Internet News

The Online Safety Bill received Royal Assenton 26th October 2023, heralding a new era of internet censorship.

The new UK internet Ofcom was quick off the mark to outline its timetable for implementing the new censorship regime.

Ofcom has set out our plans for putting online safety laws into practice, and what we expect from tech firms, now that the Online Safety Act has passed. Ofcom writes:

The Act makes companies that operate a wide range of online services legally responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. These companies have new duties to protect UK users by assessing risks of harm, and taking steps to address them. All in-scope services with a significant number of UK users, or targeting the UK market, are covered by the new rules, regardless of where they are based.

While the onus is on companies to decide what safety measures they need given the risks they face, we expect implementation of the Act to ensure people in the UK are safer online by delivering four outcomes:

• stronger safety governance in online firms;

• online services designed and operated with safety in mind;

• choice for users so they can have meaningful control over their online experiences; and

• transparency regarding the safety measures services use, and the action Ofcom is taking to improve them, in order to build trust .

We are moving quickly to implement the new rules

Ofcom will give guidance and set out codes of practice on how in-scope companies can comply with their duties, in three phases, as set out in the Act.

Phase one: illegal harms duties

We will publish draft codes and guidance on these duties on 9 November 2023, including:

• analysis of the causes and impacts of online harm, to support services in carrying out their risk assessments;

• draft guidance on a recommended process for assessing risk;

• draft codes of practice, setting out what services can do to mitigate the risk of harm; and

• draft guidelines on Ofcom's approach to enforcement.

We will consult on these documents, and plan to publish a statement on our final decisions in Autumn 2024. The codes of practices will then be submitted to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, and subject to their approval, laid before Parliament.

Phase two: child safety, pornography and the protection of women and girls

Child protection duties will be set out in two parts. First, online pornography services and other interested stakeholders will be able to read and respond to our draft guidance on age assurance from December 2023. This will be relevant to all services in scope of Part 5 of the Online Safety Act.

Secondly, regulated services and other interested stakeholders will be able to read and respond to draft codes of practice relating to protection of children, in Spring 2024.

Alongside this, we expect to consult on:

• analysis of the causes and impacts of online harm to children; and

• draft risk assessment guidance focusing on children's harms.

We expect to publish draft guidance on protecting women and girls by Spring 2025, when we will have finalised our codes of practice on protection of children.

Phase three: transparency, user empowerment, and other duties on categorised services

A small proportion of regulated services will be designated Category 1, 2A or 2B services if they meet certain thresholds set out in secondary legislation to be made by Government. Our final stage of implementation focuses on additional requirements that fall only on these categorised services. Those requirements include duties to:

• produce transparency reports;

• provide user empowerment tools;

• operate in line with terms of service;

• protect certain types of journalistic content; and

• prevent fraudulent advertising.

We now plan to issue a call for evidence regarding our approach to these duties in early 2024 and a consultation on draft transparency guidance in mid 2024.

Ofcom must produce a register of categorised services. We will advise Government on the thresholds for these categories in early 2024, and Government will then make secondary legislation on categorisation, which we currently expect to happen by summer 2024. Assuming this is achieved, we will:

• publish the register of categorised services by the end of 2024;

• publish draft proposals regarding the additional duties on these services in early 2025; and

• issue transparency notices in mid 2025.

Ohio House Representative Steve Demetriou has introduced an extraordinarily repressive House Bill (HB) 295. Dubbed the Innocence Actwould implement an age verification requirement similar to what has already been implemented in other states. However this bill goes way beyond other is that it introduces criminal penalties for websites that don't comply and misdemeanor penalties for any internet user who tries to circumvent age verification, eg by using VPNs.

In its current form, companies and webmasters who don't implement reasonable age verification methods could be subject to criminal charges -- a third-degree felony. No other proposed and implemented age verification regulation in the country has such punitive criminal penalties.

Corey Silverstein, a First Amendment attorney, commented:

VPNs are available on most mobile devices through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. They are also free or relatively inexpensive. And, to think that a 17-year-old high school student can't learn about and effectively deploy a VPN is short-sighted. I can't think of a worse idea than charging minors with criminal offenses for viewing adult content and potentially ruining their futures. Attempting to shame and embarrass minors for viewing adult-themed content goes so far beyond common sense that it begs the question of whether the supporters of this bill gave it any thought at all.

It is not yet clear if the bill has a chance of becoming law.

A few days ago, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare implemented widespread support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a privacy technology that aims to render web traffic surveillance futile. This means that site blocking implemented by ISPs will be rendered useless in most, if not all cases.

ECH is a newly proposed privacy standard that's been in the making for a few years. The goal is to increase privacy for Internet users and it has already gained support from Chrome , Firefox , Edge , and other browsers. Users can enable it in the settings, which may still be experimental in some cases.just

The main barrier to widespread adoption is that this privacy technology is a two-way street. This means that websites have to support it as well. Cloudflare has made a huge leap forward on that front by enabling it by default on all free plans, which currently serve millions of sites. Other subscribers can apply to have it enabled. Cloudflare writes in an announcement:

Cloudflare is a big proponent of privacy for everyone and is excited about the prospects of bringing this technology to life. Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) is a successor to ESNI and masks the Server Name Indication (SNI) that is used to negotiate a TLS handshake. This means that whenever a user visits a website on Cloudflare that has ECH enabled, no one except for the user, Cloudflare, and the website owner will be able to determine which website was visited.

If you're a website, and you care about users visiting your website in a fashion that doesn't allow any intermediary to see what users are doing, enable ECH today on Cloudflare

Tests conducted by TorrentFreak show that ISP blocking measures in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain were rendered ineffective.