> I've also gone back to Ofcom explicitly telling them the UK was now geoblocked (twice now) and I received a response that this was insufficient.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1rk690v/i_ru...
Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
Oh well, the uncensored web from my NL VPN still looks the same.
If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards).
If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported.
Just, no british retailer would be allowed to carry it without getting a fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_interventio...
Ofcom has a bad handle on web requests. Clients connect out. 4chan et al aren't pushing their services in anyone in the UK.
Therefore they're actually transacting that business on UK/EU soil.
Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?
I wonder if the UK/EU will reverse uno the US's stance and start extraditions on US CEOs.
> Current law allows for restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace, sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...
It's a wonder why AliExpress flies under the radar. I assume it's impossible to keep up with it all.
The UK's comically over-engineered electrics are no match for some of these plug-in-and-die sketchy USB chargers from the Far East.
DiodesGoneWild on YouTube does teardowns of many of these incredibly poorly constructed deathtraps.
In hindsight it is dumb to buy random pills and take em.
For Tiananmen Square substitute Rape Gangs.
Sometimes it self resolves - as you contributed here, yes, countries limit and interfere and fine other countries businesses, all the time!
I don’t know what yours means though. What electrics are made in the UK? How are they over engineered?
>The latest image is not the first picture of a hamster lawyers for 4chan have sent in reply to Ofcom
amazing. same energy as the pirate bay telling dreamworks to sodomize themselves. i cant help but laugh at the absurdness of it.
"In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment."[0]
>>>
"Companies – wherever they're based – are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different," she said.
"The UK is setting new standards for online safety. Age checks and risk assessments are cornerstones of our laws, and we'll take robust enforcement action against firms that fall short."
<<<
Quite frankly she seems completely out of touch with her own argument. The UK can certainly legislate away tobacco sales, for instance; they can't go after tobacco producers in a foreign state. 4Chan operates in the US and is a US company. They have no jurisdiction over it, even if their citizenry can access it; it's on them to block that access if they don't like it. Unless they're also implying that the US government should be allowed to go after UK companies that don't follow it's free speech regulations because American citizens can access them.
Precedent in the US is that courts do in fact have jurisdiction over a foreign website's owner if the owner "purposefully availed itself of the U.S. forum or purposefully directed its activities toward it", a test which is less demanding than it sounds. [1]
And US has taken advantage of this to go after foreign websites such as Megaupload, BTC-e, Liberty Reserve, etc.
Therefore, if there were a US law requiring companies to follow free speech rules, it could potentially be enforced against foreign website owners. But no such law currently exists. The First Amendment itself only applies to the US government (and to companies working on behalf of the US government). There is also the SPEECH Act, which, among other provisions, creates a cause of action where if someone sues a US person in a foreign court over their speech, they can sue back in US court. But only for declaratory judgement, not damages or an injunction. The goal is mainly just to prevent US courts from enforcing judgements from the foreign court in such cases.
[1] https://tlblog.org/how-to-find-personal-jurisdiction-over-fo...
Not even China and North Korea whine about or send fake “fines” to offshore entities. They just block their sites and move on with life.
The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.
It is amazing that these guys don't see the irony of monkeying totaliterian states policies, in term of surveillance and censorship.
Tribalism is awful for societies. There’s a reason Russia put so much effort into amplifying it in the west.
But unlike physical imports, there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.
It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.
And the UK... each time it delivers there.
They are bound by UK law exactly as much as they are bound by Venutian or Mars law.
And honestly this is more than they really should even have to do. I think it does go above their obligation. They're doing Offcom a favor here, they don't even have to figure out how to block it themselves.
But they have no legal basis to fine 4chan.
CCP "Great Firewall" style.
The reality is this will seriously chill speech broadly across the country regardless of either of those outcomes, and the technical costs of enforcement will be steep.
I mean there are parties that say they like free speech, but it never extends to the sort of speech they disagree with, or by people of the wrong colour/religion/gender etc.
VPN take up in the UK is around 20-25%
Mother Britain will be happy to make an example out of them if Uncle Sam doesn't intervene.
One I remember was a site hosting streams of the 2022 football world cup. Or a number of Iranian-affiliated news sites just last year. Or offshore gambling websites in 2021.
People going "Those Crazy Brits! Thank God That'll Never Happen Here!" seem pretty ill-informed.
They also force ISPs to block IPs [0].
I feel trying to say that's not "blocking websites" is playing games with words, and the results are functionally the same to the "average" user.
The fact that the US effectively claim juristiction over the root DNS system is a more a geopolitical power thing rather than a legal restriction.
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-orders-every-isp-in-the-un...
