Comment by Analemma_
7 months ago
I’m guessing that Imgur happily accepted the ad revenue from UK users while it served them images. If you genuinely were “not providing services” to UK users, you wouldn’t do that.
I’m not happy with extraterritorial assertions over internet services either, but you can’t wish them away with sophistry about “we’re not providing services to them!” if you’re happy to take their money and serve them a page in exchange. That’s the definition of a business providing a service to a customer.
Do they run their own ad network, or do the ad networks take the money from advertisers and cut Imgur a check? Maybe instead of trying to enforce your standards on every little site on the internet, you should just focus on the people who actually have a direct point of contact with money coming from UK businesses. (Yes, the ad networks.)
It’s completely absurd to say that some hobbyist would have nexus in the UK because they run a Google Adwords campaign to get some occasional pocket change from their project. Pre-Internet, it would be like going after a US magazine because someone brought home a copy from the US. Websites are not global entities by default, somehow responsible for obeying laws across nearly 200 national jurisdictions and many more state/provincial/local jurisdictions, across different languages and legal customs. Completely absurd! Who do you think you are to demand such a thing?
On the other hand, I think it would be perfectly fine to say that UK domiciled ad networks cannot put their ads on sites that violate some arbitrary standard. (An anti-freedom law to be sure, but at least it’s consistent with common international conventions.) This puts the onus on the ad network, rather than the site owner, who may not know or care who is visiting or from which country.
The standard you are proposing here ultimately boils down to "you can do business in a country without being subject to its laws, as long as your commercial transactions with the customers in that country are laundered through a sufficiently convoluted network of international companies like payment processors and ad exchanges". I don't think it should be terribly surprising that states don't subscribe to this view of sovereignty and jurisdiction.
> I don't think it should be terribly surprising that states don't subscribe to this view of sovereignty and jurisdiction.
Well they will have to put up with it, as they have done over the past few decades. Or, alternatively, they can engage in aggressive China-style site blocking. Only the US has significant extraterritorial legal reach.
IMHO, this policy is a transparent effort to forcefully alter the content policy of US companies. It’s more about political influence than it is about “content safety” at home. (Unilateral site blocking, perhaps with an appeals process, would be a much more effective approach for this.) The UK will regret the consequences if they push too forcefully on this.
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The standard you’re proposing would allow Afghanistan to shut down Hacker News on the basis that it provided services to at least one Afghan and the content here violates sharia law.
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If Britain or Europe want a censored, state-controlled internet, they’re just going to have to block overseas traffic like Iran and China do. That is completely within their power.
> if you’re happy to take their money and serve them a page in exchange.
How about the fact Imgur just ceased service to millions of users from which they took no money?
> if you’re happy to take their money
The law doesn’t require that they take any money, and you’re merely guessing they are. Weak