4chan fined $26K for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act
(arstechnica.com)
from schizoidman@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 03:08
https://lemmy.zip/post/50937278
from schizoidman@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 03:08
https://lemmy.zip/post/50937278
If 4chan continues to ignore Ofcom, the forum could be blocked in the UK. And 4chan could face even bigger fines totaling about $23 million or 10 percent of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. 4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
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The UK should just block sites that don’t comply. They have no business trying to fine US websites.
Then 4chan shouldn’t do business in the UK by selling 4chan passes there.
4chan should just block UK IPs. They already ban VPN IPs from posting, so obviously they have some infrastructure there to support that.
Why should that be their problem?
Because they’re doing business in that region. You don’t just get to go to another country and do business as you please there.
Maybe UK payments processors should bar purchases of 4chan passes then.
They will definitely do that soon if 4chan doesn’t respond to the Ofcom’s demands, at least in the UK.
Isn't it people in the UK that go to a US company and do business there?
Not with the internet. 4chan uses a payment processor that allows UK residents to pay with UK currency.
"Allows" - do they do anything specifically for the UK?
They allow UK residents to use a credit or debit card to pay for passes.
"allow"
Seems to me as if the people in the UK sign up with an american company.
4chan has not disabled accepting payments from UK residents through their Coinbase portal. Therefore they are allowing UK residents to pay them.
4chan is not geo blocking UK visitors in their Cloudflare portal, so they are allowing UK residents to visit their site.
4chan wants all the benefits of UK business without obeying their laws.
4chan isn't in the UK and has no reason to figure out what laws apply there.
When you made this post, did you first check which countries your post ended up in?
4chan agreed to the terms of service agreement here:
www.coinbase.com/legal/…/united_states
That means they agree their business can be affected by international regulations.
No, that's not what it says.
I know, its hard to believe your eyes, but it does say they can be adversely affected by international legislation and regulations if they want to do business there.
They could always opt to use a US-based payment processor that doesn’t deal with international payments.
It specifically talks about the value of crypto currency, which can be affected by any number of external events. I'm going to assume you're simply trolling now.
Not you again… genuinely convinced this user is a bot. He made this same argument a month ago on a now deleted post almost verbatim. I disputed his claims with evidence and they continuously moved the goalpost through the entire argument. either braindead or just software please ignore.
I didn’t delete it lol. And its happened just as I said.
Then explain why you disagree instead of coming at them with ad-hominem.
Not who you replied to, but: there is no legal, ethical, or moral, requirement for a business of one country to comply with the laws of another. If there was, all business would be beholden to the most overbearing government on any one subject. And just to specifically state it before it’s brought up, being tied into the international banking system doesn’t change that; if a state doesn’t want its citizenry doing business with a particular entity, it’s on them to stop it on their side or come to an agreement with the other’s government. Which does happen, especially with the conglomerate hegemony of components of the international banking system, but naturally that means that the only time any entity of a state is forced to comply with the laws of another is when their home-state demands it, which ultimately isn’t the laws of the other.
Their payment processor is operating in the UK though. 4chan isn’t refusing money from UK residents. It is accepting their payments.
4Chan doesn’t have their own personal payment processor that they’re responsible for. They’re tied into processors like stripe and accept all payments that make it to them on the US side. So long as it is legal, which is typically the only way that a payment actually goes through as processors refuse the obviously illegal cases like encompassing embargoes. If the UK doesn’t want payments going to 4chan through a processor that operates in their country, it’s on them to stop the payment processor on their end.
The UK knows this, the fines are just one step towards them petitioning processors.
Imagine for a moment that 4chan is a business that sells alcoholic beverages in the US. Now imagine the UK has instituted prohibition and banned the consumption of alcohol.
now, some enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to buy, smuggle, and then sell those beverages inside the UK.
Clearly, the government has intended to ban the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of it.
Now the UK government is trying to shackle hefty fines against an American company for having the “audacity” of selling a product to an individual within the confines of the US.
again, the UK banned the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of. 4Chan isn’t forcing UK citizens to drink the alcohol. They are simply selling the product, within their country of origin, to individuals who want to purchase it.
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly “protected”?
