This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.
I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
This quote from the court is amazing:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions (not even that, but third parties' understanding of those opinions). Kirk himself never proposed anything violent; the narrative was promoted based on wild misrepresentations to that effect.
But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.
While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.
While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
> there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't
In my comment I explained how countries, including the US, project their laws by imposing controls within their jurisdiction.
The weird part about this case is how they thought they could directly project their laws into another country in a way that overrides that country’s constitution, and they expected the other country to override their own constitution in agreement.
That’s not the same. This was something weirder, which is why there is speculation that it was designed to fail as a demonstration.
Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.
The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.
Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.
4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.
Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.
Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.
Maybe they weren't allowed to not try? Like adding Denuvo to your game doesn't stop piracy, but your investors will be angry if you don't make the (wasted) effort at due diligence.
Those toolkits don’t even seem to be intended to stop piracy - they seem to add value by slowing it down long enough to make the first 2 weeks (days) of sales. The people using them usually understand that.
>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.
Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
I actually wouldn’t have been shocked if other countries had helped, and the powers that be may regret enforcing their sovereignty here.
Countries used to enforce this at their borders (for foreign information) because it largely worked. They couldn’t stop 100% of the copies of the book, but they could stop there being enough copies for it to be part of the cultural zeitgeist (most of the time).
Not anymore. The companies don’t have a local HQ to harass, and the information doesn’t flow through infrastructure the government owns. They’ve pretty much entirely lost the ability to control the flow of information, and they’ve largely lost the ability to control its direction either with the fall of major news outlets.
I don’t think they have the support for a China-style great firewall, but I’m not British so maybe I’m wrong.
I think it’s a good thing information is set free, but I see why they tried it. It’s the only politically tenable way they had to try to keep that control.
No need gor a china-style great firewall. Just compel your local dns providers to stop resolving that website. That's what they do for copyright violations
Easy to circumvent ? Sure, but most people don't know how, so you've made the website inaccessible to the vast majority
The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.
By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.
> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.
Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.
Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
Exactly. Ofcom understood it needed a dog and pony show to answer the latest UK moral panic over 4chan. The headlines have moved on, and they can safely take off their costumes.
> they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.
Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities, have to declare compliance with US laws (FATCA) when opening a bank account in India with an Indian bank. This is enforced by the Indian government.
The difference is that Britain is not a super power and has not been for a long time. There is only China and the US. All other western nations and many eastern ones are shells of what they once were.
In an ideal world, exclusively-US-based companies that host message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging services, and the like would look at this saga and
1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are very low
2) Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story
Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector...
Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based? Big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.
> Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based?
That is an issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.
Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was exclusively about US-based companies.
And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
Just bear in mind that many US states are implementing the so-called age verification laws, which will soon turn into identity verification laws. So simply being in the US doesn't protect them against having to comply with these things. Someone is going to have to fight the laws.
The main difference is that most of the big players have physical presence in the UK. You can't argue British law does not apply to you when you have a campus in Kings Cross.
Here's the thing though: nobody has to agree 4chan is the hero of the story. It's also reasonable to look at 4chan and say "Gross and legally correct is still gross" and let them soldier on alone.
You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures. It doesn't say "First they came for the KKK." And, of course, it doesn't say "First they came for the Nazis."
> You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures.
Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.
If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.
To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.
The original German of the poem does say, at the final line, "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." That is, "When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest."
So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.
It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.
Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.
However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":
> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"
Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own.
So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.
It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:
> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)
This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.
For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:
Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...
Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
It’s funny because "no one with talent wants to work there" would explain an organization failure only if there were a competitive job market, one where talented people can freely choose their employer. There isn't, so the actual description is that the British Civil Service, due to having crappy managers and policies, can't do anything useful.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal
Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.
This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”
I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.
The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent?
They look pretty incompetent from my perspective.
Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.
Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.
Just a recap how it happened in Russia:
1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8
2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.
3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).
4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).
5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).
6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.
7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).
deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.
You just need to follow this to the logical conclusion. They’ll ban using your proposed method, people will switch to VPN and other modern methods and to combat people still accessing the forbidden internet they will need DPI and TSPU-like devices
Think of the kids the world we failed to protect by not having passport checks and government snitch at the 4chan login.
But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).
And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
> No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
Does _not_ need to be foreign.
People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.
Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.
So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.
It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.
For some reason we keep forgetting to make it illegal school kids to have sex with adults too.
