zlacker

>>azalem+(OP)
At this point, I am pretty confident I can live the rest of my life without ever entering British air space.

So I ask myself - could I come up with a simple HTML page that would be illegal in the UK without age verification checks? I won't host pornography, but it seems to cover a lot more than that. Photos from contests? Calls to overthrow the government?

I'd put it under some creative commons license so other people could host the exact same content. What if there were thousands, or tens of thousands of sites that did it. It'd be wonderful if people were willing to put their money where their mouth is how them how impotent and illegitimate their laws really are.

>>LAC-Te+Y4
All laws are just words; they only have power because they are backed by a government's monopoly on the legitimate use of force[0].

The Online Safety Act has to be understood as a regulation of the Big Tech platforms that form what we might call the NormieNet. Your web page is unlikely to come to the attention of politicians, Ofcom (the relevant regulator) or the wider public, so you almost certainly would not suffer any adverse consequences, even if you were a resident of the UK.

Britain has a long history of libertarianism - it's where American libertarianism came from - but British libertarians don't make florid speeches about how free they are, they just quietly do whatever it is they want to do without telling anyone who might object. During the coronavirus pandemic, the UK had particularly strict lockdown regulations, because the Johnson government believed that most people wouldn't take any notice of them.

I'm sure someone will come along soon to tell me that this is a terrible principle on which to run a country, but the truth is that Britain is governed entirely by realpolitik, because the historical record shows that strongly principled government does not endure[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_England

>>cjs_ac+tb
I've asked some of my British friends to report my site. You are right it might still be ignored, but it's worth a shot.

Just need to come up with something to put on the page.

>>LAC-Te+5c
The law doesn't work by having ISPs block websites. It works by imposing a legal duty on website operators to a) determine what risks there are to their users from the content that may appear on their website; and b) develop and implement policies to eliminate or substantially mitigate that risk. All of the blocks listed above are voluntary self-censorship to avoid obligations under the Act.

If Ofcom does decide to pursue you, they will start by asking to see your risk assessments and policy documents, and would then in theory proceed to legal action, but in practice would just ignore you, because you're just protesting, and they have no chance of getting the millions in fines out of you.

I'm not sure what content you could put on your page, but if anyone suggests a message of support for a protest group called Palestine Action, I most strongly recommend that you don't do this, because the nature of their protests has led to their proscription as a terrorist organisation, and the resultant legal action against you would be of a very different nature.