The UK triggers a global internet argument

Politico

3 days ago

The United Kingdom is testing the limits of how far a single country can go to enforce its laws in a borderless internet — and triggering transatlantic political and legal waves in the process.
The UK's Online Safety Act was passed in 2023 to protect users, particularly children, from harmful online content. The law puts age verification limits on a whole range of material — pornography, hate speech, content promoting drugs and weapons, online harassment and depictions of violence.
The act's verification provisions went into effect in late July. As soon as it did, UK internet users found themselves having to upload IDs and selfies to prove they were old enough to access certain content. Large platforms restricted everything from X posts on Gaza to subreddits on cigars, and blocked content entirely in certain cases.
Quickly, the U.S. got involved as well. Online speech laws in other countries have long annoyed U.S. tech companies; now with the White House's ear, they've been pushing officials to press the matter in trade talks with the European Union, which seems to be working. And content moderation (especially the excesses of left-leaning content moderation) has been a bugbear for Republicans for years.
Politically, it's already turning into a fertile issue. A bipartisan House delegation traveled to the UK last week to discuss the law's possible impact on the speech rights of Americans. It was led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, who has spearheaded the conservative 'free speech' case against numerous tech platforms in the U.S., but also included Democrats worried about First Amendment rights. 'When foreign governments try to export their speech codes to the United States, it undermines our First Amendment values,' Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.), who was on the trip, told DFD in a comment.
As my colleague Anthony Adragna reports, this diplomatic effort did not go entirely smoothly: UK Reform party leader Nigel Farage called Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) 'pig-headed' during one such meeting.
The OSA has also triggered American-style arguments around chilling speech within the UK as well, POLITICO's Mizy Clifton, who's been covering the OSA from London, told DFD. 'Now the right-wing insurgent populist party Reform UK has taken up that argument,' he said.
Does the law really have such global implications? Well, yes. The UK's Office of Communications, which is enforcing the OSA, has already sent letters to at least three websites operating outside the country, demanding that they conduct harmful speech audits. The letters note that failure to comply could result in 'imprisonment for a term of up to two years, or a fine (or both).' (The U.S.-based platform Gab, which hosts Nazi and other extremist content, responded by going offline in the UK.)
Ofcom's initial enforcement efforts implicate one of the thorniest questions in internet law: How can a country impose its online speech standards beyond its territorial bounds?
'This is one of the first cases in which a national legislature of a major, important country really forced the issue,' said James Grimmelmann, a Cornell Law School professor who specializes in internet law.
Since the rise of the internet, there have been other cases of governments extending their speech laws outward. Australia's highest court ruled in 2002 that its defamation laws applied to a suit that a citizen brought against Dow Jones over an online article. In 2017, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that Google had to remove a website selling counterfeit products from its worldwide search results, after its proprietors fled the country.
Large U.S.-based websites have generally been willing to play ball for these one-off cases, either following courts' orders or sending lawyers to other countries to litigate.
What makes the OSA different is that it imposes ongoing duties on websites to self-regulate according to its terms. And the law applies to more than just porn sites. So big platforms like Meta — as well as more freewheeling forums like Reddit and smaller discussion boards — are expected to more actively seek out hateful and violent content that needs to be age gated.
A source familiar with the House Judiciary Committee's investigation into the matter told DFD on background that, based on conversations with platforms, it would be impractical for them to develop separate content moderation systems based on the country.
If a U.S.-based site does violate the OSA, the act has measures to stymie websites without a presence on English soil. Ofcom has the authority to force third parties, like payment services or app stores, to stop doing business with the sites.
For American tech companies, there are a few paths out — besides, of course, just obeying the law.
One is political — asking the White House to pressure the UK in trade talks to just roll the rule back, as it's been doing with tech laws in the European Union. However, UK officials have said the OSA is not up for debate in tariff negotiations.
Another runs through the courts. Preston Byrne, managing partner at the tech law firm Byrne & Storm, says he wanted to force the issue: He's planning to file a lawsuit soon on behalf of websites to get a U.S. federal court to declare that the Online Safety Act is unenforceable in the country.
Obtaining such a ruling from an American court is rare: Yahoo previously mounted a similar effort, but the case was dismissed.
Byrne says it's still worth trying. 'You could also get symbolic declarations from the court,' he told DFD. 'It communicates to other American companies that these orders that you get from Ofcom [...] they're just letters.'
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