LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)
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If the main concern is a penalty of £18 million it is pretty clear this simply can't happen.
If you read back in the thread you'll see that there isn't as much concern about that. Setting up as a company or similar will limit liability there.
The greater concern is the possibility of senior management being criminally liable.
aggi-
Okay. There is a process and though it's optional surely with a small organization with only one person working for a few hours per month - first - highly unlikely they ever get to you given limits on their time and much higher profile cases like Facebook, Twitter etc. But if they do - then the normal process would be to talk first and find a way to comply and some action plan for how to comply. At that point if the action plan is too onerous then just shut down [never likely to reach this point]. Then warning letters and only after the warning letters are ignored and something very serious is going on especially causing harm to kids, and being ignored - then they would fine and only consider criminal action if it was very serious indeed.
That is what one would expect of the process. All this WOULD NEED TO BE CHECKED.
But it would be astonishing if they were to spend time fining never mind a court case to imprison someone who does this voluntarily a few hours a month.
I think your risk is likely zero but of course understand wanting to be certain of that. I can't provide the certainty but perhaps Ofcom or someone else can and I hope you find the answers you need.
RobertInventor
No. I am just a voluntary fact checker who helps scared people. All I have is what I shared, those quotes from Ofcom's own website.
How I know about this is just that this story is spreading virally on the internet. I fact checked it for scared people who worried it meant small businesses and voluntary organizations would have to shut down.
And after fact checking it I thought as a courtesy I'd post back here in case my fact check was useful to Velocio as they don't seem to be aware that the penalty is limited to a fraction of the turnover.
If the main concern is a penalty of £18 million it is pretty clear this simply can't happen. Indeed if the turnover is £0 not sure they can even do any fine. But the text doesn't explicitly say "any fine has to be less than the turnover". So to confirm that, I'd recommend contacting someone from Ofcom if available.
So anyway hope this helps :). Just going the extra mile to help someone in case it helps.