The Ofcom Tea Party: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence, British regulator claims “sovereign immunity” to defend itself – and sovereign powers to regulate foreign companies
(alecmuffett.com)
from herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Oct 16:15
https://lemmy.ml/post/37674526
from herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Oct 16:15
https://lemmy.ml/post/37674526
threaded - newest
If I recall, the US vehemently disagreed with the right of the British to enforce their laws here. Quite successfully, I might add.
Yeah. The truce with the native American’s was not favoured and banning slavery wasn’t acceptable…
One can have segregation and cheap colored abused labor without slavery, like most of the British empire after it went out of fashion. And one can rob, abuse and genocide natives with a formal truce in place.
Those pesky colonials just didn’t understand nuance.
It’s not just the British, it’s all “core western” nations honestly. USA most of all, it is of course funny that a British regulator tries to do that with an American company, that doesn’t happen often.
They demand fulfillment of their laws regardless of jurisdiction when the other side is weaker, and ignore laws of others even if firmly inside those others’ jurisdiction. And that’s so normalized that nobody even thinks about it except for such funny moments.
There are honestly worse things.
All of Mediterranean border and migration matters are resolved in this way, there are “coast guard” military organizations on the African shores with their own small concentration camps for those attempting to illegally migrate to Europe (not nice, of course, but doesn’t warrant such conditions) which in reality are funded by Italian and French governments and really report to them and act in their interest. I think I’ve read a few articles describing those.
It’s not been so long since France enforced its laws on much of the African continent. Due to malicious and incompetent jerks in its top, it has lost much of that. And I hope it’ll lose everything colonial, French Guyana included.
I’ve read just yesterday about British troops and Kenya in the context of a murder, which was pretty known in that regiment, with all the circumstance, and the perpetrator is a vet living in UK just fine with family and all, and more than 10 years after the British have formally started some kind of investigation, and it will apparently go on for a couple more decades. It’s literal mockery of the victim’s family, and it’s normal for Europeans in such cases.
Hell, even western policy on Armenia is not a result of some rules, it’s a result of one European politician with connections having their ass torn by bandits in Armenia in 2012. They are taking revenge for that. They think thousands of honorable decent men dead are worth less than one criminal’s torn ass. That a whole nation with its history is worth less than that. That they have right to think and act like that.
If you want Europeans (and Americans, and Australians, and Canadians, and so on) to learn honor, you need to have that whole imperial bunch thoroughly defeated by Chinese, or by India, or by them all together, or whatever.
Otherwise it’s simply unnatural for humans to know their borders. While the empire (in the British and French, not in the Roman, nor in Chinese, nor in Japanese, nor in Russian, nor even in Spanish meaning) is still alive, it will morally decay further and further.
And you know what’s the funniest? Growing up in Russia I thought I’m smarter than people around me for thinking that the general sense of what I just wrote is all propaganda. LOL. Soviet and Russian propaganda softened that reality, if anything, they had and have to somehow justify dealing with those nations. Modern Russian propaganda didn’t stop that too, they are just adding some delusions on the side.
USians are surprised that they must follow the foreign law if they do business (generate income) outside of the USA.
And the guy writing this blog is a fucking utter idiot.
Im going to take a charitable read on this and just assume that you’re misunderstanding or uninformed of the context at the core of this, because nothing of what you said is really applicable.
Read again than.
The fucking US idiot writing this blog is surprised that 4chan must follow UK law while having customers/users in the UK.
Which part is not applicable?
The part where they have any infrastructure, operations, revenue, or presence at all in the UK. They don’t, so the UK doesn’t have jurisdiction. This isn’t like the Apple stuff, where physical Apple products are being sold at retail in the EU/UK. UK residents are intentionally navigating to a website outside UK jurisdiction. If a UK resident goes to Mallorca on holiday, Spanish laws, not UK laws, apply because they’re in fucking Spain.
Also you should probably click that About page on the linked blog dude. Unless some American just randomly wound up at UCL in 1988 then graduated, stayed in the UK, and got a job at UCW Aberystwyth, you might want to rethink the random bullshit you’re spouting off as fact lol. By all means keep going off about how British ppl are “USians” and “US idiots” though.
Do you understand how the Internet works? You don’t have to have an infrastructure in a country to be present there.
USians need to get used to following the law. Shocking, I know.
Yeah, I don’t think you really understand how the internet works. Their presence is in the country where their servers are. People from the UK essentially go to another country to visit 4chan. If the UK doesn’t like that the onus should be on them to block that access, but that is also a stupid idea thanks to VPNs.
Their income is derived from the UK users. They can either block the UK traffic (which they don’t want as it would mean less money) or engage with the regulator regarding risk of illegal content they have been fined for:
Does the UK think they have jurisdiction over my server just because some twat from the UK visits my site? If so, there’s a reason why we fought a war nearly 250 years ago that said that a stupid fucking idea. Colonialism is a dead ideology
Yes. You are providing services to the UK users and deriving income from these services.
Get used to it. Apple get fined by the EU multiple times, Microsoft and Google also, from memory, lost some cases in the EU despite lack of physical presence.
Apple also sells a physical product in the UK. Microsoft and Apple both sell a virtual service/product in the UK. 4chan only gets revenue from you looking at posters and clicking those posters on their website.
UK can get fucking bent. Come and take it.
I assure you this is what will happen. If 4chan won’t pay the fine, they will be blocked in the UK by the Internet service providers (as this is the next step in the process). They will then see that non compliance with Ofcom decision is significantly more expensive than compliance.
