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| ▲ | sib a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Not quite. There are well-established legal mechanisms for Ofcom (or anyone) to try to engage legally with companies domiciled in the US and with no locus in the UK. Rather than using these mechanisms, they have tried to short-circuit the process by sending emails that have no legal force. | | |
| ▲ | baobabKoodaa a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Hmmh. If some powerful law enforcement agency was coming after me to stop my website, I sure would hope they would first send me an email asking me to stop. | |
| ▲ | james_in_the_uk a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | What “well established process” would apply here ? | | |
| ▲ | lalaithion a day ago | parent [-] | | The US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance treaty imposes obligations on Ofcom which they have not met, 4chan claims: “None of these actions constitutes valid service under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, United States law or any other proper international legal process.” https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun... | | |
| ▲ | james_in_the_uk a day ago | parent [-] | | MLAT applies only to a narrow set of legal procedures, essentially around criminal activity. I’m a lawyer but this is very specialist stuff. I’m not expert enough to opine on whether MLAT applies here but - simply judging by the quality of their respective legal work on display - I’m minded to believe that Ofcom knows what they are doing. OTOH 4chan’s rhetoric reeks of FUD. | | |
| ▲ | intended 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | 4chan is 100% FUD and is playing to the gallery. This is nerd sniping of a different sort. I’m guessing they are aiming to drum up American sentiment for their actions, and because its 4chan. | | |
| ▲ | Levitz 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | 4chan is perfectly aware of its reputation, and if that wasn't enough, it's worth noting they banded with kiwifarms on this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyjq40vjl7o >Lawyers representing controversial online forums 4chan and Kiwi Farms have filed a legal case against the UK Online Safety Act enforcer, Ofcom. Drumming up public support is a no-go. Rather, I think the intent is to make the stance that if the UK wants to prevent citizens from accessing sites if they are underage, then the UK can do just that, rather than expect random companies around the world to comply. |
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| ▲ | fsckboy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals did you mean to say "companies operating in the UK and(including) companies providing services to the UK"? because the way you wrote it, it would not apply to 4chan and what is not being mentioned by most commenters is, if the law is unenforceable on a US corp, what is the chance that an individual associated with 4chan Inc could find themselves individually arrested were they to set foot in a Commonwealth country or somesuch | |
| ▲ | aftbit a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East Can someone expand on this a bit? I'm passingly familiar with the Chinese Google example (though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?) but I know nearly nothing about the Middle East angle. | | |
| ▲ | j16sdiz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | They bend the knee for censorship requirement. (Not only that, they provided machine learning based filtering service for other Chinese search engine at the time) According to Google, the China government tried to infiltrate Google's internal computer system. In response, Google stopped the censorship over night, and withdraw from China market shortly afterward. I still remember night, when _all_ Chinese search engine stopped censoring because Google stopped their filtering service. The China tech company have evolved much since those days, and they are now much better at censoring compare to what Google had in the early days of the internet. | |
| ▲ | phantom784 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I worked for a company that asked users for their gender, with language along the lines of "choose the gender that best matches your identity." There was a special case for Middle Eastern countries that removed this language. | |
| ▲ | jjmarr 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | On a photocopier, if I switch the language to Arabic, Hebrew disappears from the list of options. | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee? Not even close. They bent the knee first; they left afterwards. | | |
| ▲ | nl a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Not at all. They refused Chinese requests, left the market and closed offices. Still the gold standard for how US companies should have responded to Chinese censorship demands. | |
| ▲ | mda 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can you explain what do you mean? | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China > On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government. > In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary. They never had a problem censoring their results. They claimed to pull out "in retaliation" for being hacked; realistically, they noticed that China didn't want them to succeed, and gave up on trying. | | |
| ▲ | hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think that's leaving out a lot of context that the "Controversies" section of that Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#Controversies, better explains. First, in 2006, there was still a general belief I think that Western companies could profitably exist in China and be, if not a "force for good", than at least a force for slightly more openness. Google's options were either to not be in China at all, or to be in China and abide by their laws. So when they censored search results in the 2006-2010 time period, at least they told you they were doing it and that it was at the demands of Chinese authorities. I think it's a fair debate to have on either side whether this was a good thing, but I think it's a gross oversimplification to present that this was a simple black-and-white decision and that Google "never had a problem censoring their results." |
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| ▲ | ghusto 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > They are stating that companies operating in the UK They are not operating in the UK. ISPs in the UK have chosen to make content from the USA available in the uk (or more accurately, do nothing to prevent it being available) | | |
| ▲ | riffraff 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | but ISPs do not have the power to decide if something is infringing a rule or not. Thus Ofcom goes through the motions of telling 4Chan "hey I think you're not compliant" and if 4Chan says "lol, I'm not serving UK people" _then_ the UK authority will tell the ISPs to block it (and the will be on the hook if they don't). |
