- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
If 4chan continues to ignore Ofcom, the forum could be blocked in the UK. And 4chan could face even bigger fines totaling about $23 million or 10 percent of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. 4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
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British government fines an American company, based in America, for serving data from American servers that was compliant with American law.
This whole law is complete overreach. It’s like banning a book and then getting mad at the author when one of your citizens buys one on holiday and brings it back with them
I think Iran should fine the UK just as much for allowing the Satanic verses to be sold since that novel are banned in Iran.
Any argument they give is the same argument why the 4chan shit is laughable.
You probably don’t want Iran to have jurisdiction over your dot-com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Iran.[2] The list of crimes punishable by death includes murder; rape; child molestation; homosexuality; drug trafficking; armed robbery; kidnapping; terrorism; burglary; incest; fornication; adultery; sodomy; sexual misconduct; prostitution;[3][4] plotting to overthrow the Islamic government; political dissidence; sabotage; arson; rebellion; apostasy; blasphemy; extortion; counterfeiting; smuggling; recidivist consumption of alcohol; producing or preparing food, drink, cosmetics, or sanitary items that lead to death when consumed or used; producing and publishing pornography; using pornographic materials to solicit sex; capital perjury; recidivist theft; certain military offences (e. g., cowardice, assisting the enemy); “waging war against God”; “spreading corruption on Earth”; espionage; and treason.[5][6] Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016,[7] and at least 507 executions in 2017.[8] In 2018 there were at least 249 executions, at least 273 in 2019, at least 246 in 2020, at least 290 in 2021, at least 553 in 2022, at least 834 in 2023,[9] and at least 901 executions in 2024.[10] In 2023, Iran was responsible for 74% of all recorded executions in the world, with the UN confirming that at least 40 people were executed in one week in 2024.
Frankly, 4chan users or operators would probably have violated some of those, were they under jurisdiction of Iranian law.
I think that’s what @ArmchairAce1944 was getting at
Yeah, not disagreeing with him.
Salman Rushdie: First time?
Pretty sure 4chan is Japanese owned now so I’m confused. I guess they still operate out of the USA. Idk. Currently owned by Hiroyuki Nishimura, who also owns 2channel. He acquired 4chan from Christopher Poole 2015. Good Smile Company is a major investor but he’s still in charge.
Its probably a parent company situation.
Lots of corpo structures are just large parent companies that actually just own a bunch of smaller companies so that the parent company gets the profits while the smaller companies make the risky products and can be bankrupted at any minute.
The company I work for does that. We just bought a couple companies that were competitors in a risky but profitable market. The full idea is that if one company gets sued to oblivion, we let that company die, move all the employees and customers to the backup company, and call it a day.
Capitalism baby!
Neocons were never that bright.
Yeah, how come the EU gets to regulate American services with all their data privacy laws? The EU is a tool of the governments to assert control over us, the common people. Plain and simple
Ofcom, famously a part of EU since brexit
The UK had a Brexit just so they could leave the EU.
The UK hasn’t been part of the EU for a long ass time. Have you been living under a rock?
Ignoring that the UK isn’t part of the EU, the EUs privacy laws extend to all European citizens, and it has treaties with most of the world (including the US) allowing it to enforce those.
4chan’s actual legal response to this can be summarized as “We are incorporated in Delaware which has not been subject to UK law since 1783. See the Treaty of Paris”.
This censorship shit is out of control.
Damn fucking straight. I hope it starts an privacy movement so big they realize that all the laws passed since 2000 against terrorism were abject failures and repeal all of them.
Canada is trying to pass major surveillance shit on par with the patriot act on steroids and effectively nullify the need for warrants, all in the name of ‘strong borders’ and anti terrorism even though it literally gives many US owned and operated companies full and complete access to digital information on Canadians, ironically weakening borders in every way.
And for what? What is the terrorism threat? Al-Qaeda was a always a joke, and the fact that 9/11 happened was far more due to a monumental failure of all intelligence services combined and not due to a lack of resources. Terrorist schemes have been thwarted in the past without the need for extensive surveillance… and most plots are still thwarted primarily by informants and insiders speaking to authorities. The whole 'we need to be super proactive ’ has yielded shit results.
Most of the stuff that they claim was 'prevented proactively ’ was literally entrapment. They found some mentally ill and/or lonely people who would have done nothing on their own, but ended up being goaded into stupid crap when undercover agents flirted with them, encouraged them, and even offered weapons and explosives for them to use, and if they agreed… well, that’s when they nabbed them. No terrorism would have occurred if agents didn’t do shit.
Have you ever wondered why so many people are highly distrustful of people talking about doing violent shit? Fed posting? Its because agents have such a long ass history of doing that that you cannot tell who is and who isn’t a Fed.