I thought the Russel Brand case might cause someone to ask why it's even legal for a grown man to pick a kid up from the school gates to have sex with them, but apparently not.
Would be nice if foreigners who raped 30+ kids could get more than 14 years in prison before we release them too.
I get the concern about kids on 4chan, but it just feels like such low priority that I'm surprised the government keep forgetting to tackle the more important stuff that's happening in real life.
> I wish them luck in that important work. In the meantime, we Americans have plenty more work to do on this side of the pond to protect our border and prevent the British, Australian, Russian, and other foreign censorship regimes from crossing it.
We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.
And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act
Your quote references censorship specifically and while there are some creaks in the first amendment here and there, it is nothing compared to the censorship machine running in the UK and Europe.
What the hell are you talking about? We have the same problems as the UK and they are just as bad. We are at the cusp, while the UK is further in, but we still have the same problems..
I think this is just one more case of “we thought we lived in Western Civilisation and all agreed on how to handle the problems of the world”. And we are discovering that we actually live in American Civilisation, and the differences are becoming insurmountable.
The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends
It was clear to me from the moment this began that this case would end in humiliation for the British government/regulator. A good reminder that Britain is a declining nation that still likes to pretend it is an empire.
This isnt unique to the UK. China does the same thing. The UK will have its own firewall in time. They cant actually force foreign companies to comply with these laws so they'll have to blacklist them. It's exactly the same as China.
I'm not sure who the other three clients are,
But in the case of 4chan, people are also forgetting that it is well known to be an intel gathering and propaganda disseminating platform closely aligned if not run indirectly by the US government.
It's not blocked anywhere that much more tame sites are usually blocked, perhaps china is the only one I know of and even google is blocked there, and that makes me suspicious.
Yes there are organic users on there outside of the political places,
But many, especially those that are disgusted by the site, forget the very real impact that 4chan has had on current events, I just don't see any of this situation as organic.
does this mean the UK will block 4chan in the UK? if the defense is jurisdictional then 4chan can continue to serve US users, but there would be no recourse if the UK blocks it in their jurisdiction
I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.
4chan and Kiwi Farms, which is something the article intentionally glosses over. Honestly, KF is a far more “dangerous” place in the eyes of the UK government, as 4chan hasn’t been relevant for around a decade, and the combined efforts to deplatform KF traditionally has been fruitless.
4 chan is the most bent place on the internet that is just wide open, and in my short forrey I did see and read a bunch of horrible stuff, but there are other areas in there where certain counter culture groups with no violence or ranting seem to be hiding out for the privacy, and there are also people who go in to challenge some of the worst obscenities, and as it turned out I have a friend who does just that, even going so far as to learn the intricasies of these groups and chase them around the net to pick there horrible theories and causes apart, driving some of them completly insane in the process.
it's not like there are not worse places, and 4 chan realy is sort of cartoonish and juvenile, so the best thing is to openly acknowledge it and like all the bad stuff label it and remind people of the risks of getting caught up in this, or any, cult.
Are you saying it is sad that American courts do not enforce foreign laws if they violate the US constitution? If so, then are you in favor of Russian, Chinese, various Muslim countries' laws being enforced in the US?
Yes. Ofcom sent multiple extortion letters to 4chan and Kiwi Farms, demanding they pay up and/or submit to British rule. Saying it was for “PR purposes” is equivalent to saying that reporting blackmail is for PR. GP also fails to understand that specifically US courts have no jurisdiction to stop international extortion, which is a loophole through the FSIA. For now, this creates a gridlock: the UK has no ability to seize assets from non-UK entities, but are free to fine and declare non-UK entities as in violation, which aids internal and even international pressure to censoring speech critical of the UK government. In response, US legislation is being proposed (GRANITE Act) that aims to close this loophole.
Note this nonsense headline and article is just more puffery from the theatrical 4chan side and doesn't represent any official legal position.
Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.
The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.
Cool. So 4chan is going to get DNS blocked in the UK and I can finally stop hearing about this and all the Americans takes on what my country's enforcement mechanisms should be.
This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.
I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
This quote from the court is amazing:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
The write-up from the lawyers is unintentionally hilarious
1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
> Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk
Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:
https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here
They have tariffs on foreign double standards because it's a key export business.
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here: [...]
> [...], the CLOUD act, [...]
The CLOUD Act doesn't do what you think it does. Here's a comment from a while ago with more detail [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226822
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
5 replies →
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...>
Or how about the FBI declaring that parents at PTA meetings as “domestic terrorists”? Or targeting the Catholic church as an “extremist organization”?