The US by and large doesn't censor websites even if the content is illegal in the US. They'll get a warrant and seize servers or domains if it's in the country, or maybe poke international law enforcement for cooperation, but it doesn't really extend beyond that.
It's fucking stupid that an American site that is afforded free speech protection in its own country has to deal with the UK acting like a tyrant.
So the UK plans to fine Parisian bars that serve alcohol to British under-18s in France on holiday?
It’s like fining Parisian bars to hand over alcohol to couriers without checking to whom couriers will deliver it.
Couriers = all involved network providers.
If someone mails $ProhibitedItem at a USPS to the UK, then it's the job of local UK police and/or customs to reject the parcel if it is prohibited. It's the UK's problem, de facto if not de jure, because the sender is out of reach.
If someone with a UK subsidiary and local processing center mails $ProhibitedItem to their center and delivers it to someone in the UK, then that's more than the UK's problem.
I don't think UK law governs foreign companies' overseas operations based on the nationality of the customer though, no.
Laws apply to actions in the country, they’re not based on citizenship.
If you go to Amsterdam and sleep with a hooker, you didn’t break a law by doing that: despite prostitution (specifically purchasing sex) being illegal in many western countries.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Prostitution is primarily conducted by women, and this is a way for them to still seek protection and healthcare while still technically criminalising the practice.
Gab refused to pay the fine, and it was over.
> The enforcement notice itself highlights the structural tension. Despite acknowledging Gab’s US address, the German government asserts authority to pursue collection, including formal enforcement proceedings, without identifying any German subsidiary or office.
> The payment instructions route funds directly to the German federal treasury, showing that the action is punitive rather than remedial.
> Germany’s approach also reveals the paper trail behind modern censorship enforcement. The fine stems not from a specific post or statement, but from alleged failure to comply with aspects of NetzDG. That procedural hook enables broader regulatory reach, transforming administrative requirements into a mechanism for speech governance.
https://reclaimthenet.org/gab-refuses-to-pay-germanys-fine-c...
There is a famous quote regarding this nature of British parliamentary sovereignty that is taught to every law student in the UK: "If Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence" - Ivor Jennings.
The UK isn't going to get a cent from that but the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future.
Doing this a lot as a country is how you achieve pariah status and losing a bunch of trade, though.
Not at all. But if they do enter, they might find difficulty leaving.
If I buy something illegal off of AliExpress, the US government won't and can't do squat to the seller. If they decide to enforce the law, they'll go after me.
Sure they can. It’s unlikely they can do anything about it though.
OFCOM&co is about overseas data going to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
I used to go on a curated version of 4Chan via Telegram. Yes there is a lot of racism (although it flies in every direction, between every ethnicity you could imagine) but there is also (due to the anonymous nature) some genuinely interesting discussions. I remember one thread about aircraft carriers being of no use being debated by US and UK submarine officers.
There are also some genuinely funny bits. There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university. His nickname was Dormogenes.
To mock and ridicule, yes. to speak your mind, sure, But first and foremost to discuss between true equals, because you can only be judged by what you write, because the value you are bringing to the discussion comes from your words and not from your reputation as the real-world human you are.
Being free to discuss controversial topics without having repercussion to your job or family (which is why doxxing was so frowned upon back then)
Being free to do some stupid childish fun, just for laughs.
Something we still had when it was just forums, even though we did have accounts they did not represent our whole persona, and we could be different people on different platform.
Something that was almost lost for good when normies invaded the internet due to social networks. It's not completely lost yet, and we must fight to keep it.
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
4chan has produced some hilarious/interesting stuff, and they have also driven people to suicide. i suppose it is up to everyone individually to make the value judgement there.
If anything, the person you were replying to was intentionally describing how 4chan is less dissimilar to humanity in general than its typical portrayal, so responding with a dismissal that that makes them just the same as everyone else is really just affirming their point.
https://www.scribd.com/document/117922444/the-pirate-bay-res...
I'm pretty sure in one they responded saying their lawyer was alseep in a ditch and would reply when he woke up lol
I realize there’s a carve out in the legislation for search engines but if the goal is to stop little Timmy finding pictures of an X being Yd up the Z then it is a resolute failure.
The only thing that works with children is transparency and accountability, be that the school firewall or a ban on screen use in secret.
”screens where I can see ‘em!”
It already sounds like Ofcom is likely to lose lawsuits about this, as they do not have jurisdiction in the U.S., where 4chan is hosted.
How would Ofcom even have a lawsuit to lose? Are they going to file it in the US? Of course not, USA courts will tell them to pound sand.