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How are they going to collect? Extradite to pay a fine? No theyre just going to block it and be done. The UK will never see one penny from 4chan imo, no mayter how much they beg
This is the only real solution, and it’s a inconvenient one at best to surfers thanks to solutions like VPN.
Can’t stop the signal
It’s not ‘inconvenience at best’. The vast majority of people won’t use a VPN, so it will be a loss of revenue. Even if you are willing to pay for a VPN (or daft enough to use a free one), it’s an inconvenience as using a VPN can have side effects, such as other things getting blocked unexpectedly, or cause websites to redirect you to the local version in the country of your VPN server.
C’mon, it’s 4chan we’re talking about here. The gambit runs from “yes, that daft” to “good luck, I’m behind 7 proxies”.
You’re deluded if you think the UK is going to get a cent from 4chan. The most they can do is direc their ISPs to block 4chan IPs but that wont stop people from tunneling to the site. Thats all they have the legal jurisdiction to do like it or not
4chan will probably end up paying the fine and engaging immediately when it is blocked in the UK as it will result in their top line getting hit. There is also an option of seizing the assets belonging to the company (not necessarily just in the the UK although probably not in the USA). You are deluded if you think otherwise.
It will end up the same as tech giants fines. They will shout, moan and pay.
I especially like this hysterical statement:
😂😂😂
Why would 4chan pay the fine? Its not like 4chan will take all that much of a hit because people can tunnel out and still participate in however 4chan monetizes if they really wanted to. Also lmao seize assets. 4chan has no assets in the UK to seize afaik.
How much money do you think 4chan gets from the UK? I promise it’s not much.
Are you seriously trying to say that if you have a website, no matter where it’s hosted and what you are hosting, you are subject to the laws of EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY that has internet access?
Here’s a text picture of Muhammad lying down: O<–<
Are the admins of lemmy.world now subject to being put to death in Somalia? Under Somali law, that is blasphemy and punishable by death.
If you have users and derive income from a country, you are operating in this country. This is not a difficult concept as tech giants found out after EU fined multiple of them.
Admittedly you’re halfway decent as a troll. Got a few people.
I feel like I am missing something reading your comments, but it seems pretty clear to me that they do do business in the UK. They have users in the UK, to which they are providing a service (the 4chan message boards) in exchange for eyes on adverts placed on the page (from which 4chan makes money).
Just because this law is really stupid, and that 4chan does not have servers in the UK doesn’t really matter. UK laws can still be enforced for individuals in the UK (which is expressly what is stated in the message from ofcom). Ofcom is not demanding that age verification is implemented for all users world wide, but for UK users. 4Chan can decide to not comply (which I think is good), but then it is not surprising that if you keep doing business in the UK (not blocking UK users/IPs) that fines (which 4chan will just ignore as they are not UK based) and possible bans on your service in the UK follow.
So as I understand it from conversations surrounding the USB-C stuff and other things the EU was trying to enforce on US headquartered companies, “doing business in” means the company has a registered subsidiary in that region, they have local payment processors, etc. So Meta does business in the EU or UK because they sell advertising space to businesses in those regions that target users in those regions, and the ad fees are paid to that local subsidiary through local payment processors.
I think we’re on the same page. Ofcom can’t force 4chan to do anything, because they don’t have jurisdiction over 4chan. They can’t force 4chan to implement age verification, or to implement geoblocks. They can issue fines if they feel like it, but they’re uncollectible.
So ultimately that’s what’s so ridiculous and goofy and annoying about all this shit. Ofcom is acting like foreign companies with no business operations in the UK are subject to its decisions. They are not. Ofcom should have never tried regulating entities it has no authority over, it just makes them look silly and naive.
The UK has every right to restrict their own residents access to things that are illegal internally. Just like how they have customs controls at their physical borders to prevent illegal physical items from being imported, they should have just blocked 4chan off the rip instead of trying to fine them.
Yeah, reading this I think we are indeed on the same page.
It’s an extremely shitty and bad faith law, sorry for being the devil’s advocate.
It is not a great piece of legislation but the statements from 4chan are hysterical 😂
You are extremely wrong and will inevitably have your face rubbed in that fact when the UK fails to do anything to/about 4chan
It is quite simple really - 4chan will either pay and comply or be blocked in the UK, lose all the revenue from UK traffic and be constantly on guard where their financial assets are as these will be seized if handled by UK bank.
4chan will pay nothing, the UK has no power to seize any assets 4chan has, any revenue they lose will be negligible and temporary
You USians are funny, you really believe you are exceptional and your shitty companies are above the law.
EU and EU countries proved you wrong multiple times when they fined your big tech. This time it will be no different.
Lol @ “you think you’re exceptional” from a country literally in the middle of trying to enforce their laws on others, delusional
No, sweetie. USians are shocked to find out laws apply to them. Difficult concept, I know.
UK laws matter internationally exactly as much as the UK does, which is to say nowhere near enough for this lol
You REALLY don’t know what you are talking about, do you?
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So are you saying the UK government doesn’t have the power to block 4chan in the UK?
Interesting.
How much money do you think UK users are worth to 4chan? And how much do you think the free international publicity for telling the UK government to fuck off might be worth? I would be surprised if they cave to this nonsense.
Probably not a lot.
And for the same reason I cant imagine the government would have any problems or issues blocking them altogether. Its not like there’d be an outpouring of support, I imagine you could ask any 10 people on the street if any of them know what 4chan is and you’d draw a blank. Maybe 1 in 20 will know its for dank memes.
<img alt="STOP! This person is seeking attention! Please do not reply and move on with your day." src="https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/00ab1a78-5412-47d0-a86d-12524fa9abce.jpeg">
Found a USian.