14 replies →
Donald Trump is currently suing the BBC for their speech.
In a UK court, of course.
12 replies →
[flagged]
[flagged]
9 replies →
> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
7 replies →
sauce is 404
Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions (not even that, but third parties' understanding of those opinions). Kirk himself never proposed anything violent; the narrative was promoted based on wild misrepresentations to that effect.
But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.
4 replies →
While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.
While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
> While Ofcom were barmy to even try this
Quote from the article:
> Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused
Seems like Ofcom broadly got the result they wanted. A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
10 replies →
> there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't
In my comment I explained how countries, including the US, project their laws by imposing controls within their jurisdiction.
The weird part about this case is how they thought they could directly project their laws into another country in a way that overrides that country’s constitution, and they expected the other country to override their own constitution in agreement.
That’s not the same. This was something weirder, which is why there is speculation that it was designed to fail as a demonstration.
13 replies →
Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.
1 reply →
As a US citizen, I'm inclined to agree.
The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.
Ofcom didn't "try this"
4chan is suing Ofcom, not the other way round.
2 replies →
Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.
4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
This is how the UK gets it's own great firewall.
Demand online services change their services to conform to their law. Because its accessible from the UK.
Services refuse.
Up goes the wall.
1 reply →
It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.
That's not unique to their culture. Remember The Alamo? That was 190 years ago and we still celebrate our defeat.
9 replies →
Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
14 replies →
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.
Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
I am surprised that https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/4102 was not cited.
It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.
[dead]
Maybe they weren't allowed to not try? Like adding Denuvo to your game doesn't stop piracy, but your investors will be angry if you don't make the (wasted) effort at due diligence.
Those toolkits don’t even seem to be intended to stop piracy - they seem to add value by slowing it down long enough to make the first 2 weeks (days) of sales. The people using them usually understand that.
3 replies →
>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.
Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
I actually wouldn’t have been shocked if other countries had helped, and the powers that be may regret enforcing their sovereignty here.
Countries used to enforce this at their borders (for foreign information) because it largely worked. They couldn’t stop 100% of the copies of the book, but they could stop there being enough copies for it to be part of the cultural zeitgeist (most of the time).
Not anymore. The companies don’t have a local HQ to harass, and the information doesn’t flow through infrastructure the government owns. They’ve pretty much entirely lost the ability to control the flow of information, and they’ve largely lost the ability to control its direction either with the fall of major news outlets.
I don’t think they have the support for a China-style great firewall, but I’m not British so maybe I’m wrong.
I think it’s a good thing information is set free, but I see why they tried it. It’s the only politically tenable way they had to try to keep that control.
No need gor a china-style great firewall. Just compel your local dns providers to stop resolving that website. That's what they do for copyright violations
Easy to circumvent ? Sure, but most people don't know how, so you've made the website inaccessible to the vast majority
2 replies →
The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.
By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.
Or they really are delusional. I dunno.
> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.
Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
Didn't the USA kidnap a president from another country from that country, just the other day?
Yes.
What ties are there to the current conversation?
1 reply →
[flagged]
>> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
How this judgment do that?
They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
> Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates
When something can be explained by both incompetence and conspiracy, the correct explanation is usually incompetence.
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Not European politicians.
You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.
Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
It’s largely political. Even the rank and file staff there agree that it’s nonsense, being done for appearances.
Exactly. Ofcom understood it needed a dog and pony show to answer the latest UK moral panic over 4chan. The headlines have moved on, and they can safely take off their costumes.
> they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.
Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities, have to declare compliance with US laws (FATCA) when opening a bank account in India with an Indian bank. This is enforced by the Indian government.
>Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities
That's just one handshake away from their bank which does have business with US and their dollaridos.
> Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.
The surprise is that Britain is a local backwater and the United States isn't. You can't throw your weight around if you don't have any weight.
The difference is that Britain is not a super power and has not been for a long time. There is only China and the US. All other western nations and many eastern ones are shells of what they once were.
In an ideal world, exclusively-US-based companies that host message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging services, and the like would look at this saga and
1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are very low
2) Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story
Alas.
Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector...
Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based? Big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.
> Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based?
That is an issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.
Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was exclusively about US-based companies.
And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
6 replies →
Just bear in mind that many US states are implementing the so-called age verification laws, which will soon turn into identity verification laws. So simply being in the US doesn't protect them against having to comply with these things. Someone is going to have to fight the laws.
