Security News > 2023 > April > Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

Wikipedia won't be age-gating its services no matter what final form the UK's Online Safety Bill takes, two senior folks from nonprofit steward the Wikimedia Foundation said this morning.

The bill is currently in the committee stage at the House, where the peers are considering a "Full package of amendments [that] defines and sets out the rules of the road for age assurance, including the timing of its introduction, and the definition of terms such as age verification and age assurance."

Though one can't predict how that will go, back in February, more than one of the Lords were disappointed that an earlier version of the Bill didn't stop children from accessing pornography, explicitly calling for age verification to be written into the face of the Bill to prevent this.

The Earl of Erroll, who is the Parliamentary Chair of the Digital Safety Tech Group, spoke of the "The sadness of the constitutional impropriety when the Executive refused to implement the will of Parliament," when UK ministers tried to push age verification in the Digital Economy Act 2017 - suggesting some factions are ready for round 2 of the DEA. As Jo Joyce, senior counsel in Taylor Wessing's commercial tech & data team, told us at the time, when the OSB returned to Parliament: "The protection of children and vulnerable people online is perceived as a vote winner for the government and dropping the Bill entirely was unlikely to be an option, despite the concerns of free speech advocates and pressure from tech businesses."

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Tech orgs have been incresingly stepping up to voice their concerns over the Online Safety Bill for weeks, https://www.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/04/28/online_safety_bill_age_checks/