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Bungling Brit Bureaucrats

I expect that everyone reading this column understands how the internet works.

Computers all over the world are connected by miles and miles of damp string, a network that is called "the internet". Through this tortured mess of cabling, little packets of data bounce around like the "DVD" logo on an old CRT TV when the disk had finished playing.

When one computer needs to send data to another it wraps that data into a "packet", slaps an address on it and casts it out into the ether.

After much magic, a few mirrors and occasionally some magic smoke, that packet of data is eventually delivered to the intended destination.

Very clever stuff.

The cleverest part of it is that the whole thing is pretty much transparent to politics, geography or ideology.

Well that used to be the case anyway -- perhaps not today though.

Since governments discovered that these packets of data whizzing around the globe might contain "hurty words" and even opinions that were not congruent with those governments' own ideologies, increasing measures have been put in place to fix that problem.

Right now the internet is in a state of turmoil, as governments around the world seek to impose their own authority on these little packets and their contents -- so as to keep our children safe (of course).

In the UK and Australia they've decided that minors can't possibly be exposed to the entirety of the internet and all the dangers it can deliver. Instead, they're age-gating access. Of course it's utter coincidence that in order to implement that age-gating they'll also be able to identify internet users and thus track who is saying what when online.

Both the UK and Australia are now pushing hard to introduce a compulsory Digital ID, something that will further simplify the task of holding everyone accountable for their online activities. To hell with your freedoms, to hell with privacy, to hell with your right to anonymity and to hell with freedom of speech.

The children must be protected at all cost... right?

Well those buffoons in the UK's communications regulator Ofcom have just made Britain look like a nation of idiots. That maybe a fair call on their politicians but an unreasonable aspersion on the average Brit in the street.

After the British Prime Minister proudly proclaimed, whilst standing next to Donald Trump, that his country has a proud tradition of free speech and would continue to do so, Ofcom has taken legal action against a US website for not implementing age-gating as is required by UK law.

Excuse me?

Since when did UK law apply to US entities that have no direct presence in the UK?

I suggest you watch this video from a UK barister that describes the situation and highlights the insanity of the UK bureaucracy in this case.

Perhaps the only thing that Daniel gets wrong in his video is his faith that YouTube will continue to allow Brits to speak freely on that platform. The reality is that YT is falling into line with the diktats of various Western governments and even pre-empting the prospect of mandatory age-gating in the USA by already applying such restrictions ahead of any legislative requirement to do so.

I saw a brilliant comment on that video which kinds of sums up the situation perfectly:

Free speech, enjoy it while you still can.

Carpe Diem folks!

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