Submitted 17 hours ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
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.
So then… Potential arrest and imprisonment for 4chan for no proven damage. Meanwhile, Trump can visit the King.
British company 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
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.
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
The UK hasn’t been part of the EU for a long ass time. Have you been living under a rock?
Ofcom, famously a part of EU since brexit
4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
I wanna see how a whole website would be sent to jail.
Clearly they’re after the notorious hacker known as 4chan
The global push for censorship is accelerating and not nearly enough people are woke to it.
This is a case of stupid laws that still don’t understand the internet.
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.
Blocking america as a whole would do the uk some good tbh
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.
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.
The boomers are not on their way out. We have the exact same politicians in power that we had 30 fucking years ago.
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 on workable 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.
Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts.
You mean lobbyists?
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”.
were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.
Which is exactly what they have done with tariffs in the US.
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.
Great analogy.
Is it even possible for Ofcom to legally fine 4chan for these issues? How does a company in the UK fine a US company?
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.
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.
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.
Bilateral agreements may exist.
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.
Fine the phone company for allowing calls they don’t like.
Fuck yes, fine the phone companies who allow these spoofed phone number scammers to reach me. (/s… Mostly)
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.
Gross Domestic… Projekt Red?
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?
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.
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.
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?
Why would a local Lemmy instance ever pay a fine to China?
Imagine running a website for 20 years, changing absolutely nothing, and one day you’re being tageted because someone else on the other side of the planet changed something at their end.
Tell them to piss off.
“Block us in your country 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.
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
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.
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.
Then 4chan shouldn’t do business in the UK by selling 4chan passes there.
4chan should just block UK IPs.
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.
Why should that be their problem?
Imagine for a moment that 4chan is a business that sells alcoholic beverages in the US. Now imagine the UK has instituted prohibition and banned the consumption of alcohol.
now, some enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to buy, smuggle, and then sell those beverages inside the UK.
Clearly, the government has intended to ban the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of it.
Now the UK government is trying to shackle hefty fines against an American company for having the “audacity” of selling a product to an individual within the confines of the US.
again, the UK banned the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of. 4Chan isn’t forcing UK citizens to drink the alcohol. They are simply selling the product, within their country of origin, to individuals who want to purchase it.
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly “protected”?
Noooo the britbong threads
The uk is irrelevant anyways. They will not be missed when they strengthen the Great Firewall rules
people exist here though :(
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
4chan is likely using this to take it to the courts.
hope they write their legal battle in green txt
be me American’t social mediatard Britbongs demand money Notmyproblem.png
be me
mfw
The defense rests.
4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
You don’t want to be locked in a small cell with 4chan for two years.
“I’m not stuck here with you. You’re stuck here with me!”
You don’t want to be locked in a small cell with 4chan for two years.
Not again.
They’ll never control the hacker known as 4chan
I think 4chan is a pretty cool guy. Eh gets fined by the UK and doesn’t afraid of anything.
I have never seen this. It is on my list now
And they think 4chan ever complied with anything. How adorable!
They do though, 4chan complies with US laws and regulations. They regularly hand over logs to various US agencies.
The thing is, an indeterminable amount of users (and admins!) are feds, so despite giving the appearance of lawlessness, it’s actually fully compliant!
Million is spelled with a M
4chan makes that much money?!?
They do, at least a little. You can pay for a subscription to get rid of the captcha before posting.
At least a little?
According to this article they pull in 230 million a year. For a shitty forum that looks like it’s run on 1995 tech
I wonder if Ofcom’s true goal is banning 4chan from the UK and if this is a just required part of the legal process for a ban…
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 15 minutes ago
They have no way of making them pay.