The Distillery forum

[Richard Russell]

The link to The Distillery forum, which can be found for example at this forum's landing page, doesn't seem to be working. Does anybody know whether this is a temporary fault, or if the URL has changed, or if The Distillery forum has closed down (I hope not)?

[jgharston]

I tried posting there a week or so ago, and got an error page, something like "The Distillery has been stilled. Grumble, grumble, Ofcom, grumble, grumble. "

Links direct to discussions work (eg link), but I've just tried a test post right now, and it silently disappears. I wonder if the Ofcomm reference is pertinent.

[Richard Russell]

I tried posting there a week or so ago, and got an error page, something like "The Distillery has been stilled. Grumble, grumble, Ofcom, grumble, grumble."

Yes I saw that too, but didn't know what to make of it.

Links direct to discussions work (eg link), but I've just tried a test post right now, and it silently disappears.

Curiouser and curiouser... I'm resorting to posting about Brandy here instead, but The Distillery would be a better place.

[Richard Russell]

Could it, I wonder, be connected with the DDoS attacks that so many phpBB forums (including this one) were suffering about a week ago. The Distillery isn't a phpBB forum, so far as I'm aware, but perhaps it was also vulnerable to attack.

If this is the reason, the attacks seem to have subsided now (although who knows for how long) so maybe The Distillery will be reinstated soon.

[Richard Russell]

I wonder if the Ofcom reference is pertinent.

From a comment made at GitHub, it looks like Michael has taken down The Distillery over concerns about the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which came into effect earlier this year. Strictly speaking this does apply to forums, but opinions vary over what actions are necessary or appropriate.

If you believe in abiding by the letter of the law, it's probably not possible for a small forum such as The Distillery (or indeed this one), run by just one or a few individuals, to comply; the requirements are just too onerous. Some owners who feel that way have taken down their forums to be on the safe side.

But if you are more concerned about the spirit of the legislation, it's highly unlikely that The Distillery or this forum would host any content that would be a cause for concern (such as harmful or pornographic posts), especially if new members are automatically moderated.

If Michael is in the former category, I assume he may want to close this forum too (legally speaking he is the owner and administrator). If so I would hope that at least he would leave it up in a read-only state, as a repository of useful information, rather than block access to it altogether.

[Richard Russell]

opinions vary over what actions are necessary or appropriate

As a couple of examples of how this can all become rather vague:

• The Online Safety Act includes limited exemptions for "comments relating to provider content" (e.g. on-topic blog posts), but this is narrowly interpreted. Off-topic discussions or open forums likely fall under full scope.
• Ofcom expects smaller, low-risk services to adopt "proportionate" measures, but there is no clear guidance on what this actually means in practice.

My understanding is that the BBC BASIC Facebook Group and the Discussion Group at groups.io are not likely to be affected directly by this, because the primary responsibility for adhering to the Online Safety Act lies with the platform (Facebook or Groups.io respectively), not the individual group owner.