The Tories wrote the law for the recent changes to internet freedom in the UK. Labour supports it. Support seems to come from all sides across the political spectrum.
I think the Greens are opposed to it, and maybe Reform in one of their populist speeches, but the majority of UK representatives seem to support this law.
They could have insisted websites include something like a TXT record saying they are "for over 18s only". Or even come up with a standard saying "this website is suitable for under 18s" under a dns record.
Then the bill payer can enable or disable access for three categories
* Under 18s
* Over 18s
* Unknown
as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.
ISPs could choose to implement finer grained controls in their routers. The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
Rather than DNS consider an existing solution that just lacks laws to require server operators to add it and web clients to look for it. That is RTA headers. [1] Adding a header is trivial and clients looking for it is an afternoon of coding from an intern. As a bonus there is no privacy leaks unlike third party adult verification sites. The onus would be on the parents to enable it. Teens will always get around it given they watch porn and pirated movies together from within G and PG rated video games and that will always be a thing but it could help small children.
The people writing these laws don't know about DNS.
This isn't really relevant because what is considered "suitable for under 18s" varies wildly per country. Some countries ban rainbow flags, others will happily sell alcohol to 16-year-olds. Plus, 99.99% of websites don't care about this and will be blocked by default if you block the "unknown" category. Grandma isn't going to call their ISP and ask to unblock pornography because the American knitting forum she's on doesn't know how to add TXT records.
Technical solutions don't solve political problems.
> The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
Existing UK legislation already requires them to do that.
> as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.
This is already the case in UK, has been for years. The bill payer needs to prove age with an ID to lift IP level blocks from some default age blocklist.
It doesn't work well because obviously a lot of internet is shared amongst a household, and the blocklist is too broad to make it annoying enough that any adults will remove it. Then of course you can always just use a VPN same as with the current situation.
They support the OSA because they think its only about stopping kids accessing online porn. They do not know it is much wider, enables tracking, and also stops adults access somethings.
The Tories wrote the law for the recent changes to internet freedom in the UK. Labour supports it. Support seems to come from all sides across the political spectrum.
I think the Greens are opposed to it, and maybe Reform in one of their populist speeches, but the majority of UK representatives seem to support this law.
Based on this poll, most Britons also support the OSA: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...
They could have insisted websites include something like a TXT record saying they are "for over 18s only". Or even come up with a standard saying "this website is suitable for under 18s" under a dns record.
Then the bill payer can enable or disable access for three categories
* Under 18s
* Over 18s
* Unknown
as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.
ISPs could choose to implement finer grained controls in their routers. The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
Rather than DNS consider an existing solution that just lacks laws to require server operators to add it and web clients to look for it. That is RTA headers. [1] Adding a header is trivial and clients looking for it is an afternoon of coding from an intern. As a bonus there is no privacy leaks unlike third party adult verification sites. The onus would be on the parents to enable it. Teens will always get around it given they watch porn and pirated movies together from within G and PG rated video games and that will always be a thing but it could help small children.
[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
> include something like a TXT record
The people writing these laws don't know about DNS.
This isn't really relevant because what is considered "suitable for under 18s" varies wildly per country. Some countries ban rainbow flags, others will happily sell alcohol to 16-year-olds. Plus, 99.99% of websites don't care about this and will be blocked by default if you block the "unknown" category. Grandma isn't going to call their ISP and ask to unblock pornography because the American knitting forum she's on doesn't know how to add TXT records.
Technical solutions don't solve political problems.
> The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
Existing UK legislation already requires them to do that.
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> as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.
This is already the case in UK, has been for years. The bill payer needs to prove age with an ID to lift IP level blocks from some default age blocklist.
It doesn't work well because obviously a lot of internet is shared amongst a household, and the blocklist is too broad to make it annoying enough that any adults will remove it. Then of course you can always just use a VPN same as with the current situation.
They support the OSA because they think its only about stopping kids accessing online porn. They do not know it is much wider, enables tracking, and also stops adults access somethings.
Don't pretend the Tories are any better...
they were, once upon a time.
No, both parties.