This is full of contradictions and both-sides-of-the-mouth speech. You can't coherently argue for an "open internet" "for everyone", and simultaneously plead exceptionalism for your own website, due its special virtues[0]. An "open internet" for websites with sterling reputations is a closed internet. It's an internet where censorship segregates the desirable from undesirable; where websites must plead their case to the state, "please let me exist, for this reason: ..." That's not what "open" means!

And moreover: WF's special pleading is[1], paraphrased, "because we already strongly moderate in exactly the ways this government wants, so there's no need to regulate *us* in particular". That's capitulation; or, they were never really adverse in the first place.

Wikimedia's counsel is of course pleading Wikimedia's own interests[2]. Their interests are not the same as the public's interest. Don't confuse ourselves: if you are not a centimillionaire entity with sacks full of lawyers, you are not Wikimedia Foundation's peer group.

[0] ("It’s the only top-ten website operated by a non-profit and one of the highest-quality datasets used in training Large Language Models (LLMs)"—to the extent anyone parses that as virtuous)

[1] ("These volunteers set and enforce policies to ensure that information on the platform is fact-based, neutral, and attributed to reliable sources.")

[2] ("The organization is not bringing a general challenge to the OSA as a whole, nor to the existence of the Category 1 duties themselves. Rather, the legal challenge focuses solely on the new Categorisation Regulations that risk imposing Category 1 duties (the OSA’s most stringent obligations) on Wikipedia.")

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Towaway69 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is a fine sentiment, could you also please provide an alternative approach?

The law has passed, Wikipedia has to enforce that law but don’t wish to because of privacy concerns.

What should Wikimedia now do? Give up? Ignore the laws of the UK? Shutdown in the UK? What exactly are the options for wikimedia?

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perihelions 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> "This is a fine sentiment, could you also please provide an alternative approach?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477966 ("Wikipedia blackout page (wikipedia.org)" (2012))

Wikimedia weren't always a giant ambulating pile of cash; they used to be activists. Long ago.

	▲	internetter 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Wikimedia weren't always a giant ambulating pile of cash; they used to be activists. Long ago. Your point is moot because this wasn’t a WMF initiative, it was an enwiki community initiative which WMF agreed to accommodate. The history is detailed… on Wikipedia… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA...

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raincole 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Warn the UK users during the grace period as best as they can.

And after the grace period... yeah, I think blocking UK IPs is the "correct" thing to do. If the government doesn't make them an exception than they'll have to do that, correct or not, anyway.

	▲	Towaway69 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think the people of the UK have little or nothing to do with this. UK is a representative democracy meaning that voters get a voice every X years to vote for a representative that they assume will act in their favour and on their behalf. What this representative does in their time in power is very much left to the representative and not the voters. On the other hand, if this were to be a direct democracy then the voters would have been asked before this law was voted on. For example, a referendum might well have been held. Perhaps a more nuanced approach would be to block all IPs of government organisations - difficult but far more approriate.

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iLoveOncall 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Shutdown in the UK?

Yes. This is what every single large company which is subject to this distopian law should do. They should do everything they can to block any traffic from the UK, until the law is repelled.

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graemep 4 days ago | parent [-]

large companies love this law.

By imposing costs and risk on self hosting, and reducing the number of supplies (because many small and medium companies and organisation will block the UK), it reduces competition.

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iLoveOncall 4 days ago | parent [-]

The reality is the vast majority of users will just not submit their ID and the large companies will lose most of their UK traffic.

There was a study by Amazon [1] that showed that every 100ms of extra load time of a page cost 1% of revenue. How much revenue do you think adding an ID verification that takes 10 minutes to complete cost???

You think PornHub loves this law???

[1] https://www.conductor.com/academy/page-speed-resources/faq/a...

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graemep 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Very possibly. It will be an excuse to gather more user data. Will the lost users be the valuable ones for their business model? Also, once people have registered with a site, it imposes a switching cost, so it does favour incumbents over new entrants.

There must be smaller sites in the same business that will block UK users rather than comply.

So, they very likely do.

What is more important is that the tech giants, and social media in particular does love this law. As I pointed out in another comment, and has been reported many times on HN before, they have already gained users as people switch from independent forums to social media, and in the future it will keep competition out.

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wizzwizz4 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The grapevine says that independent sex workers are struggling as a result of the Online Safety Act. Unless the law has significantly reduced the tendency for UK people to engage with internet porn (which I doubt), then yes, PornHub is benefiting from this law.

	▲	iLoveOncall 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Independent sex workers upload their content on websites that are affected by the OSA, like PornHub and OnlyFans, this is why they are struggling. A lot of PornHub's content comes from independants, not big studios.

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bboygravity 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Shut down in the UK seems like a reasonable approach.

If UK wants to be more like China: let them.

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exe34 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Shutdown in the UK?

That might actually be one of the few things that would help.

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1dom 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One of the complaints against OSA is how easy it's proven to circumvent, evidenced by the massive increase in VPN usage.

So it would be interesting to understand if shutting down in the UK would have an impact, now we all had to learn how to circumvent georestrictions this past week.

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jojobas 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Laws get challenged and overturned all the time. I doubt it will happen this time, can't have wrongthink.

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ZiiS 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They can build a solid legal case on their exceptionalism _and_ hope the court uses it as an opportunity to more widely protect the open Internet. The fact that the letter of the law means you can't have an open Internet isn't their fault.