Semi-criminalisation

I've written about the Online Safety Act and the broader issue of semi-criminalisation in Britain for The Critic.

 

Downloading random VPNs comes with risks of its own and opens up a whole new world of illicit online activity from free Premier League football to the Dark Web. But there is a deeper reason to feel uneasy about this unintended, albeit predictable, consequence of paternalistic regulation. By driving another wedge between the state and the individual, it further normalises rule-breaking in a country where casual lawlessness is becoming part of daily life. A law-abiding society cannot long endure if the median citizen thinks that the law is an ass.  

The breakdown of trust can be seen most clearly when the ordinary man or woman does not share the moral certainties of the governing class. Among smokers, a collapse in tax morale — the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes — has led to a huge rise in the consumption of illegal tobacco in recent years. Smokers no longer feel any obligation to pay taxes that are designed to impoverish them to a government that vilifies them. Cannabis smokers learn from an early age to be suspicious of a police force that they might otherwise respect. Motorists who are faced with 20mph speed limits that were introduced by people who hate private transport have no scruples about flouting the law.  

Closely analogous to the new age verification law are the affordability checks that punters are expected to undergo when they spend more than the state thinks is good for them on a gambling website. These have never been put into law and instead rely on a Kafkaesque system in which operators are expected to second guess what spending threshold the Gambling Commission thinks is appropriate. Faced with the threat of multi-million pound fines if they fail to spot a problem gambler, the companies err on the side of caution and request bank statements and other documents from any high-rolling customer. Unsurprisingly, many of these people do not want to share this private information and close their account. But they do not stop gambling. Instead, they switch to offshore gambling websites that are not regulated by the Gambling Commission. All they need to do that is — you guessed it — a VPN.

This all happens without any meaningful protest from the individuals involved. There are enough viewers of “adult content” to swing an election if they mobilised in their self-interest, but no group of consumers is less likely to stand up and be counted. Instead, like millions of other ordinary souls who find themselves semi-criminalised by an over-bearing state, they roll their eyes and find a workaround.

 

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