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| ▲ | itake a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China What does Google do with Tiananmen square searches in China? I can't access google here at all. | | |
| ▲ | flumpcakes 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It is a mass killing event which the Chinese government pretends never happened and/or suppresses the information of. Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. From Wikipedia: > The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising. > Between 200 and 10,000 civilians were killed. The Red Cross states that around 2,600 died and the official Chinese government figure is 241 dead with 7,000 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates puts the number of deaths at several hundred to close to 1,000. As many as 10,000 people were estimated to have been arrested during the protests. | | |
| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | So what is Google doing? That was the question. Google isn't available in China. | | |
| ▲ | flumpcakes 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. Google was complying with, what I assume is the law in, China and censoring searches for things China doesn't want talked about. Google has since left China, apparently bowing down wasn't enough. | | |
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| ▲ | jandrese a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Completely whitewashed, for all the good it does Google. | | |
| ▲ | Thorrez 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you have evidence that Google is filtering searches in China? Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on search. | | |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Countries do things like this when they're run by fools and they can do this because the fools have weapons and prisons. What good has it done the US? Can US patrons of offshore internet Bitcoin casinos no longer find them available? Not a chance. But then on top of being completely ineffective, it causes exactly what you're saying -- other fools in other countries want to treat the foolishness as precedent for doing it themselves. Which is why the people in the various countries should put a stop to all of it, before it spreads and they find themselves in a foreign prison because their flight had a layover in a country with a law they didn't know about. And countries themselves should retaliate like hell whenever anyone tries to do it to one of their citizens. | | |
| ▲ | kijin 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time. Whether for a "shopping trip to NYC", or for business reasons. That's why it's a big deal when the US wants somebody. On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something. Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time. That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino. > On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something. Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life? > Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year. The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London. | | |
| ▲ | kijin 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time. Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time. There are two major problems with this. The first is that you don't actually know which countries you have to avoid. There isn't going to be an app that can walk you through every law in every country. And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow. > Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to They already do stuff like this. The fact that they do it is now being used as a justification for doing it more and elsewhere. You can watch people telling you that slippery slope is a fallacy as they're greasing the hill. | | |
| ▲ | int_19h 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow. Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly. And yes, that is a thing that some of us do actually need. For example, while I have lived in the West for the past 18 years, I'm still a Russian citizen, and if I ever set foot there again they will likely have some questions for me regarding all the money for the war effort in Ukraine (see Ksenia Karelina for an example). Thus I would very much appreciate the ability to book a flight that is guaranteed to not be diverted to Russia or to any country that is likely to extradite to Russia, and I would pay money for such a service. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly. I mean, that's fine if you want to avoid Russia while flying from California to Quebec, but you don't really need an app for that one. Whereas if you're within the plane's fuel supply of where you don't want to be, how are you supposed to know ahead of time what kind of nonsense is going to happen while you're in the air? The plane could have a navigation failure over the ocean and end up arbitrarily far off course. Some first class VIP could have a medical problem which is going to force the plane to divert anyway and then the nearest city with the right kind of hospital is in the place you don't want to be. And what if you end up St. Petersberg not because you had a layover in Finland but because Helsinki was your intended destination? |
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| ▲ | testdelacc1 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This isn’t about visiting for shopping. Billions of people, the vast majority of humanity, manage just fine without ever taking a holiday in the US. What matters is if any of their assets are ever denominated in USD, or ever use the international banking system that is also controlled by the US. No other country has that kind of long arm jurisdiction. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The thing I can't understand is that people keep bringing this up as if it's supposed to justify doing it because the US could actually make it work, but then there are still a zillion offshore internet casinos which is strong direct empirical evidence that it does not in fact work. | |
| ▲ | kijin 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, that's the special thing about the US. Nobody can even use a phone without the US getting involved in one way or another. The UK on the other hand... |
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| ▲ | wyager a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 4chan is not "operating in the UK". They accept and respond to packets from the UK. If the UK government doesn't like this, they can block 4chan themselves. | | |
| ▲ | saxenaabhi a day ago | parent | next [-] | | That's serving UK users while knowing that they aren't legally allowed to. | | |
| ▲ | 4ndrewl a day ago | parent | next [-] | | That's an interesting view. If I were to fly to the USA, purchase something that was illegal in my home country (and explicitly state I was going to take it back home), then took it back home - would the vendor be prosecuted? | | |
| ▲ | beowulfey 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No because the sale would have had to occur in the place that it is illegal | | |
