It would take some clever crafting to outlaw Matrix clients without also outlawing web browsers and conventional email clients. Let's assume they did though. The best they can do is block it from app stores, which won't stop anyone but iOS users.

More likely, it just won't become popular enough for lawmakers to notice because the UX is a little rough, and people have very little patience for such things anymore.

It's not really a method to escape the law, or a technicality - it's that people other than Matrix.org are operating chat services, and the law applies to those people, but those people are not Matrix.org.

This won't save Matrix.org if legislators throw stupid at it, of course, but Matrix.org has the opportunity (though maybe not the resources) to engage with UK legislators to ensure they feel respected and that honest efforts are being made to comply.

> Governments don't typically go "aw, shucks, you've caught us on a technicality" without getting the courts involved.

That might happen here, but I don’t think that principle holds generally. If that were true, wouldn’t every component of the service provider chain be sued for people e.g. downloading pirated or illegal stuff? The government cracks down on e.g. torrent trackers and ISPs, but they haven’t seriously attacked torrent clients or the app stores/OSes that allow users to run those clients. Why not?

It's just a reality that law is harder to enforce when you cannot target a given server and take out an entire service. Regardless of what you think of the law.

This is why to this day torrenting of copyrighted material is alive and well.