The price of good advice
Hello,
You may have noticed that things on the Internet are getting a bit dire lately, particularly in terms of legislation that makes running services like Libera.Chat way more complicated than they should be. This means we need to understand what we as a network are up against, especially since several of you have approached staff asking us related questions that we currently cannot answer. Between existing legislation such as the UK’s Online Safety Act, and prospective measures like the EU’s Chat Control, we are facing a bunch of new bureaucracy to navigate, and none of us are trained for that.
After reaching out to multiple contacts, a bunch of prep work on our side, and some back and forth with a firm that has some tech-related background, we have finally arranged some actual legal advice. While this has taken far longer than we’d have liked, part of the delay has also been our hesitation to spend any money on this. At our last MGM, we agreed that this is unfortunately what we need to do, to the tune of £1920.
While we are very fortunate that our finances allow us to afford this one bill, it is… only one bill. Regulations infringing on the neutrality of online services, and the right to privacy online, are not going to stop with the OSA, or with Chat Control. Laws like this multiply. It is very likely that this is not the last time we need to cough up perfectly good money to buy advice about the latest government overreach.
So, as awkward as this is, we are asking for your help.
If you value the service Libera.Chat provides, please consider a contribution towards the cost of this bill. Doing so ensures that we have enough reserves for followup costs or future crises, either of this nature or otherwise. Folks in Chat Control countries, please also reach out to your representatives and (diplomatically!) tell them what is at risk.
We are committed to being transparent about the outcome of this situation, and hope that other similar services can benefit from our effort and expense.