UK Online Safety Act could force small websites to close down: here’s why

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(Reclaim The Net) — The U.K.’s sweeping online censorship law – the Online Safety Act – that will be enforced from March of next year is already claiming its first victims.

The new legislative landscape in the country is now not providing any kind of safety for hundreds of small websites, including non-profit forums, that will have to shut down, unable to comply with the act – specifically, faced with what reports refer to as “disproportionate personal liability.”

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The fines go up to the equivalent of $25 million, while the law also introduces new criminal offenses.

Earlier in the week, the act’s enforcer, Ofcom, published dozens of measures that online services are supposed to implement by March 16, including naming a person responsible – and accountable – for making sure a site or platform complies.

The law is presented as a new way to efficiently tackle illegal content, and in particular, provide new ways to ensure the safety of children online, including by age verification (“age checking”).

Opponents, however, reject it as “a censor’s charter” designed to force companies to step up monitoring and censorship on their platforms, including by scanning private communications and undermining encryption.

But another way that concrete harm can be done to the online ecosystem, while declaratively seeking to prevent harm, is now emerging with the example of small and community sites, where those running them are unwilling to take on the massive risk related both to the fines, and criminal responsibility in case they fail to “moderate” according to the act’s provisions.

U.K. press reports about one of the first examples of this, as the non-profit free hosting service Microcosm and its 300 sites – among them community hubs and forums dedicated to topics like cycling and tech – will go down in March, unable to live up to the “disproportionately high personal liability.”

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“It’s too vague and too broad and I don’t want to take that personal risk,” Microcosm’s Dee Kitchen is quoted.

Although the general impression has been that only large corporate services will be affected by the law, in reality requirements and penalties for them are higher, but Ofcom made it clear that “very small micro businesses” are also subject to the legislation.

Microcosm’s decision illustrates what that will look like in practice, as sites – big and small – consider finding hosting overseas, or even leaving the U.K. market.

Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.