> I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

No, but it's a relatively trivial setting to block IP ranges, especially for a service the size of 4chan.

> You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

It's not a ridiculous burden (the ranges are easy to obtain - I did it before) and it's not expected to be 100% effective against a dedicated user because proxies exist.

▲

LexGray 13 hours ago | parent [-]

It is a strange definition of relatively trivial to ask each and every person on the planet who has served content to be aware of all constantly changing local judicial content restrictions, to identify the location of their users, and to identify which specific bits of the content they are serving is problematic.

It is a massive global undertaking involving untold collective man hours developing, implementing, and updating. They may as well be adding an invisible 1/2 pent tax on every man woman and child like some sort of hidden global sovereign.

This is a war they lost long ago and they keep trying to take power to which they are not entitled. The correct answer is like the Boston tea party dumping their imperial assumptions into the ocean.

If they want to block content they should take the responsibility to do so themselves. Even just blocking advertisers who fund problem sites would probably take care of whatever problem they are trying to solve.

	▲	rbanffy 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not all people who serve a website need to be aware of that - I don't think my personal blog will be declared illegal anywhere, for instance. If a post is, I might just spare myself the pain and remove it. If a country wants to notify me, I'm pretty easy to find. Now, for a relatively high-profile website such as 4chan, who deliberately dodges responsibility for the content it knowingly hosts, I'd say it is not a huge effort. They have the staff for that kind of thing. If they decide they aren't complying, then the UK government might order UK-based ISPs to block access and they will comply - as they did many times before. The people in charge of the company might face charges if they ever set foot in the UK, but that's a risk they need to balance. And, in the light of legislation that sanctions whoever does business with sanctioned companies, sanctioning advertisers can go a long way to force compliance.