The Online Safety Bill shouldn't treat community-run sites like big tech firms its foundation says.
Wikipedia should be treated differently to the big social media firms in the Online Safety Bill, a leading member of its foundation says.The Wikimedia Foundation's Rebecca MacKinnonThe bill aims to protect people from harmful content online.She told the BBC that the threat of "harsh" new criminal penalties for tech bosses "will affect not only big corporations, but also public interest websites such as Wikipedia".
The government told the BBC the bill is designed to strike the balance between tackling harm without imposing unnecessary burdens on low-risk tech companies. "[Regulator] Ofcom will take a reasonable and proportionate approach when monitoring and enforcing the safety duties outlined in the bill, focusing on services where the risk of harm is highest," it said.But lawyers have also pointed out that some of the duties in the bill, promoted as a way to rein in big tech, will affect much smaller services where users can communicate with other users.
Neil Brown, a solicitor specialising in internet and telecoms law, told the BBC: "The bill, and the amendment, would impose pages of duties on someone who, for fun, runs their own social media or photo/video sharing server, or hosts a multi-player game which lets players chat or see each other's content or creations."
He suggests limiting the scope of the bill to the major commercial operators with multi-million pound turnover would help "remove the burden and threat to hobbyists and volunteers".
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