Okkkkkay so I’ll play your hypothetical game.
So in your scenario here, some enterprising individuals start off by smuggling alcohol into the UK. By definition according to Merriam-Webster, smuggling is: “to import or export secretly contrary to the law and especially without paying duties imposed by law”.
According to UK laws, this has the following consequences:
Lets move to the selling of the illegally imported alcohol:
For the sake of your argument, we’ll remove the law that says its illegal to sell alcohol to children, I guess? Regardless, it might be some enterprising individuals that are selling it, but they are selling the alcohol in the UK. In UK currency, To UK residents. In the UK. We are getting into possibly exchanging UK currency for US currency, which is a whole new can of worms, but we can save that for later.
Now to your question:
Easy answer is yes. They should be fined for smuggling alcohol into the UK, which is what the current law calls for.
Now hypothetical for you.
Imagine for a moment that the UK has banned looking at alcohol if you are under 18. Doesn’t matter if you look at alcohol if you are over the age of 18, but you just can’t legally look at alcohol if you are under 18.
Now someone comes along named 4chan and builds a giant building in the UK that has a ton of alcohol inside of it. There isn’t anything outside of the building. Its only inside where the alcohol is. They don’t have protections in place that prevent anyone under 18 from going inside the building. An
gonna be honest, I didn’t read anything past this part.
I didn’t read any of it because you clearly didn’t read what I said.
here’s the part you conveniently forgot and it literally changes the entire argument.
next time you want to argue your point don’t employ the use of bad faith tactics and try to argue your point without manufacturing flaws.
LOL okay but you said:
I went ahead and edited it for you so it says enterprising individuals… which you end up asking about 4chan anyways
still not reading it. you attempted to argue under false pretenses and I’m not wasting my time on something you probably used AI to generate.
I didn’t use AI at all.
Learn to read.
Read what, exactly?
You clearly know how to blockquote: use it correctly.
Used it correctly per Mozilla’s blockquote documentation, as I was quoting another source.
Nope: the horizontal scroll boxes (marked up as code blocks) don’t contain code & no one should have to horizontally scroll long prose. Those code blocks should be blockquotes.
The markdown documentation is built right into the lemmy editor (as the help icon).
Edited it. Hows that?
Looks like it doesn’t get rendered correctly on my end
The rest of the help explains headings, paragraphs, line breaks (if you want those to render). Otherwise, it’s better.
Sweet. Thanks!
Wouldn’t it be more akin to those individuals putting the alcohol into 4chan’s trucks that are taking other stuff to the UK? (and worse with 4chan’s knowledge)
In that case do you think it’s unreasonable that the uk government imposes penalties for 4chan refusing to remove the alcohol that they know is there from the trucks.
And then if 4chan then refuses to pay said penalties start to not allow them to bring any trucks into the uk at all?
the “trucks” in your example are the users computers/phones.
the highways are the Internet, which is owned and maintained by the UK government after their “gate”.
the alcohol is the content.
4chans trucks deliver to the UKs “gate” and the UK user does the rest from there on the UK highways.
if the UK doesn’t want the alcohol in their country, they need to stop their citizens from purchasing it and block it from entering their country at their “gate”.
this is what any reasonable country would do. they (UK) already do it for actual physical products like potassium bromate, azodicarbonamide, and certain artificial food dyes like Yellow 5 and Yellow 6.
Are they going to sue or fine the companies that manufacture those products? no. They’re going to ban the products that use them and then go after the individuals that smuggle them in.
No it’s the packets being sent from the 4chan server.
Stopping every single packet (or in the real world truck) to check it isn’t feasible, do that and you get 20 mile queues up the m20 (and the digital version of that). Plus any government trying to so it like that would get accused of tax payers money due to the insane amount of resources that would be needed.
Placing the responsibility on the company makes sense, so does issuing penalties for non compliance. The company that has a fine issued against them can of course ignore it if they’re set up outside the country that issues the fine. But they should then expect the country issuing the fine to escalate. If they don’t pay and don’t comply they can expect to have any assets in the uk seized and eventually get blocked from operating entirely. And probably have any executives arrested of they enter the country. Ofcom can’t just jump to getting a court order though because they need to be fair and give 4chan a chance to comply if they want to.