They'll just advise the UK government to block 4chan nationwide. Which is really what they want to do anyway.
assumedly the rate of consumption hasn't dramatically changed, so the OSA's immediate result has been either the decentralisation of porn providers (towards those small enough to dodge the law for now and be less exacting) or the mass adoption of proxies; I assume the former is the path of least resistance
this is notably the opposite of the feared outcome (which I suspect may be closer to the long-term effect) that the bar to meet the requirements would be so high (possibly involving hiring a lawyer) that smaller social/porn sites get regulated out of existence (see ie. https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1/uk_users_lobsters_needs_your_help...)
[1] I'm not going to quote studies, but plenty exist. I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults, let alone children with developing minds.
Someone at school has parents who aren't watching their children and allowing them unrestricted Internet access? This is where the bounty-hunter private-right-of-action morality-police laws that seem to be gaining traction can be put to some actual good use instead of, for example, hunting down trans people in Kansas. If someone's child is showing other children inappropriate material because their parents are negligent, the other parents should be able to take those parents to court and recover damages if they can collect evidence. Once parents are fined for letting their children roam with an unrestricted Internet connection it'll stop pretty quick.
> they need help from the wider society they live in.
Help that is not material support (e.g. paying hospital bills, babysitting, etc.) is usually interference.
> I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults
Agreed, but I can handle myself on the internet (my parents did their job and I am also not a dog and know the difference between a screen and a real object), and shouldn't be tracked with verification nonsense because someone else can't.
That means making it possible for parents to actively block bad websites, and making that hard to circumvent.
We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door, and there's plenty of theoretical dangers there too. Let the parents educate their children.
Despite the enormously heinous stuff I've seen on that site, it has made me a better writer, developed my critical thinking skills, and given me a perspective on the world and its people that wouldn't have existed without.
It also introduced me to many different things and developed my taste beyond measure.
The massive downside, that I suspect the grandparent still wrestles with, is integrating all of depravity of humankind into a coherent world view without falling into cognitive dissonance between the idealized and constructed world with an onslaught of information on the actual reality of it.
It's sort of like looking into the Epstein files and having to decide one's reaction to them:
- crushed by despair at the state of things leading to nihilism and depression
- deciding to ignore it all, and continuing to go on about one's life without integrating it
- acceptance, normalization, and corruption
- a secret fourth option that reaffirms you, using that news as fuel for whatever ends in the hope you can improve the world even if just a little bit, despite how ugly it is
And so on.
We don't sell bottles containing alcohol and then expect to filter the alcohol out if the child wants to drink from it. We have two different bottles: alcoholic bottles and non-alcoholic bottles. If you are a child, you cannot purchase the former.
Stop selling unrestricted computing devices to children. Require a person to be 18+ to purchase an unrestricted internet device. Make it clear that unrestricted internet access, like alcohol and nicotine (and the list goes on) is harmful to children. That resolves 90% of the problem.
And lets be fair, the problem isn't the children. Children want what all their peers have. The problem isn't their peers. The problem is the parents. Give the spineless parents a simpler way to say no to their children, and the overall problem goes away.
Ofcom has today fined 4chan £450k for not having age checks in place
> Data shows that nearly 80% of the top 100 pornography sites in the UK now have age checks in place. This means that on average, every day, over 7 million visitors from the UK are accessing pornography services that have deployed age assurance.
I would have expected that most people would switch to other pornography sites that don't have age checks rather than doing an age check. But apparently that isn't the case. (Or their data is misleading. People in the UK who are using VPNs presumably can't be easily identified as British.)
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to include links as a new user but Pornbiz posted an article showing AV lost them 90% of traffic. There's a BBC article where researchers found AV compliant sites were decimated on their top traffic ranking on Similarweb. And I working in the industry saw our traffic drop by 99.9% during our AV test.
Users don't use VPN, they certainly don't upload ID... they just go to noncompliant sites. Don't believe UK government's gaslighting.
The onus is on the parent to the be parent. Not the tech industry, and especially not the government.
At least we seem to agree the solution lies with better tools for parents.
"proper parental control software" doesn't exist for a lot of the platforms.
> or requiring Internet Service Providers to block a site in the UK.
Ah, that's what they want.
The same goes for the freedom of speech. Europeans should make it legal guarantee instead of trying to build walls around speech. So when X or 4Chan etc deletes a post, it may lead to freedom of speech fines if deletion wasn't justified. Tha same for the algorithm, if a post that doesn't break the rules is discriminated by the algorithm, a hefty fine should apply.
Suddenly we will have companies that keep their business clean and no claim for moral high ground.
For them there're far worse things than giving up some freedoms.
One can agree or disagree with this but Europe's actions are far more understandable if you see where they're coming from.
From what it's worth, the younger generation doesn't seem to see this the same way so whatever censure Europe introduces today will most likely be temporary.