[Towaway69]

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?

[perihelions]

> "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]

> 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...

[raincole]

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]

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.

[iLoveOncall]

> 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.

[graemep]

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.

[iLoveOncall]

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...

[graemep]

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.

[wizzwizz4]

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]

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.

[bboygravity]

Shut down in the UK seems like a reasonable approach.

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

[exe34]

> Shutdown in the UK?

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

[1dom]

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.

[jojobas]

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