The problem with the online safety act is that it exists at all, and that they expect people to use third party authentication services many of which are operating from countries with poor data protection regulations. That said, as iit does exist the logic of saying that companies are the ones responsible for what people access from their servers does make sense.
Noooo the britbong threads
It’s a process. They need to issue the fine first to give them a chance to pay rather than jumping to blocking it. If they continue to refuse to pay that’s where it’ll go.
People should fight for their rights and free speech and make pressure on the gouvernement. Blocking is isolationism.
Extort, you mean. The law threatens them with abduction and being held in captivity.
What? No it doesn’t, not as long as the people responsible don’t step foot in the UK.
If they do - yes they’ll be arrested for having broken UK law.
I guess thats not a threat? Not sure what else youd classify that as. “If you step on our turf you’re going to be jailed” is just peaceful language haha
You have to obey the law of whatever country you are currently occupying, even if the rule is bad shit crazy, actually especially if the rule is bat shit crazy. There are plenty of people who have done nothing wrong who would be arrested if they step foot in China, but that doesn’t really bother anyone because they don’t step foot in China.
Also it would be interesting to see what they would even be charged with, since offcom don’t really have authority to issue arrest warrants. Ofcom barely have the authority to enforce UK law in the UK. Otherwise the likes of GB news wouldn’t exist.
They’re not “occupying” or even operating here. all the servers have been in Texas since 2008. The British gov are attempting to legislate feature implementations for companies that aren’t operating in britain. it’s ridiculous.
Apparently they are operating in the UK though apparently they are selling some kind of pro service, so they are operating in the UK. To be clear it’s a stupid law, but it is the law.
.
It’s an interesting idea that countries could only fine websites that operate in said country. Could get away with a lot by finding a permissive country to do what would otherwise be illegal and worth of fines.
“Selling user’s private information illegally? Buddy, Tuvalo don’t care”
That's ... how it works.
Nope lol, countries definitely try to fine websites not operated in the same country. Sometimes they’re just not succesful
Not just "sometimes". The thing you're looking for is "jurisdiction". A country doesn't have jurisdiction in another.
The comment I replied to talked about trying to fine websites based outside the respective country. Countries obviously still try that
The uk is irrelevant anyways. They will not be missed when they strengthen the Great Firewall rules
people exist here though :(
Then get your asses in order. If you have doubts, the French across ye pond taught pretty well how to use guillotines to achieve it. Didn’t you guys also have a mask guy do the same?
4chan’s inevitable response.
I have never seen this. It is on my list now
Gone
You don’t want to be locked in a small cell with 4chan for two years.
“I’m not stuck here with you. You’re stuck here with me!”
Not again.
And they think 4chan ever complied with anything. How adorable!
They do though, 4chan complies with US laws and regulations. They regularly hand over logs to various US agencies.
The thing is, an indeterminable amount of users (and admins!) are feds, so despite giving the appearance of lawlessness, it’s actually fully compliant!
They’ll never control the hacker known as 4chan
I think 4chan is a pretty cool guy. Eh gets fined by the UK and doesn’t afraid of anything.
Imagine running a website for 20 years, changing absolutely nothing, and one day you’re being targeted because someone else on the other side of the planet changed something at their end.
Tell them to piss off.
They’ll come after your phpbb instance next.
“Block us then. We’re not paying your fines and you’ll never arrest us as we’ll never step foot in your country. Get fucked.” That’s about the response I’d have I think… attached with a photo of tubgirl or something for the classic lawls.
Ok I wish I did not search for tubgirl now
i will learn from your mistake
Million is spelled with a M
If you’re ok with this then imagine your local lemmy instance getting fined by China/Qatar/Thailand/etc for posting something breaking their laws.
If they operate in China then it seems legit. If they don’t operate in China it’s a non issue.
This might be stupid, but the corollary of your statement is that a sovereign nation can’t impose laws on foreign business…
That what you want?
Unironically yes. Otherwise the internet as we know it is very much over, and what we have instead is a mesh of country-nets.
I mean, what is actually “doing business” when it comes a simple web page or a forum for example? Merely existing and being reachable.
