Scary/crazy reading, thanks. It's like they have never used the internet, only an iphone or something.
The way they have exempted email is funny, because criminals never use email /s
Also apparently OFCOM have to produce and update a list of all internet services. Good luck with that, literally millions of forums and chat servers.
Apparently they then have to contact the operators with notices, doesn't matter where in the world they are, if the service can be accessed from the UK then they are fair game. Its a criminal offence to not respond to the notice within 48 hours lol, good luck enforcing that on server operators in North Korea etc. But its a defence to say you didn't get the notice but will help them now honest.... everything about this is impractical/idiotic bureaucracy.
The good news is that OFCOMs powers are limited - the only new criminal offences relate to failing to respond to OFCOM (when first contacted), or failing to provide information if you are a named manager (OFCOM will first ask for a details of a named manager they can contact in future). OFCOM will ask the named manager to produce a risk assessment, and keep records of how much illegal content was found and/or removed from the service. OFCOM could service notices to request changes to be made to the terms of service etc if they "think there is a risk", but these notices can only be enforced with a civil penalty, so even harder to enforce on people outside the UK.
The most stupid aspect is there is no standard defined for the risk assessment. To be honest if I was running a forum and got contacted, my first plan would be to ignore the notice. If they then managed to track me down in person and serve the notice, I would legally have to name a manager, but the risk assessment etc produced later could just be a go-slow / fob off with bullshit operation, and there is little they could do about it, even if I lived in the UK, so long as the "service" was run by a company legally based outside outside the UK, as any civil action would be against the operating company.
The worst OFCOM could do is request ISPs to block my website, but my ISP already blocks tons of sites like ukpunting, so I have to work around it already.
A way to get round the rules completely is just to block UK ip addresses, but then users have to use vpn to access. Maybe if this passes everyone will have to use vpn to access the internet.
