Is the UK becoming a bad place for internet startups?
The UK has been making some really bad decisions for encouraging tech startups.
For those unaware and reading from outside of the UK, a UK judge has ordered British ISPs to block access to arguably the biggest BitTorrent search engine, The Pirate Bay. Alone, this is a worrying act of censorship over internet access especially when you consider The Pirate Bay is currently (according to Alexa) the 77th most visited website in the world, and doesn’t even host any pirated content on its servers.
Unfortunately this isn't the only poor decision the UK has made recently... They’re also planning to make it effectively illegal for UK webmasters to use analytics and other cookie tracking services that can be used to collect information on their visitors.
http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/UK-Edition-start-here/Richi-s-Rant-Web-Analytics-Illegal-after-26-May-Crazy/ba-p/2892
In my opinion this kind of action displays a clear misunderstanding about the workings of the internet and will more damage in an attempt to address the problem they’re trying to solve. It’s evident that many users have a problem with websites tracking their browsing activity, but for concerned users this can be quickly fixed by disabling cookies. Ironically, if you are someone who's worried about being being tracked online, you’ll be delighted to hear the UK government are planning to monitor all your personal email, phone and web traffic soon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17590363
It doesn’t end there though, the UK goverment are also considering to block all pornographic websites by default, requiring users contact their ISPs to first opt-in before being allowed to access adult content.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17952975
If these measures are put into action the UK would be making one massive step towards the great firewall of China, where the government has the power to dictate what the people can and can’t do online. And how exactly are we defining a pornographic site? Many family friendly websites occasionally have pornographic content, take Tumblr, most users never upload any pornographic content to their Tumblr account, but occasionally users do, so do we block access to the entire website? Do we block access to any website with user added content? And what does this type of censorship do to the functionality of the web? Well here are some problems a software developer had when living behind the great firewall of china.
Any internet entrepreneurs looking to based their company in the UK should be worried; your website may be under threat of being heavily censored or even blocked completely over the next few years. If you’re startup hosts user uploaded content, you could be under threat already.
If you’re a UK webmaster leave a comment below, I’m interested to hear you’re thoughts.
Author
Hello, I'm Lee.I'm a developer from the UK who writes about technology and startups. Here you'll find articles and tutorials about things that interest me. If you want to hire me or know more about me head over to my about me page
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