The main difference is that most of the big players have physical presence in the UK. You can't argue British law does not apply to you when you have a campus in Kings Cross.
4chan and Kiwi Farms (via Lolcow LLC), to be more specific.
Rad. Thanks for the correction.
Here's the thing though: nobody has to agree 4chan is the hero of the story. It's also reasonable to look at 4chan and say "Gross and legally correct is still gross" and let them soldier on alone.
You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures. It doesn't say "First they came for the KKK." And, of course, it doesn't say "First they came for the Nazis."
> You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures.
Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.
If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.
To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.
6 replies →
The original German of the poem does say, at the final line, "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." That is, "When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest."
So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.
It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.
Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.
However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":
> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"
Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own.
So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:
> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church#Aftermath
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marga_Meusel
4 replies →
This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
Here's the link to Parliament's own on-demand video: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c32e3478-65af-41b2-aa7...
I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.
For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:
- 22nd April 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88b...
- 3rd June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e6...
- 10th June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e...
- 15th July 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af6...
- 2nd September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab...
- 16th September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-922...
Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...
Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
3 replies →
"parliamentlive.tv" doesn't sound any more reputable, but apparently it's official despite the foreign TLD!
Cummings is an absolute crank. He had the opportunity to try and he ended up failing spectacularly, like Liz Truss or Yannis Varoufakis.
It’s funny because "no one with talent wants to work there" would explain an organization failure only if there were a competitive job market, one where talented people can freely choose their employer. There isn't, so the actual description is that the British Civil Service, due to having crappy managers and policies, can't do anything useful.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal
He also talked with Dwarkesh Patel: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dominic-cummings
Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.
This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”
I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.
The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent? They look pretty incompetent from my perspective. Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.
1 reply →
They already track everything going through the undersea cables, why couldn't they start blocking at those points?
3 replies →
Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.
Just a recap how it happened in Russia:
1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8
2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.
3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).
4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).
5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).
6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.
7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).
That's already been done, on the ISP level, some time ago. For torrent sites and similar, if I remember correctly.
I'm pretty sure it was to protect the children, or fight terrorism, or to save the NHS, or lower taxes.
deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.
You just need to follow this to the logical conclusion. They’ll ban using your proposed method, people will switch to VPN and other modern methods and to combat people still accessing the forbidden internet they will need DPI and TSPU-like devices
2 replies →
Likely yes IMO, especially since the UK is making moves to militarize.
I hate to break it to you, but the UK has had a military for some time now.
10 replies →
Think of the kids the world we failed to protect by not having passport checks and government snitch at the 4chan login.
But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).
And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action...
> No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
Does _not_ need to be foreign.
People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.
Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.
So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.
It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.
For some reason we keep forgetting to make it illegal school kids to have sex with adults too.
I thought the Russel Brand case might cause someone to ask why it's even legal for a grown man to pick a kid up from the school gates to have sex with them, but apparently not.
Would be nice if foreigners who raped 30+ kids could get more than 14 years in prison before we release them too.
I get the concern about kids on 4chan, but it just feels like such low priority that I'm surprised the government keep forgetting to tackle the more important stuff that's happening in real life.
> I wish them luck in that important work. In the meantime, we Americans have plenty more work to do on this side of the pond to protect our border and prevent the British, Australian, Russian, and other foreign censorship regimes from crossing it.
We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.
And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act
Your quote references censorship specifically and while there are some creaks in the first amendment here and there, it is nothing compared to the censorship machine running in the UK and Europe.
What the hell are you talking about? We have the same problems as the UK and they are just as bad. We are at the cusp, while the UK is further in, but we still have the same problems..
I think this is just one more case of “we thought we lived in Western Civilisation and all agreed on how to handle the problems of the world”. And we are discovering that we actually live in American Civilisation, and the differences are becoming insurmountable.
The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends
I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.
Though I guess we've already seen something similar in France with Telegram...
When European governments say they will lead in technology regulation, this is what they mean.
I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.
Though I guess we've already seen something similar in 2024 with France and Telegram...
Its adorable that the UK gov thought they could beat the internet.
The world wide web remains undefeated.
It's annoying, in the UK you can browse 4chan but not Imgur
It was clear to me from the moment this began that this case would end in humiliation for the British government/regulator. A good reminder that Britain is a declining nation that still likes to pretend it is an empire.
This isnt unique to the UK. China does the same thing. The UK will have its own firewall in time. They cant actually force foreign companies to comply with these laws so they'll have to blacklist them. It's exactly the same as China.