This is a case of stupid laws that still don’t understand the internet (35+ years in to wide use, mofos)
If an http GET request initiated from country A traverses routers and wires around the globe to grab some data from a server in country B, then we have to accept that the owners of the server are not “operating in country A” and in fact the user in country A is responsible for import.
If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.
All that is tongue in cheek to say they can fuck right off.
Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts. But the politicians that were in power when all this was first been decided were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.
Then Labour got in and for some reason implemented the stupid law anyway despite having heard none of the consultations, and of course now it turns out that the consultations told them not to do it. Now I’m sure the industry experts would have been ignored anyway but Labour look really daft now.
They have basically accepted that this law is unworkable and is basically going to be ignored by everyone, but they still have to go through all of the pantomime of trying to enforce it. I’m sure eventually they’ll quietly kill it because the whole thing has been such an embarrassment for them.
I think it’s well established by now that this bunch of Labour politicians too are “arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself”.
That would amongst other things neatly explain why they went around and implemented the stupid law.
It also doesn’t help that they’re being advised by people who don’t understand the world anymore and who’s last real contribution was probably in the 1970s. The fact that they can’t even capitalise on the fact that Boris Johnson has been found guilty of misappropriation of government funds is just ridiculous and shows how incompetent they are as politicians.
Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts.
You mean lobbyists?
If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.
What used to be called The Great Firewall of China. It used to be unthinkable for western countries.
You can’t blame this on old people. This is only happening now that the Boomers are on the way out. People who sent international letters or made international phone calls were aware that they were communicating with a different country with different laws. I think we are seeing this now, because now we have people who experience the internet as something happening on their own phone, at their location.
The boomers are not on their way out. We have the exact same politicians in power that we had 30 fucking years ago.
UK cabinet is mainly GenXers. I didn’t count exactly, but Boomers still seem to outnumber Millennials. Definitely on the way out, though.
I wouldn’t mind the politicians from 30 years ago, who stayed away from this bullshit.
The UK didn’t ban leaded petrol until 1999 meaning most millenials will suffer from the boomer-loony disease as they were poisoned during their childhood.
Let’s also not forget that fuel for light aircraft still contains lead :/
They’re plum out of luck
They’re retiring or dying of old age soon, they think now’s the time to shit all over the floor and trash the place.
They’re retiring
Retirement is when it’s about time to get into big politics. Most politicians on higher levels are 60+ y.o.
Funnily enough the CIA (yes, the CIA) was largely involved in keeping the internet a free and open space for all, heck they even contributed encryption algorithms to keep data private and such …
The reason why the free internet existed for so long was because it was a big ideological project for the US. (the internet is the space of all ideas and as such represents the platonic/christian concept of heaven). It’s only now ending because it’s served its purpose. The people have exchanged ideas worldwide, and that only needs to happen twice, similarly to how you can only infect yourself with the same virus once (because the second infection does way less impact), you can only infect yourself with the same idea once. So, once the worldwide ideas are exchanged, the internet serves very little purpose anymore.
Also why the fuck would you piss off 4chan with their years of stalking, ddosing, swatting, etc of successful campaigns against anything they felt wrongged or even just annoyed them.
They were defanged many years ago by the new owners and raiding is banned.
Because these people have never even heard of it. The whole party is a bunch of absolute technophobes. You should see that online advertising it’s pathetic.
If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK. It’s not reasonable to make the argument that you should be able to do business with a country and opt out of its laws simply by running the physical servers abroad. We don’t tolerate it for wire fraud or CSAM, but nobody’s rushing out to defend the sovereign rights of child abusers and scammers.
I don’t agree with the Online Safety Act on its own terms, but this is a dud of an argument.
With wire fraud and csam, the activity is illegal in the host country as well as the target country, which is not the case here.
If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK.
By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.
By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.
No. Every ad platform out there has the advertiser choose what region to advertise in. Nobody wants to pay to advertise in countries where they don’t sell their products. Likewise websites have the option not to serve countries they don’t want to comply with the laws of, and indeed many do this exact thing.
The whole argument being presented is being intentionally naive about both the technology and the law. Y’all are arguing based on how you WANT the world to be rather than how it is.
And as a website you don’t deal with any of that, you just implement an ad platform’s ad window and they serve whatever regional ads are relevant to your visitors. So yes, practically all websites with advertising would be operating in every country worldwide, by your logic.
Again you’re just factually wrong. The website operator has a wide degree of control over what can appear on their site in the admin panel. They even have the choice of which platform to go with if they don’t. And even if they didn’t, it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
To repeat, I’m not supporting the Online Safety Act, but this whole argument seems to rely on the fictional notion that innocent website operators don’t know where their data packets are being sent, which hasn’t been true since the 1990s.
it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
Given that’s how the entire Internet works, it does stand on its own terms. The UK isn’t influential enough to force the entire Internet to follow suit. They can take it or leave it.