| ▲ | Ray20 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Obviously, yes. A crime is a crime, so what difference does it make what country it was committed in? | | |
| ▲ | jcelerier 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Law systems usually state explicitly their jurisdiction domain, depending on the level of offense. |
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| ▲ | bossyTeacher 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If I fire off an agent to buy items at random times from a list which is updated in country, where does the purchase of the list items happen? |
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| ▲ | YawningAngel a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If they came to your home country, very possibly yes. | | |
| ▲ | madeofpalk 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | ? Of course they wouldn't. Bartenders from other countries don't get locked up the moment they enter the US because they served alcohol to someone (a US citizen?) between 18 and 21. The US does not have jurisdiction over alcohol sales in other countries. In this scenario, what's more likely to be illegal is bringing the item into the country. It's difficult to make physical analogies to these types of internet laws. What makes them 'tricky' is how they are not physical. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | If they pack the alcohol up in a crate, and then ship it to the person after they make the order in person? Less clear yes? If the consumer goes to a place it is legal, and consumes it there without bringing any back, most people would say ‘meh’. Depending on the product. Hard drugs and sex work, being two common exceptions that some countries get more worked up about even traveling to ‘enjoy’ it. But ship it back (especially hard drugs or sex workers!), and almost all people get more concerned. The issue here is exactly why customs typically is a mandatory ‘gate’ for packages AND passengers entering a country. Similar, one could say, to a giant country level firewall? And why it is so lucrative for smugglers, which are defacto performing a type of arbitrage eh? |
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| ▲ | Onavo a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you are purchasing any form of financial service that involves moving money around and said financial services provider also happens to interact with a US based financial entity, then yes, Uncle Sam will make life very difficult. And no before you ask crypto won't solve this because Uncle Sam demands USD stablecoins to have sanctions mechanisms built in and clearing entities that don't implement KYC etc. will find themselves subjected to prosecution in other ways. |
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| ▲ | redml a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | How many other laws can I passively break in other countries I have no connection to? | | |
| ▲ | intended 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | As many as you like, as long as you never travel to that country. Or that country has an extradition treaty with yours. |
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| ▲ | pfortuny 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Mmmmmhhhhhhh…What if I buy some goods (say electronics) in the EU from a foreign firm (v.gr. China) using mail and these goods do not comply with the EU’s regulations? I really do not know the proper reply to this. | | |
| ▲ | Uvix 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Then you’re the importer of record and the compliance burden is on you. | |
| ▲ | 63stack 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Customs will destroy the package. They do not start fining random foreign companies for sending you the package. | |
| ▲ | philwelch 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s what customs is for. |
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| ▲ | monerozcash 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A darknet drug dealer could make the same argument, probably with little success. |
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| ▲ | 1oooqooq 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | your comment seems very insightful but for the layman that I am it seems to ignore the source of international law reach. the usa does at lot of leg work to set up legal frameworks, suck as forcing transpacific "partnership", which enforce usa IP law overseas etc. they can enforce some things, like gambling and financial rules, and now intellectual property overseas because there are specific accords for those. every thing else, even hacking and spying, they must wait for the "criminal" to land on it's jurisdiction. why is this changing anything on all of that? also, your example of google/china would let this play out opposite of what you suggest: uk gov would please US law to keep doing business there. i fail to see the relevance on that also. | |
| ▲ | delfinom a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK. The board of directors for a private company is generally secret in the US. Only the "manager" aka president/CEO/whoever at the top is generally named publicly, as well as legal agent. | | |
| ▲ | nradov a day ago | parent [-] | | I suspect that MI6 could find a US private company's directors names if they wanted to. We're not talking about nuclear launch codes here. | | |
| ▲ | nl a day ago | parent | next [-] | | MI6 is involved in intelligence, not criminal work. | |
| ▲ | TheRealPomax a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I suspect MI6 has much better things to do. | |
| ▲ | delfinom a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really that easily? Generally, only the legal agent for the private company will know and the direct hires of the board i.e. the CEO/CTO/whoever they name up top. Sometimes board of directors can get named in court records but with the public records redacted. But outside of that? Not even the IRS knows unless the directors get compensation. MI6 would have to commit a few physical in person crimes to get any details out of any reasonably well run operation. | | |
| ▲ | jandrese a day ago | parent [-] | | Honestly I'm surprised to learn that 4chan has a board of directors. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | In general, many things you think are grassroots are actually highly corporate astroturf. |
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| ▲ | antonvs a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > TIL that 4chan's lawyer … …also suffers from delusions of grandeur, apparently: “Britain will be spinning hard to minimise the noise in the media.” | |
| ▲ | HDThoreaun a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | 4Chan operates out of the US. The UK can ban it if it wants but it can not unilaterally make demands of 4chan and expect courts to enforce them, because it has no jurisdiction over 4chan's activities. | | |
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