ContentDB - new terms of service, Online Safety Act

[rubenwardy]

Hi everyone.

Terms of Service

To comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, I've introduced a new Terms of Service to ContentDB: https://content.luanti.org/terms/

The most significant thing here is a list of prohibited content. This was copied from the Act and is content which is either illegal or would require "strong age verification" (ie: privacy invasive)

Risk Assessment

ContentDB already has active moderation and measures to reduce harm. We've not had a single case of illegal content to date.

As required, I've conducted a risk assessment and made the following changes:

• Screenshot manual approval: Screenshots are manually reviewed by moderators for New Members and Members. Trusted Members and above are exempt. Previously, only New Members required screenshot review.
• Packages that depict illegal drugs (as defined by UK law) are no longer permitted
• You can no longer make private standard threads. Package approval threads are still private.

I will be updating the reporting system to ensure compliance with the Act. I have 6 months to do this.

I am not required to introduce proactive technology to scan for illegal content.

This process required reading 100s of pages of ofcom guidance and creating a 50 page report for ContentDB. Thank you UK for keeping the Internet safe from UK innovation

[Blockhead]

This process required reading 100s of pages of ofcom guidance and creating a 50 page report for ContentDB. Thank you UK for keeping the Internet safe from UK innovation

Hear, hear! The last thing the UK tech landscape needs is new entrants. Meanwhile in my own country, they plan to ban social media for under-16s, which I'm sure won't be simultaneously ineffective, costly and privacy-invasive at all, no.

Big thanks for going through what it took to do the compliance work. That deserves a donation in my book.

Also a small rest in pieces to the few mods that contained weed on ContentDB.

And my sympathies to the moderation team for their increased workloads.

[Melkor]

what? wtf?

[Astrobe]

My empathy.

That said, there is a popular game with "Blox" in its name which is famous for being abused by some disgusting people. We don't want that reputation either (that's actually mainly in the hands of Luanti game server operators, though). Even if this country has a ministry of silly walks, it still however "walks" a bit.

[Melkor]

Meanwhile in my own country, they plan to ban social media for under-16s

I'm totally ok with that, social networks like twitter are nothing more than garbage, just like their owner.
Kids and teenagers should have a device with the bare minimum.

[Blockhead]

Meanwhile in my own country, they plan to ban social media for under-16s

I'm totally ok with that, social networks like twitter are nothing more than garbage, just like their owner.
Kids and teenagers should have a device with the bare minimum.

I'm not going to comment on this more than one, because off-topic. To say it concisely: When parents parent properly, then yes, they should teach their kids responsible use or avoidance of social media. But when the government cooks up some scheme that's going to inevitably involve biometric scanning, government IDs, and probably sharing them with some "trusted" third parties to verify people, then no, it's not really a net positive. I've spoken to a teen, who said a friend could just scan her face and that Facebook just thought she was old enough. So like I said, ineffective, costly and privacy-invasive.

ContentDB is thankfully quite kid-friendly, without being dumb about it like Mojang's hatred for firearms in Minecraft.

[ShallowDweller]

Meanwhile in my own country, they plan to ban social media for under-16s

I'm totally ok with that, social networks like twitter are nothing more than garbage, just like their owner.
Kids and teenagers should have a device with the bare minimum.

I'm not going to comment on this more than one, because off-topic. To say it concisely: When parents parent properly, then yes, they should teach their kids responsible use or avoidance of social media. But when the government cooks up some scheme that's going to inevitably involve biometric scanning, government IDs, and probably sharing them with some "trusted" third parties to verify people, then no, it's not really a net positive. I've spoken to a teen, who said a friend could just scan her face and that Facebook just thought she was old enough. So like I said, ineffective, costly and privacy-invasie.

ContentDB is thankfully quite kid-friendly, without being dumb about it like Mojang's hatred for firearms in Minecraft.

Not to mention people in their 20s and later who may appear too young (I know a few). Or good old makeup.

Will this act affect mods that use hemp as a source of fiber with no narcotic properties or is fiber hemp fine?

[Blockhead]

Will this act affect mods that use hemp as a source of fiber with no narcotic properties or is fiber hemp fine?

This affects representations of illegal drugs, not a specific plant. Industrial hemp like in Technic (plus) is not going to be affected. By the way, industrial hemp is much lower in THC (the stuff that gets you high) than the marijuana/cannabis plants grown to get high off, and this is regulated. For instance, in Victoria and NSW Australia, you can grow hemp as a crop as long as it's got <1% THC content and seed from <0.5% THC.

[ShallowDweller]

This affects representations of illegal drugs, not a specific plant. Industrial hemp like in Technic (plus) is not going to be affected. By the way, industrial hemp is much lower in THC (the stuff that gets you high) than the marijuana/cannabis plants grown to get high off, and this is regulated. For instance, in Victoria and NSW Australia, you can grow hemp as a crop as long as it's got <1% THC content and seed from <0.5% THC.

glad to know. hemp is such a useful resource in the mods that add it.