Imagine running a website for 20 years, changing absolutely nothing, and one day you’re being targeted because someone else on the other side of the planet changed something at their end.
Tell them to piss off.
They’ll come after your phpbb instance next.
“Block us then. We’re not paying your fines and you’ll never arrest us as we’ll never step foot in your country. Get fucked.” That’s about the response I’d have I think… attached with a photo of tubgirl or something for the classic lawls.
Ok I wish I did not search for tubgirl now
i will learn from your mistake
The UK should just block sites that don’t comply. They have no business trying to fine US websites.
People should fight for their rights and free speech and make pressure on the gouvernement. Blocking is isolationism.
Extort, you mean. The law threatens them with abduction and being held in captivity.
What? No it doesn’t, not as long as the people responsible don’t step foot in the UK.
If they do - yes they’ll be arrested for having broken UK law.
I guess thats not a threat? Not sure what else youd classify that as. “If you step on our turf you’re going to be jailed” is just peaceful language haha
You have to obey the law of whatever country you are currently occupying, even if the rule is bad shit crazy, actually especially if the rule is bat shit crazy. There are plenty of people who have done nothing wrong who would be arrested if they step foot in China, but that doesn’t really bother anyone because they don’t step foot in China.
Also it would be interesting to see what they would even be charged with, since offcom don’t really have authority to issue arrest warrants. Ofcom barely have the authority to enforce UK law in the UK. Otherwise the likes of GB news wouldn’t exist.
You have to obey the law of whatever country you are currently occupying.
They’re not “occupying” or even operating here. all the servers have been in Texas since 2008. The British gov are attempting to legislate feature implementations for companies that aren’t operating in britain. it’s ridiculous.
deleted by creator
Apparently they are operating in the UK though apparently they are selling some kind of pro service, so they are operating in the UK. To be clear it’s a stupid law, but it is the law.
It’s a process. They need to issue the fine first to give them a chance to pay rather than jumping to blocking it. If they continue to refuse to pay that’s where it’ll go.
The uk is irrelevant anyways. They will not be missed when they strengthen the Great Firewall rules
people exist here though :(
Then get your asses in order. If you have doubts, the French across ye pond taught pretty well how to use guillotines to achieve it. Didn’t you guys also have a mask guy do the same?
Then 4chan shouldn’t do business in the UK by selling 4chan passes there.
4chan should just block UK IPs. They already ban VPN IPs from posting, so obviously they have some infrastructure there to support that.
Not you again… genuinely convinced this user is a bot. He made this same argument a month ago on a now deleted post almost verbatim. I disputed his claims with evidence and they continuously moved the goalpost through the entire argument. either braindead or just software please ignore.
Then explain why you disagree instead of coming at them with ad-hominem.
Not who you replied to, but: there is no legal, ethical, or moral, requirement for a business of one country to comply with the laws of another. If there was, all business would be beholden to the most overbearing government on any one subject. And just to specifically state it before it’s brought up, being tied into the international banking system doesn’t change that; if a state doesn’t want its citizenry doing business with a particular entity, it’s on them to stop it on their side or come to an agreement with the other’s government. Which does happen, especially with the conglomerate hegemony of components of the international banking system, but naturally that means that the only time any entity of a state is forced to comply with the laws of another is when their home-state demands it, which ultimately isn’t the laws of the other.
Their payment processor is operating in the UK though. 4chan isn’t refusing money from UK residents. It is accepting their payments.
4Chan doesn’t have their own personal payment processor that they’re responsible for. They’re tied into processors like stripe and accept all payments that make it to them on the US side. So long as it is legal, which is typically the only way that a payment actually goes through as processors refuse the obviously illegal cases like encompassing embargoes. If the UK doesn’t want payments going to 4chan through a processor that operates in their country, it’s on them to stop the payment processor on their end.
The UK knows this, the fines are just one step towards them petitioning processors.
Why should that be their problem?
Because they’re doing business in that region. You don’t just get to go to another country and do business as you please there.
Isn’t it people in the UK that go to a US company and do business there?
Not with the internet. 4chan uses a payment processor that allows UK residents to pay with UK currency.
“Allows” - do they do anything specifically for the UK?
They allow UK residents to use a credit or debit card to pay for passes.
Maybe UK payments processors should bar purchases of 4chan passes then.
It’s an interesting idea that countries could only fine websites that operate in said country. Could get away with a lot by finding a permissive country to do what would otherwise be illegal and worth of fines.
“Selling user’s private information illegally? Buddy, Tuvalo don’t care”
That’s … how it works.
Nope lol, countries definitely try to fine websites not operated in the same country. Sometimes they’re just not succesful
Not just “sometimes”. The thing you’re looking for is “jurisdiction”. A country doesn’t have jurisdiction in another.