Yeah, and a county could say “you can’t do business in our county anymore” and block them
A country can ban dildos, but they don’t get to tell a foreign factory they can’t make dildos. If an importer orders dildos anyways, that’s between the importer and customs. Which in this case the importer is the ISP
which, TBH, doesn’t seem so bad to me. as an european, i’m personally sick of all the sick (as in, unwell) culture from america swapping over via the internet and poisoning people’s minds.
i mean, all the culture war is literally instigated by american capitalists to disrupt society and to disrupt the people’s coherence, to make them weaker and therefore easier to exploit.
If it wasn’t for continuous exposure to american influence, europe would long have drastic left-wing political reforms, i guess.
Oh yes, because it’s not like Nigel Farage, Victor Orban and a bunch of other populists didn’t make use of US companies and advisors (and russian funds…) on how to best fracture societies to their end. Clearly nuking the internet would put an end to that, and all would be well.
Why would a local Lemmy instance ever pay a fine to China?
Same way ofcom expects anyone outside UK to pay up, I guess.
My server is in the corned of my bedroom. How the hell can I be operating in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Norway, or The UK if my bedroom is in none of those countries?
That’s kind of exactly my point? If China came to you and said you owe us fines, why would you voluntarily do so?
Yes. You can impose as much laws as you can enforce them. Don’t want your citizens to buy anything from me, stop shipments at your border. Want to stop payments, talk to your banks. Want to stop access to my servers, block them at your routers.
Why the fuck should I enforce your rules for you? You made them, you figure out how you will make them work.
you being the UK government, in this case.
You shouldn’t… As you said, how are they going to make you?
Flipside is EU trying to enforce GDPR and such
GDPR can only be enforced if the business wants to continue to do business in Europe. There are lots of non-European businesses that do not enforce GDPR rules but they can’t sell products or services in Europe.
But of course 4chan doesn’t sell any products or services anywhere, it’s not a business, so it’s a bit hard to see exactly how this could be enforced.
It’s selling 4chan passes, yeah it’s a thing unfortunately
Gross Domestic… Projekt Red?
…europa.eu/…/general-data-protection-regulation-g…
T’was a poorly-marked joke.
Fine the phone company for allowing calls they don’t like.
Fuck yes, fine the phone companies who allow these spoofed phone number scammers to reach me. (/s… Mostly)
Actually they should close that loophole.
More likely than dining then for calls I don’t want to get they they facilitate by selling my data. Linda of like the scale car warrantee mail you get because the DMV sold your data.
This is a case of stupid laws that still don’t understand the internet (35+ years in to wide use, mofos)
If an http GET request initiated from country A traverses routers and wires around the globe to grab some data from a server in country B, then we have to accept that the owners of the server are not “operating in country A” and in fact the user in country A is responsible for import.
If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.
All that is tongue in cheek to say they can fuck right off.
Great analogy.
Also why the fuck would you piss off 4chan with their years of stalking, ddosing, swatting, etc of successful campaigns against anything they felt wrongged or even just annoyed them.
Because these people have never even heard of it. The whole party is a bunch of absolute technophobes. You should see that online advertising it’s pathetic.
They were defanged many years ago by the new owners and raiding is banned.
Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts. But the politicians that were in power when all this was first been decided were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.
Then Labour got in and for some reason implemented the stupid law anyway despite having heard none of the consultations, and of course now it turns out that the consultations told them not to do it. Now I’m sure the industry experts would have been ignored anyway but Labour look really daft now.
They have basically accepted that this law is unworkable and is basically going to be ignored by everyone, but they still have to go through all of the pantomime of trying to enforce it. I’m sure eventually they’ll quietly kill it because the whole thing has been such an embarrassment for them.
Which is exactly what they have done with tariffs in the US.
Th US has taken it to step further. Somehow they’ve managed to convince a significant junk of the population that a tariff is not a tax, and that the tariff is paid by the importing country, even though that’s not how tariffs work. They don’t require reality to actually do anything, they just require the populace to be mind numbingly stupid. Fortunately, they are.
It’s pretty ironic, the United States was founded on the back of unfair taxation, and yet financial literacy is probably lower in the US than it is in any other country in the world.