[Wuzzy]

I feel very sorry you were forced to do this. This is such a bullshit law. How is “force websites to apply more censorship” going to make anyone more “safe”? The name Online Safety Act is perfect newspeak. I always hate it when politicians regulate the Internet, it never ends up well. It seems they didn't even add an exception for small sites. It’s almost as if they WANT to destroy the independent Internet by flooding the admins with mountains of compliance bullshit in order to bring them to the edge of burn-out, so that only a few big corporate sites survive. But I expected nothing from a dying kingdom anyway.


I am glad you decided against age-verification. This would 100% be the death of ContentDB.



So what are examples of “illegal drugs”? A list of common items would help (which ones are OK, which not), esp. for edge cases so that authors know what to look out for. Or is the law being deliberately vague here, too?
Does alcohol count? Beer, wine, rum, ale, whiskey, etc.? What about cigarettes or cigars? And so on …

[ShallowDweller]

I feel very sorry you were forced to do this. This is such a bullshit law. How is “force websites to apply more censorship” going to make anyone more “safe”? The name Online Safety Act is perfect newspeak. I always hate it when politicians regulate the Internet, it never ends up well. It seems they didn't even add an exception for small sites. It’s almost as if they WANT to destroy the independent Internet by flooding the admins with mountains of compliance bullshit in order to bring them to the edge of burn-out, so that only a few big corporate sites survive. But I expected nothing from a dying kingdom anyway.


I am glad you decided against age-verification. This would 100% be the death of ContentDB.



So what are examples of “illegal drugs”? A list of common items would help (which ones are OK, which not), esp. for edge cases so that authors know what to look out for. Or is the law being deliberately vague here, too?
Does alcohol count? Beer, wine, rum, ale, whiskey, etc.? What about cigarettes or cigars? And so on …

from what i understood, drugs that are illegal in UK (so afaik, tobacco and alcohol should be fine). the hemp question was already answered above (i asked).

though this makes me want to geo block UK while if i ever bother to create a site, even if i don't end up adding anything affected by this law...

[rubenwardy]

So what are examples of “illegal drugs”? A list of common items would help (which ones are OK, which not), esp. for edge cases so that authors know what to look out for. Or is the law being deliberately vague here, too?
Does alcohol count? Beer, wine, rum, ale, whiskey, etc.? What about cigarettes or cigars? And so on …

This is as defined by UK law. So includes weed, cocaine, heroin. Alcohol and tobacco are not prohibited in the UK

[vulonkaaz]

• Packages that depict illegal drugs (as defined by UK law) are no longer permitted

welp, look like I have no reason to bother with making FOSS textures for my blunt mod anymore



would it be possible to have an archive of all the banned mods ?

[bgstack15]

How about at least a list of the names of the previously-hosted-but-now-banned mods? Then search engines can fill in the rest.

[rubenwardy]

How about at least a list of the names of the previously-hosted-but-now-banned mods? Then search engines can fill in the rest.

https://github.com/MistUnky/drugs
https://github.com/IIIullaIII/CANNABIS_MOD.git

[real_mineplayer]

oh, that's quite much ^^

But gladfully that are just 2, not more (and to be fair: these mods aren't the most popular ones, so its not really a change)

[MatyasP]

Hi everyone.

Terms of Service

To comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, I've introduced a new Terms of Service to ContentDB: https://content.luanti.org/terms/

The most significant thing here is a list of prohibited content. This was copied from the Act and is content which is either illegal or would require "strong age verification" (ie: privacy invasive)

Risk Assessment

ContentDB already has active moderation and measures to reduce harm. We've not had a single case of illegal content to date.

As required, I've conducted a risk assessment and made the following changes:

• Screenshot manual approval: Screenshots are manually reviewed by moderators for New Members and Members. Trusted Members and above are exempt. Previously, only New Members required screenshot review.
• Packages that depict illegal drugs (as defined by UK law) are no longer permitted
• You can no longer make private standard threads. Package approval threads are still private.

I will be updating the reporting system to ensure compliance with the Act. I have 6 months to do this.

I am not required to introduce proactive technology to scan for illegal content.

This process required reading 100s of pages of ofcom guidance and creating a 50 page report for ContentDB. Thank you UK for keeping the Internet safe from UK innovation

Please, tell us that it is an april joke...

Very, very, very "great" papers...