The comment I replied to talked about trying to fine websites based outside the respective country. Countries obviously still try that
If you’re ok with this then imagine your local lemmy instance getting fined by China/Qatar/Thailand/etc for posting something breaking their laws.
Flipside is EU trying to enforce GDPR and such
GDPR can only be enforced if the business wants to continue to do business in Europe. There are lots of non-European businesses that do not enforce GDPR rules but they can’t sell products or services in Europe.
But of course 4chan doesn’t sell any products or services anywhere, it’s not a business, so it’s a bit hard to see exactly how this could be enforced.
If they operate in China then it seems legit. If they don’t operate in China it’s a non issue.
This might be stupid, but the corollary of your statement is that a sovereign nation can’t impose laws on foreign business…
That what you want?
Yes. You can impose as much laws as you can enforce them. Don’t want your citizens to buy anything from me, stop shipments at your border. Want to stop payments, talk to your banks. Want to stop access to my servers, block them at your routers.
Why the fuck should I enforce your rules for you? You made them, you figure out how you will make them work.
you being the UK government, in this case.
You shouldn’t… As you said, how are they going to make you?
My server is in the corned of my bedroom. How the hell can I be operating in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Norway, or The UK if my bedroom is in none of those countries?
That’s kind of exactly my point? If China came to you and said you owe us fines, why would you voluntarily do so?
Unironically yes. Otherwise the internet as we know it is very much over, and what we have instead is a mesh of country-nets.
I mean, what is actually “doing business” when it comes a simple web page or a forum for example? Merely existing and being reachable.
Yeah, and a county could say “you can’t do business in our county anymore” and block them
A country can ban dildos, but they don’t get to tell a foreign factory they can’t make dildos. If an importer orders dildos anyways, that’s between the importer and customs. Which in this case the importer is the ISP
Otherwise the internet as we know it is very much over, and what we have instead is a mesh of country-nets.
which, TBH, doesn’t seem so bad to me. as an european, i’m personally sick of all the sick (as in, unwell) culture from america swapping over via the internet and poisoning people’s minds.
i mean, all the culture war is literally instigated by american capitalists to disrupt society and to disrupt the people’s coherence, to make them weaker and therefore easier to exploit.
If it wasn’t for continuous exposure to american influence, europe would long have drastic left-wing political reforms, i guess.
Oh yes, because it’s not like Nigel Farage, Victor Orban and a bunch of other populists didn’t make use of US companies and advisors (and russian funds…) on how to best fracture societies to their end. Clearly nuking the internet would put an end to that, and all would be well.
Why would a local Lemmy instance ever pay a fine to China?
Same way ofcom expects anyone outside UK to pay up, I guess.
4chan can be the first website blocked by the great firewalls of British cooking. potatoes and boiled cocks. not bad if im honest
Should Ofcom be labelled as a terrorist organisation ?
The global push for censorship is accelerating and not nearly enough people are woke to it.
So then… Potential arrest and imprisonment for 4chan for no proven damage. Meanwhile, Trump can visit the King.
Potential arrest and imprisonment for failing to pay the fine, you mean? That would be a proven damage, wouldn’t it?
Is it even possible for Ofcom to legally fine 4chan for these issues? How does a company in the UK fine a US company?
It works the same way they can fine domestic businesses: Pay up or we’ll stop you from doing any more business in this country.
In the context of a website like 4chan that means pay the fine or get blocked by every UK based ISP.
I don’t think that would deter any of their user base.
It isn’t really an US company for say. It just conveniently claims itself an US company. The servers probably are not in the US
The argument 4chan uses is laughable. “Freedom of speech of every American?” Tere is no such protection in the US right now.
No one is watching the news? Trump is killing freedom of speech. Anyone dares to advocate equality is getting fired or estorcised. All rainbow, trans or minority rights signs are being eliminated. Our rainbow sidewalk in my city was repainted. Diversity programs are dismantled. Any minority names program is being renamed. Less black people are being hired in the white house than ever.
Even now som states require you to prove your identity before your can log into Internet.
American invention? American right? Lol.
I agree, but letting a foreign government dictate what you can and cannot say on your site is dangerous. If 4chan capitulates then countless other sites are on the chopping block.
they don’t have that kind of money they can’t pay that shit are you nuts
Probably why they didn’t do it in the first place.
They barely pay for moderation. Who is going to pay for that survey? And also why would they? Obviously most of the people on that site are under 18. That’s when I used it.
What other demographic clicks the horny ads they run?
And they think 4chan ever complied with anything. How adorable!
The thing is, an indeterminable amount of users (and admins!) are feds, so despite giving the appearance of lawlessness, it’s actually fully compliant!
They have no way of making them pay.
