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From: Retro Guy <retroguy@novabbs.com>
Newsgroups: news.software.readers
Subject: Re: Newsgrouper Update
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:20:18 -0700
Organization: Rocksolid Light
Message-ID: <bf202f3b137639309081f85f063f663f$1@novabbs.org>
References: <1729782469-7@newsgrouper.org.uk> <1739546063-7@newsgrouper.org> <voobti$18jgc$1@matrix.hispagatos.org>
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On Fri, 14 Feb 2025 21:17:38 -0000 (UTC), rek2 hispagatos wrote:

> On 2025-02-14, Colin Macleod <user7@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:
>> Sorry, but I've now decided I need to block access to Newsgrouper from the
>> UK, starting 16th March. This is because I find it impractical to meet the
>> requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which comes into effect then.
>> See https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety and https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk
>>
>> I've done a fair bit more homework on this, reading some of the guidance,
>> but not all the thousands of pages that Ofcom has produced, and following
>> their online seminars. Unfortunately very many aspects remain vague, and
>> requests to Ofcom to provide clearer guidelines get answers like "It depends
>> on your circumstances", "We can't advise individual sites", "You have to
>> make the judgement", etc..
>>
>> I'm afraid my conclusion is that trying to comply with the OSA is just too
>> much effort.  It's not just the initial risk assessments and policy/system
>> changes. It's also that one is then required to respond to any reports that
>> come in and judge whether that content is really illegal. You are required
>> to remove anything that *is* illegal under a long list of categories, but
>> also to protect users' right to freedom of speech. It's easy to think of
>> cases where this balance could be very tricky. I simply don't want to get
>> into the business of having to police other people's speech.
>>
>> Ofcom have stated unequivocally that geo-blocking the UK will put a site
>> outside the scope of the Act. So I put up a simple survey on the newsgrouper
>> site, this appeared for UK users only, and I let it run for two weeks.
>> There was just one question and a space for comments. I got 11 responses,
>> as follows:
>>
>>    How would a UK block affect you?                    Answers
>> 1: Not Concerned, I can follow Usenet by other means.      1
>> 2: An Annoyance, but not the end of the world.             5
>> 3: Oh No, that would be a disaster!                        5
>>
>> The comments were generally disappointed, but some also expressed
>> understanding. So blocking UK access would be a real inconvenience to
>> 5 people. I regret that, but they may be able to use one of the other web
>> interfaces to Usenet, see:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sites_and_popularity
>> Also UK people are only about 15% of my users now.
>>
>> I have seen comments that having a .uk address is enough to bring a site
>> into the scope of the act. I'm not convinced about that, but to be on the
>> safe side I have reregistered my site as newsgrouper.org with a redirect
>> from newsgrouper.org.uk .
>>
>> My software is available at:
>> https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home
>> so if anyone else wants to take on the job of running an instance that would
>> remain open to UK users, they are welcome to do so.
>>
> 
> 
> Can't you host on a non 8 eyes country?  and have the few in the uk
> using it use tor/vpn?  you could also give http access on tor/i2p
>:shrugs: 

This is simple to do. You don't even need Tor or I2P running on the same
machine as the web server (but for I2P it's better if you do).

Although I much prefer I2P (I'm not really a Tor fan), Tor is probably much
easier for users.