I remind people as much as possible that it is essentially a federal sales tax.
I think it’s well established by now that this bunch of Labour politicians too are “arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself”.
That would amongst other things neatly explain why they went around and implemented the stupid law.
It also doesn’t help that they’re being advised by people who don’t understand the world anymore and who’s last real contribution was probably in the 1970s. The fact that they can’t even capitalise on the fact that Boris Johnson has been found guilty of misappropriation of government funds is just ridiculous and shows how incompetent they are as politicians.
You mean lobbyists?
What used to be called The Great Firewall of China. It used to be unthinkable for western countries.
You can’t blame this on old people. This is only happening now that the Boomers are on the way out. People who sent international letters or made international phone calls were aware that they were communicating with a different country with different laws. I think we are seeing this now, because now we have people who experience the internet as something happening on their own phone, at their location.
The boomers are not on their way out. We have the exact same politicians in power that we had 30 fucking years ago.
But thirty years ago I was half my height
They’re retiring or dying of old age soon, they think now’s the time to shit all over the floor and trash the place.
Retirement is when it’s about time to get into big politics. Most politicians on higher levels are 60+ y.o.
Well, death makes exceptions for no one, so
Tell that to the corpse of Diane Feinstein that they puppeted weekend at Bernie’s style for months after she died.
I’m barely exaggerating
UK cabinet is mainly GenXers. I didn’t count exactly, but Boomers still seem to outnumber Millennials. Definitely on the way out, though.
I wouldn’t mind the politicians from 30 years ago, who stayed away from this bullshit.
The UK didn’t ban leaded petrol until 1999 meaning most millenials will suffer from the boomer-loony disease as they were poisoned during their childhood.
Let’s also not forget that fuel for light aircraft still contains lead :/
They’re plum out of luck
Funnily enough the CIA (yes, the CIA) was largely involved in keeping the internet a free and open space for all, heck they even contributed encryption algorithms to keep data private and such …
The reason why the free internet existed for so long was because it was a big ideological project for the US. (the internet is the space of all ideas and as such represents the platonic/christian concept of heaven). It’s only now ending because it’s served its purpose. The people have exchanged ideas worldwide, and that only needs to happen twice, similarly to how you can only infect yourself with the same virus once (because the second infection does way less impact), you can only infect yourself with the same idea once. So, once the worldwide ideas are exchanged, the internet serves very little purpose anymore.
If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK. It’s not reasonable to make the argument that you should be able to do business with a country and opt out of its laws simply by running the physical servers abroad. We don’t tolerate it for wire fraud or CSAM, but nobody’s rushing out to defend the sovereign rights of child abusers and scammers.
I don’t agree with the Online Safety Act on its own terms, but this is a dud of an argument.
With wire fraud and csam, the activity is illegal in the host country as well as the target country, which is not the case here.
By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.
No. Every ad platform out there has the advertiser choose what region to advertise in. Nobody wants to pay to advertise in countries where they don’t sell their products. Likewise websites have the option not to serve countries they don’t want to comply with the laws of, and indeed many do this exact thing.
The whole argument being presented is being intentionally naive about both the technology and the law. Y’all are arguing based on how you WANT the world to be rather than how it is.
And as a website you don’t deal with any of that, you just implement an ad platform’s ad window and they serve whatever regional ads are relevant to your visitors. So yes, practically all websites with advertising would be operating in every country worldwide, by your logic.
Again you’re just factually wrong. The website operator has a wide degree of control over what can appear on their site in the admin panel. They even have the choice of which platform to go with if they don’t. And even if they didn’t, it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
To repeat, I’m not supporting the Online Safety Act, but this whole argument seems to rely on the fictional notion that innocent website operators don’t know where their data packets are being sent, which hasn’t been true since the 1990s.
Given that’s how the entire Internet works, it does stand on its own terms. The UK isn’t influential enough to force the entire Internet to follow suit. They can take it or leave it.
Blocking america as a whole would do the uk some good tbh
4chan makes that much money?!?
They do, at least a little. You can pay for a subscription to get rid of the captcha before posting.
At least a little?
