland shows there can still be special conditions.
In the long term (the last 14 years), the UK has been performing worse than the OECD average. That said, the differences are not huge, even if they are significant/material. Obviously, if there is some variation, there will be an average, and some economies will be above average and some below, and the UK is not that much worse.
Just like a supertanker, GDP numbers don't change direction or accelerate quickly, but the UK economy is definitely not OECD-leading, and actions that tend to reduce GDP growth are not ideal. Brexit is one (it has really significantly/materially negatively affected international trade); and legal changes on the use of encryption won't help either. The US laws on export of encryption just pushed development and use outside the USA, and the French laws on encryption restricted product use for many, many years.
I'm not a fan of Brexit. It has effected me personally in several ways, cost me a lot of money, and restricts my freedom of choice. I don't expect it to be reversed, ever, as the UK had many opt outs that would never be agreed to in any future re-entry negotiation, and I fully expect 'Europe' to develop in way to make British re-entry more and more politically unacceptable for the British. I think Scottish independence and the unification of Ireland to be more likely.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03, @06:04PM
> I'm not a fan of Brexit.
I understand and sympathise. The existence of a Brexit referendum was a terrible failure of the EU and UK governments. We should have done better.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday May 02, @09:30PM
No problem. They've got Encyclopedia Britannica.
Online poetry too offensive? Try Vogon poetry!
Be the first country in your neighborhood to build a great internet firewall.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday May 03, @08:59AM (1 child)
Like they do with tvs?
Register for the internet, get username/password for uk network, and have restrictions based on age for the account.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 03, @02:07PM
Will they have internet detector vans roving the neighborhoods in packs?
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...