[Melkor]

that's it! I'm Going To Build My Own Luanti With Blackjack and Hookers!
(never gonna happen)

[real_mineplayer]

that's it! I'm Going To Build My Own Luanti With Blackjack and Hookers!
(never gonna happen)

i guess you just have to build your own alternative for the ContentDB (which should work in the same way) and then just have to replace the links to it from the luanti source code

[Blockhead]

that's it! I'm Going To Build My Own Luanti With Blackjack and Hookers!
(never gonna happen)

i guess you just have to build your own alternative for the ContentDB (which should work in the same way) and then just have to replace the links to it from the luanti source code

ContentDB is free software, so you can host your own. And the content server isn't hard-coded into the source code, you can change it in the menu. So yes, it's pretty easy all things considered.

[real_mineplayer]

that's it! I'm Going To Build My Own Luanti With Blackjack and Hookers!
(never gonna happen)

i guess you just have to build your own alternative for the ContentDB (which should work in the same way) and then just have to replace the links to it from the luanti source code

ContentDB is free software, so you can host your own. And the content server isn't hard-coded into the source code, you can change it in the menu. So yes, it's pretty easy all things considered.

oh, I didn't know this.

But do you know the reason why it's in the settings and that easy to change?

[Blockhead]

But do you know the reason why it's in the settings and that easy to change?

Basically for the (originally silly) reason given by Melkor. ContentDB is free software so you can contribute to it. And you can change the setting so you can run your own according to your own set of rules, or remove it to "disable" the functionality. Same with custom serverlist URLs, so you can have a separate list for e.g. a school environment, LAN party, or like Multicraft's list. It's part of the idea of software freedom: The ability to use the software for any purpose, without restriction, including the optional extra network services like the server list and ContentDB, which you can skip or substitute your own.

[MirceaKitsune]

For years I warned this would happen if people don't take a stance against moral extremism and sectarianism in government... there's arguments I don't want to remember, times I maybe went too far just to make a point because I saw what was coming. Now we're reaching a level of absurd and mind boggling dystopia, that can only be equated to the cultural revolution or the dark ages. Wonder at which point they finally realize this has nothing to do with safety and never did, only imposing slavery over people and experimenting with absolute control over the masses: The longer it takes the worse it will get, and at this point I see nothing stopping the descent into total insanity.

The UK is... yeah, best not to comment, I don't think there's words in the dictionary to encompass it. I'm afraid it will have to be treated just like China or North Korea: The same way we'd laugh at whatever Kim Jong Un told us, we have to ignore whatever the lunatics in charge there are doing. I feel horrible for whoever is still stuck there and hope they can escape. In the meantime I think all hosting should be moved outside of Britain to a nation in the civilized world as soon as possible: Luanti has team members in many countries, I don't know their situation but maybe we should ask if any can help with a server migration or setting up a mirror.

Also it was a great decision to make the mod URL customizable, same goes for the server list. In terms of features I can suggest one thing here: Make both support multiple addresses, that way users don't have to switch between them periodically but enable multiple sources at once like Linux software repositories... if a package exists on multiple servers list all of its sources so the user can choose where to install from.

[rubenwardy]

Saying that we should move hosting from the UK is quite unhelpful, for a few reasons:

ContentDB is hosted in Germany, the UK part is me. To achieve this goal, I would no longer be able to host or lead ContentDB. This is likely to result in it not existing. I have done 99.999% of the work to create CDB and very few people have contributed to the code. Previous attempts have failed (just look at what happened to mmdb)

We don't need to move from the UK to escape the OSA, a UK host can block UK users to achieve this. The Online Safety Act is about UK users, not UK hosts. (Non-UK hosts are still subject to the OSA, the difference is that enforcement is limited to a block.)

ContentDB is already actively moderated and already prohibited a lot of mature content in order to provide the most value to a wide audience. Therefore, barely any content was affected by the OSA. The drawbacks of blocking all UK users outweigh the benefits, the worst part of the OSA for ContentDB is the bureaucratic nonsense which I have already done.

Comparing the UK to China or North Korea is quite laughable and again unhelpful.

I am no fan of the OSA, especially as it required me to do a lot of work to keep ContentDB compliant. I would appreciate more "oh what a silly law, thanks for doing this though" than comparing the UK to North Korea. I'm a volunteer on open source, I'm not the prime minister

[MirceaKitsune]

I understand that and can agree. Needless to say this isn't your fault in the slightest: You're clearly managing this best you can, thank you for that. My opinion on the UK definitely goes there after the things I've been hearing, I worry even now many can't fully encompass just how bad what's happening is... that's less relevant now though. The servers being in Germany is good, even that should reduce the risk in this situation.

Even if existing content won't be affected, there's no guarantee this will stop now that the precedent is there: Anything can be added to the list if one of those people is having a bad day. I'm afraid to bet that given enough time, you'll be asked to remove the sword and the bow items because they're considered symbols of violence: I'm not going that far yet but after this I have no doubt it's legitimately on the table with much more, it's all foot on the gas pedal and no brakes at this point.