According to this article they pull in 230 million a year. For a shitty forum that looks like it’s run on 1995 tech
That’s all of moolah for/from internet trolls. Though I imagine that those servers aren’t cheap either.
It doesn’t say that. The potential fine the higher of 23M or 10%. Not that 23M is 10%
I wonder if Ofcom’s true goal is banning 4chan from the UK and if this is a just required part of the legal process for a ban…
4chan is likely using this to take it to the courts.
hope they write their legal battle in green txt
> be me
> mfw
The defense rests.
courtlistener.com/…/4chan-community-support-llc-v…
Is it even possible for Ofcom to legally fine 4chan for these issues? How does a company in the UK fine a US company?
Bilateral agreements may exist.
It works the same way they can fine domestic businesses: Pay up or we’ll stop you from doing any more business in this country.
In the context of a website like 4chan that means pay the fine or get blocked by every UK based ISP.
I don’t think that would deter any of their user base.
Oh no! That one country out of all the other ones will be the biggest loss ever!
Anyway, about these things called VPNs.
I think this sentiment is common but misses some important things. First: the UK is a big market of internet users, so losing it is not insignificant. Second: most people will not bother with a VPN because it’s annoying or costs money. Third: from the UK’s perspective, banning non-compliant sites is a good thing.
Recognising all this is important, because it’s part of resisting such censorious laws.
The population of internet users is tiny compared to the total population of internet users in the Western world.
Nothing great or significant is lost.
It’s the 4th largest country of origin for 4chan from what I can find. It doesn’t sound like you’re actually responding to what I said is being missed. Guess you don’t want to.
I just dint think any of it matters. UK is a big market for Internet users… Yes, like any other developed country.
It is only the 4th largest country for 4chan… Which isn’t even in the top 3.
The UK not having access to 4chan is of no consequence, and the kinds of people that still hang out there would probably know their way around a VPN.
There is no further thing that’s worth addressing.
The argument 4chan uses is laughable. “Freedom of speech of every American?” Tere is no such protection in the US right now.
No one is watching the news? Trump is killing freedom of speech. Anyone dares to advocate equality is getting fired or estorcised. All rainbow, trans or minority rights signs are being eliminated. Our rainbow sidewalk in my city was repainted. Diversity programs are dismantled. Any minority names program is being renamed. Less black people are being hired in the white house than ever.
Even now som states require you to prove your identity before your can log into Internet.
American invention? American right? Lol.
I agree, but letting a foreign government dictate what you can and cannot say on your site is dangerous. If 4chan capitulates then countless other sites are on the chopping block.
.
It isn’t really an US company for say. It just conveniently claims itself an US company. The servers probably are not in the US
The global push for censorship is accelerating and not nearly enough people are woke to it.
British government fines an American company, based in America, for serving data from American servers that was compliant with American law.
This whole law is complete overreach. It’s like banning a book and then getting mad at the author when one of your citizens buys one on holiday and brings it back with them
Yeah, how come the EU gets to regulate American services with all their data privacy laws? The EU is a tool of the governments to assert control over us, the common people. Plain and simple
Ofcom, famously a part of EU since brexit
The UK hasn’t been part of the EU for a long ass time. Have you been living under a rock?
The UK had a Brexit just so they could leave the EU.
Ignoring that the UK isn’t part of the EU, the EUs privacy laws extend to all European citizens, and it has treaties with most of the world (including the US) allowing it to enforce those.
I think Iran should fine the UK just as much for allowing the Satanic verses to be sold since that novel are banned in Iran.
Any argument they give is the same argument why the 4chan shit is laughable.
You probably don’t want Iran to have jurisdiction over your dot-com.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran
Frankly, 4chan users or operators would probably have violated some of those, were they under jurisdiction of Iranian law.
I think that’s what @ArmchairAce1944 was getting at
Yeah, not disagreeing with him.
Salman Rushdie: First time?
Pretty sure 4chan is Japanese owned now so I’m confused. I guess they still operate out of the USA. Idk. Currently owned by Hiroyuki Nishimura, who also owns 2channel. He acquired 4chan from Christopher Poole 2015. Good Smile Company is a major investor but he’s still in charge.
Its probably a parent company situation.
