Remix.run Logo
IanCal 4 days ago

Age checks are not fundamentally required by the OSA. It's really, really important that if you want to argue against it you argue against what's actually in it.

alansammarone 3 days ago | parent [-]

I was not arguing against OSA, I was arguing about your point that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with "if there are kids involved, care should be taken". Yes there is, because we can't know if there are kids involved without turning into a surveillance state.

IanCal 3 days ago | parent [-]

Again that is a second order thing and is also not true. If it was all examples by ofcom would include age verification.

It’d be like saying an 18+ limit for buying booze means full DNA tracking because otherwise we don’t know if people are over 18 or just look it.

alansammarone 3 days ago | parent [-]

What? I'm not sure I follow your point, and I'm not sure why you're referencing something that is unrelated to my statement, so I'll just make my point in clearer way and leave it at that.

I completely disagree that even a tangentially related, much weaker concept ("having a list of IDs and what you've watched") is "second order" effect. This is a question relative to one's values, which is at the heart of the discussion, but as I'm concerned that cartoon version is a zeroth order effect - much more relevant than all the other points you make, which are at best less important (some might be completely irrelevant to me).

I couldn't care less about the technicalities cooked up by ofcom. Those will be left for a judge to decide and will depend on the political winds. Again, I'm just answering your point - "requiring X if kids are involved" is on the face of it obviously absurd and bad. And the analogy with alcohol, even though not great, might help make it clearer: to the extent that it is enforced, it is absolutely the case that it introduces a much weaker form of mass government surveillance.

The distinction clarifies the idea: if every store was required to check your ID digitally, in real time, and storing that information (which, mind you, makes it trivially accessible by anyone, in particular law enforcement), then the government has arbitrary power to stop anyone from buying anything ("oh, I see your ID is associated with X - sorry, we can't serve you right now" - replace X with your favorite group, idea, arbitrary law), to track their every movement (since you need to buy things fairly often), etc.

The scale and functioning of the internet is what distinguishes it from the physical space.

Just because you have a good master, doesn't mean you're free. You're only free when you're not not subject to anyone's good will towards you. I'm not an anarchist - there are real problems and there are laws that are necessary to solve these problems, your examples are clearly neither and so are on the face of it, absurd and laughable.

IanCal 3 days ago | parent [-]

Second order effects do not mean they're less important, perhaps that's the misunderstanding.

> I couldn't care less about the technicalities cooked up by ofcom.

Then you will be incapable of discussing it with anyone looking at how things are implemented and will continue to make assertions that don't match what they're seeing.

> if every store was required to check your ID digitally, in real time, and storing that information

Which has no parallel to what's in the OSA.