Monthly General Meeting, September 2025
Propositions and Motions
Proposal for OSA advice
Following a series of attempts to obtain legal advice on the UK’s Online Safety Act — in particular clear answers regarding whether it could realistically be considered to apply to us and, if so, what our risk level is — we received a quote from a law firm for 1920 GBP (just under 24.3k SEK) for a basic memo. This meeting discussed whether we should move forward with engaging that law firm’s services.
Concerns were raised about how much advice we will actually get for the asking price. At the time of the meeting, relatively little was promised in terms of the memo’s contents. Spending ~£2k just to find out we would need to spend more to get detailed information is undesirable. However, the meeting generally agreed that having any legal advice on the matter would be better than none, and that if nothing else the memo can help inform next steps.
The meeting also discussed potentially shutting down or migrating servers based in the UK as a security precaution. It was agreed that this will only be done if the advice we receive suggests we have unreasonable obligations under the OSA. Geo-blocking the UK (a measure used by some online communities to nullify any potential applicability of the OSA) was not discussed during this meeting.
The EU “Chat Control” proposal was also brought up as another concern, and it was noted that other countries are considering similar measures. Libera Chat has the finances to get legal advice for the OSA, but not for every law that attempts to censor the internet outside of a country’s own jurisdiction. A proposal to fund-raise for future legal advice was brought up and loosely agreed upon.