Lots of corpo structures are just large parent companies that actually just own a bunch of smaller companies so that the parent company gets the profits while the smaller companies make the risky products and can be bankrupted at any minute.
The company I work for does that. We just bought a couple companies that were competitors in a risky but profitable market. The full idea is that if one company gets sued to oblivion, we let that company die, move all the employees and customers to the backup company, and call it a day.
Capitalism baby!
Neocons were never that bright.
I wanna see how a website would be sent to jail.
Clearly they’re after the notorious hacker known as 4chan
All 4 of them face charges.
If they live in China, good luck figuring iut which of the Chans there are these four.
I see you never downloaded a car before.
They could go after the owner. I believe he lives in Japan, all the UK has to do is send an extradition request to the Japanese government, bing bang boom all done.
Which they would laugh at. Even the Chinese government would laugh at such a request. It isn’t something that is considered universally a crime, like robbery and murder, but the type of shit they are asking for is so fucking unprecedented and unreasonable it’s stupid.
It would be like if the UK demanded that France immediately extradite all legal handgun owners in France (where handguns are legal) because it is a crime to possess one in Great Britain and therefore they are criminals. Makes no sense.
So then… Potential arrest and imprisonment for 4chan for no proven damage. Meanwhile, Trump can visit the King.
Potential arrest and imprisonment for failing to pay the fine, you mean? That would be a proven damage, wouldn’t it?
They have no way of making them pay.
This censorship shit is out of control.
Damn fucking straight. I hope it starts an privacy movement so big they realize that all the laws passed since 2000 against terrorism were abject failures and repeal all of them.
Canada is trying to pass major surveillance shit on par with the patriot act on steroids and effectively nullify the need for warrants, all in the name of ‘strong borders’ and anti terrorism even though it literally gives many US owned and operated companies full and complete access to digital information on Canadians, ironically weakening borders in every way.
And for what? What is the terrorism threat? Al-Qaeda was a always a joke, and the fact that 9/11 happened was far more due to a monumental failure of all intelligence services combined and not due to a lack of resources. Terrorist schemes have been thwarted in the past without the need for extensive surveillance… and most plots are still thwarted primarily by informants and insiders speaking to authorities. The whole 'we need to be super proactive ’ has yielded shit results.
Most of the stuff that they claim was 'prevented proactively ’ was literally entrapment. They found some mentally ill and/or lonely people who would have done nothing on their own, but ended up being goaded into stupid crap when undercover agents flirted with them, encouraged them, and even offered weapons and explosives for them to use, and if they agreed… well, that’s when they nabbed them. No terrorism would have occurred if agents didn’t do shit.
Have you ever wondered why so many people are highly distrustful of people talking about doing violent shit? Fed posting? Its because agents have such a long ass history of doing that that you cannot tell who is and who isn’t a Fed.
Will the notorious hacker known as 4chan finally get his comeuppance?
4chan’s actual legal response to this can be summarized as “We are incorporated in Delaware which has not been subject to UK law since 1783. See the Treaty of Paris”.
Should Ofcom be labelled as a terrorist organisation ?
Offcom has been drinking, came home in a blackout and committed domestic abuse of 4chan. Does Offcom even internet? Alternative plot twist, Offcom is trolling 4chan.
I wanna say that Offcom is doing a good job and trying to protect British people in good faith but I feel like they are being used as a cudgel by the British ruling class to advance an anachronistic agenda. Don’t forget, they fired their expert drugs advisor for telling them that MDMA is comparable to horse riding in terms of safety. They want certain things to be true, regardless of the scientific accuracy.
Non-British here. There’s a telecom company that called itself “OFFcom”?
It’s Ofcom, the Office of Communications. Not sure how they managed to get it wrong 4 times.
It’s ofcom but my phone desperately wants it to be Offcom for some reason
they don’t have that kind of money they can’t pay that shit are you nuts
Probably why they didn’t do it in the first place.
They barely pay for moderation. Who is going to pay for that survey? And also why would they? Obviously most of the people on that site are under 18. That’s when I used it.
What other demographic clicks the horny ads they run?
4chan can be the first website blocked by the great firewalls of British cooking. potatoes and boiled cocks. not bad if im honest