3d ago

4chan is getting fined in the UK by the Office of Communications(Ofcom) under Online Safety Act; 4Chan Respond by appealing to Trump administration and intending to fight it in the U.S courts.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35889767

Source;
Ofcom.

4d ago

4chan got fined in the UK by the Office of Communications(Ofcom) under Online Safety Act; 4Chan Respond by appealing to Trump administration and intending to fight it in the U.S courts.

65 comments

On one hand, 4chan (miraculously) has a point. They do not have a presence in the UK. They just serve traffic to it. Fining them for not following UK law makes no sense, and 4chan should tell them to pound sand.
On the other hand, if this were merely "we'll block you in our country unless you do X", then I do think notifying them ahead of time would be common courtesy. If the "violating" website sends them back a picture of tubgirl or something, then that's your answer.
This really comes down to national sovereignty. The UK can't force US businesses with no presence in the UK to play by the UK's rules, and the US can't stop the UK from blocking external businesses from serving the UK for not complying with their rules (as dumb as the rules are).
- They serve users in the UK, therefore they can be fined. There is an established way to not get fined by governments of states whose markets you operate in: get out of that market. Block traffic from the UK. It is not the country's obligation to block, it is the company's. This has been already played out over the years in courts.
  
  Websites have no way to know where a user is located. They can only use heuristics to predict a user's location. Such a law would be unenforceable anyway because 4chan can just tell the UK to blow themselves and there's nothing the UK can do in US territory except politely ask Trump to ship them to Europe.
  
  they can be fined.
  Sounds like no? How are they going to make a company with no assets or staff in the UK pay the fine? American courts likely won't enforce it.
I don't know who to wish to fail more; OFCOM or 4Chan
I can't believe I'm agreeing with 4chan INC (or whatever the company is called). This whole situation is a mess. So many jurisdictions want to force age verification. I am a from believer that pushing laws to force "adult" content sites to have a standardized set of tags that parental controls can block will be way better. More beneficial to actually concerned parents (not fear mongering adults), safer for visitors to these sites by not forcing them to send their ID to a place that may mishandle it, safer for everyone by not making it normal to submit your ID to websites (think of the phishing opportunities), and more convenient for everyone.
I mean, for fuck's sake, a woman got arrested in Georgia for leaving the house while her child was playing outside. We expect parents to know where their children are every moment of every day but just throw our hands up and say "there's nothing I can do" when it comes to the net? It should be parents' responsibility to block such content, and requiring standardized tags across jurisdictions would make this easier.
Maybe don't let minors get full, unblocked access to the Internet.
- kids are just handy excuse that appeals to the masses. Getting more control over people is the goal.
God help me when I'm barracking for 4chan
- they're clearly not good if they're listing their twitter handles in official legal documents
That's full circle, since the current administration was basically grown in the lab called 4Chan.
I guess we'll see how that goes, but with similar age verification laws currently being introduced across the US, it seems like it soon won't make much of a difference.
- And apparently enforcement of foreign judgements in the US is state-by-state, and the US state doesn't need personal jurisdiction over the person. So any US state court can decide to recognise a foreign jurisdiction, under local state laws, and all other states will recognise it. So if OFCOM can find one state that will recognise the judgement, then they are in trouble.
I don't think ofcom expect to get any money. It's either to just be a precursor to requiring a DNS/ip block by isps. Or just as they have told that they have to do this anyway.
UK stretching its ol' colonial muscles again.
TIL 4chan still exists
- Never read a greentext before?
  !greentext@lemmy.ml
- It's distilled essence runs the modern Republican Party, fam.
nice to know 4chans lawyers are as dumb as the posters
enjoy your dns level block in the uk 4chan
- Cheering on disturbing censorship legislation is pretty cringe, their lawyers are also correct the UK has zero legal standing to make these sorts of demands of companies with zero infra in their borders when.it comes to international & US law.
  
  censoring white supremacists and paedophiles is good actually.
  
  Actually they do if they serves traffic to the UK.
- Oh no, a DNS block. Does that even work on DNS over HTTPS?
I thought 4chan was down for good

65 comments