>China does the same thing.
No, China is smart enough not expect foreign courts to carry out the work of the Chinese censorship regime.
its the exact same as the US vis a vis tiktok as well
[flagged]
We need to start collectively shaming individuals in the tech sector who work for these censorious government agencies and do their bidding.
Good, fuck off ofcom. We always mocked Chinese censorship but we’re not really any different now.
I'm not sure who the other three clients are, But in the case of 4chan, people are also forgetting that it is well known to be an intel gathering and propaganda disseminating platform closely aligned if not run indirectly by the US government. It's not blocked anywhere that much more tame sites are usually blocked, perhaps china is the only one I know of and even google is blocked there, and that makes me suspicious. Yes there are organic users on there outside of the political places, But many, especially those that are disgusted by the site, forget the very real impact that 4chan has had on current events, I just don't see any of this situation as organic.
lol. get rekt oofcom :DDDDD
does this mean the UK will block 4chan in the UK? if the defense is jurisdictional then 4chan can continue to serve US users, but there would be no recourse if the UK blocks it in their jurisdiction
The UK ISPs already did this earlier. What Ofcom really wanted is to flex their muscle and kill 4chan because it represents Satan for them.
What Ofcom wants next is to make VPNs illegal.
It is not blocked in the UK.
I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.
2 replies →
Did they fully block it or just put it on the blocklists that you can turn off in your account settings?
https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://www.4chan.org suggests the latter to me, but the checks aren't very recent
4 replies →
4chan and Kiwi Farms, which is something the article intentionally glosses over. Honestly, KF is a far more “dangerous” place in the eyes of the UK government, as 4chan hasn’t been relevant for around a decade, and the combined efforts to deplatform KF traditionally has been fruitless.
Why would they block it if they hope to get money from it.
4 chan is the most bent place on the internet that is just wide open, and in my short forrey I did see and read a bunch of horrible stuff, but there are other areas in there where certain counter culture groups with no violence or ranting seem to be hiding out for the privacy, and there are also people who go in to challenge some of the worst obscenities, and as it turned out I have a friend who does just that, even going so far as to learn the intricasies of these groups and chase them around the net to pick there horrible theories and causes apart, driving some of them completly insane in the process. it's not like there are not worse places, and 4 chan realy is sort of cartoonish and juvenile, so the best thing is to openly acknowledge it and like all the bad stuff label it and remind people of the risks of getting caught up in this, or any, cult.
[dead]
[flagged]
[dead]
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Good grief. This is sad stuff.
What else should happen in this case?
No, it's called sovereignty.
Are you saying it is sad that American courts do not enforce foreign laws if they violate the US constitution? If so, then are you in favor of Russian, Chinese, various Muslim countries' laws being enforced in the US?
Iranian Fatwas enforced/carried out by American courts, that could get interesting.
I think you meant to ask "are you in favor of the CLOUD Act and FACTA (among others) being enforced outside the US?"
[flagged]
This was a fairly stupid case. Ofcom didn't try to enforce it abroad, 4chan sued Ofcom in case it did (mostly for PR purposes).
Ofcom knows its rulings don't apply internationally.
So yes, the status quo is enforced by the US courts, as if it was ever in doubt and nothing at all has changed.
Didn't Ofcom send multiple threat letters to 4chan, requesting they comply with UK laws? That counts as trying to enforce it
Yes. Ofcom sent multiple extortion letters to 4chan and Kiwi Farms, demanding they pay up and/or submit to British rule. Saying it was for “PR purposes” is equivalent to saying that reporting blackmail is for PR. GP also fails to understand that specifically US courts have no jurisdiction to stop international extortion, which is a loophole through the FSIA. For now, this creates a gridlock: the UK has no ability to seize assets from non-UK entities, but are free to fine and declare non-UK entities as in violation, which aids internal and even international pressure to censoring speech critical of the UK government. In response, US legislation is being proposed (GRANITE Act) that aims to close this loophole.
Note this nonsense headline and article is just more puffery from the theatrical 4chan side and doesn't represent any official legal position.
Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.
The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.
[dead]
Cool. So 4chan is going to get DNS blocked in the UK and I can finally stop hearing about this and all the Americans takes on what my country's enforcement mechanisms should be.
What should the rules and enforcement mechanisms be? It seems your country is unfree and getting worse in terms of digital freedom.
https://eylenburg.github.io/countries.htm