[jem]

Well this was always going to happen eventually wasn’t it?


But basically the site 4Chan (OK, fine, not the most salubrious site on the internet), have been fined some £20k by OFCOM plus £100 per day until they comply for not having any sort of age verification, and/or coughing up their (non existent) ‘illegal harms risk assessment'.

Except 4Chan’s lawyers have stated they have no intention of paying, will refuse to pay, OFCOM and the UK Government can basically ‘do one’.

So what happens now? Does OFCOM apply to the Courts to block them? Well that won’t go down well and I suspect that 'the Donald' will have something to say.

I suspect nothing will happen and the OSA will be exposed as the complete toothless paper-tiger that it is. Yes it might well shut down a few minor sites, steam train enthusiast, knitting sites which have a forum and so technically fall under the OSA umbrella, but are far too small to have a formal risk assessment or be able to age verify people.

But there we go, eventually OFCOM will publish figures showing that they ‘successfully shut down x hundred of offending sites - they’ll be the aforementioned steam train enthusiast sites - while the real problems are left running.