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I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this... The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan

I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this... The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan is providing a service to UK people (a website you can access) and is not implementing the law. Ultimately the UK cannot enforce this law until money destined to/from 4Chan passes through the UK or people associated with the site visit UK territories. In practicality this law for the most part will just mean either websites block the UK or UK ISPs are forced to block websites. But this law was designed for the websites and platforms that will not be willing to do that as they make money off of UK citizens, such as Amazon/Facebook/Youtube/etc. If a website blocks UK users then the law doesn't apply as it is only concerned with protecting UK citizens. If a foreign company was shipping drugs or guns to UK children, or your choice of obvious contraband, then why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? This is how it has always worked and I am not seeing why this is a problem just because it's in the digital space.

HDThoreaun 1y ago
> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? Literally because the entity is not under the jurisdiction of the UK. The UK can force domestic companies to block the website but they cant force the website itself to do anything. The claims of fines against 4chan are therefore nonsensical. Probably just part of the legal proceedings prior to blocking the site I guess but still strange to see.
- flumpcakes 1y ago
  It does have 'jurisdiction' because it applies to the citizens: it is offering a service to UK citizens. If I had a website operated outside of the US, where you can download US citizens private medical records and phone conversations, I would be liable to breaking US law. If you do not want to be held accountable to a regions laws, then you do not offer a service to or deal with data that relates to that regions citizens. I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp. Jurisdiction does not imply enforceability. There are laws from your country that you can break while not even being in that country and be held accountable.
  - trothamel 1y ago
    Simply offering a service to UK citizens isn't enough to provide jurisdiction. If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand. That's what's happening here - a webserver is operating entirely out of the UK, with no nexus. UK citizens send requests to it - just like all other countries citizens do, so either the website would be covered by all laws or just the places where it has nexus. This is especially true in the US, where speech is strongly protected - making Ofcom's assertion that its regulation overrides the first amendment especially egregious. The UK government's behavior here is a bit shameful.
    - flumpcakes 1y ago
      > If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand. It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK. Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?
      - trhway 1y ago
        >Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal? Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal? I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200 countries and at any given moment, especially while online, you're probably violating some law of some country. Before internet globalization, the geography based jurisdiction was such an objective approach. Now it is more like "catch me if you can" which is obviously not a solid foundation to build on. Like that plane that had emergency landing in Minsk, and the Belorussian dissident flying on that plane was arrested by the Belorussian police. And many here on HN were critical of MBS when Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul - what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...
- wisty 1y ago
  Jurisdiction only applies within a sovereign country. If there's some dispute that crosses national lines, you don't call the International Bureau of Investigations to send International Agents in to drag the perp before the Planetary Supreme Court.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  "Offering to" is a nonsense term. The website exists on the open internet regardless of jurisdictional borders. A UK citizen must actively go to the website, initiating a connection from within the UK and requesting data from an IP address that may or may not have some kind of relationship with geography. 4Chan isn't popping up unbidden on people's phones. Wither a UK citizen chooses to visit a website is no business of the website operator. To say that 4Chan is somehow responsible for the actions of unknowably many private citizens is absurd. If the UK wants to enforce internet censorship within their borders, that's their own business. Putting pressure on wholly independent foreign businesses for the crime of existing is not reasonable. This is just as bad as US credit card companies censoring adult material from the entire global online economy. They're trying to censor large parts of the global internet for everyone, not just their citizens. If they cared about UK citizens so much, they'd do something like proactively blocking noncompliant websites to force them to immediately either comply or fuck off. They should be trying to protect their citizens instead of trying to bully foreign companies they have no jurisdiction over. It's their responsibility to enforce their laws, not the US courts.
- nprateem 1y ago
  Yeah this line of thinking worked really well for Assange
knorker 1y ago
> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? If I transmit insults of dear leader Kim Jung Un on amateur radio, then those radio waves will reach DPRK. I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power? Same reason my decree that guns are now banned in the US is not even refuted, but ignored. 4chan has no obligation or even reason to even respond to the UK except as entertainment (this reply was entertaining), and to send a message to the US that (in its opinion) the US government cooperating with the UK on this would be illegal by US law, the only law that matters to the US legal system. Other countries laws only matter insofar as they are allowed by US law. Foreign laws will not get US constitution bypass unless the US constitution itself allows it. It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy. All that US citizen cares about is to give a heads up to the US that "if these people come knocking, tell them to go fuck themselves". What is the UK government going to do, send bobbies over to attack 4chan owners with nerve gas on US soil? What's the alternative? I'm sure there are countries where it's illegal for women to show their faces on TV. Why wouldn't that country have the power to hold any website where women's faces are shown accountable? On a more depressing note, as is super clear in the US lately, crime is perfectly legal, if your friend (or POTUS you bribed) orders you to not be prosecuted. Or pardons you for being a drug kingpin and mobster ordering murders of innocent people (Ross Ulbricht). Power ultimately comes from the exercise of violence. The UK cannot exercise state violence on US soil. That's a US monopoly under very harsh penalty. On US soil only US law (or in the case of Trump, lawlessness) can de facto be exercised. Also, from their reply: > The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student. Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws? If POTUS orders that taking $50k in cash as a bribe is not to be prosecuted, then you won't be prosecuted.
- flumpcakes 1y ago
  I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability. I agree with the gist of your argument though, the UK cannot _force_ a US only company, but it doesn't change the fact it is breaking UK law. > I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power? They do as a sovereign nation. But what most people seem to be missing is that you're not going to DPRK and the US Government doesn't care so you can go about your life breaking DPRK law as much as you want.
estimator7292 1y ago
Putting the burden on site operators to geoblock UK users is not only placing an incredible burden on individual operators, it doesn't even work. It is not the responsibility of foreign companies to enforce or even acknowledged the UK's laws. If the UK has a problem, they have tools to solve it on their own soil. If they want to enforce their laws they need to pay for it. The UK is trying to bully and scare foreign website operators regardless of scale or type of business into paying to enforce UK laws outside of the UK. If they want a website blocked, the only way to make that work is to block it and pay for it themselves.
- james_in_the_uk 1y ago
  Relevant here is that 4Chan appears to explicitly target the UK users for commercial purposes, and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil. Whether one agrees with the policy aims of the OSA or not, there are some complex jurisdictional and enforceability issues at play here. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as you make out.
  - inkyoto 1y ago
    > […] and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil. Still, not quite. Servers in the UK ≠ targeting the UK – courts on both sides of the pond will ask whether the operator directed activity at the forum. Merely serving content from UK edge nodes because a CDN optimises latency is usually incidental and does not, by itself, show a «manifest intent» to engage with UK users. There is an established precedent in the US[0]. If a UK-established CDN processes personal data at UK nodes, the CDN itself may be subject to UK GDPR. That does not automatically drag a non-UK website operator into UK GDPR unless it offers services to or monitors people in the UK. Accessibility or passive CDN caching alone is insufficient. And modern UK statutes mirror this; for example, the Online Safety Act bites where a service has a significant number of UK users or targets the UK – not simply because a CDN happens to serve from UK equipment. From the horse's mouth: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/guide-for-services?language=en https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... Then there is a nuance – explictly configured Cloudflare (1) vs automatic «nearest-edge» (2) selection: 1. Explicit UK-favouring config (for example, rules that prioritise UK-only promotions, UK-specific routing or features tailored for UK users) is a relevant signal of targeting, especially when combined with other indications such as UK currency, UK-specific T&C's, UK marketing or support. In EU/UK consumer cases the test is whether the site is directed to the state – a holistic, fact-sensitive enquiry where no single factor is decisive. 2. Automatic «nearest-edge» selection provided by a CDN by default is a weak signal. It shows global optimisation, not purposeful availment of the UK market. US targeting cases say much the same: you need directed electronic activity with intent to interact in the forum; mere accessibility and generic infrastructure choices are not enough. [0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293/707/521921/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293...

HDThoreaun 1y ago

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? Literally because the entity is not under the jurisdiction of the UK. The UK can force domestic companies to block the website but they cant force the website itself to do anything. The claims of fines against 4chan are therefore nonsensical. Probably just part of the legal proceedings prior to blocking the site I guess but still strange to see.

flumpcakes 1y ago
It does have 'jurisdiction' because it applies to the citizens: it is offering a service to UK citizens. If I had a website operated outside of the US, where you can download US citizens private medical records and phone conversations, I would be liable to breaking US law. If you do not want to be held accountable to a regions laws, then you do not offer a service to or deal with data that relates to that regions citizens. I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp. Jurisdiction does not imply enforceability. There are laws from your country that you can break while not even being in that country and be held accountable.
- trothamel 1y ago
  Simply offering a service to UK citizens isn't enough to provide jurisdiction. If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand. That's what's happening here - a webserver is operating entirely out of the UK, with no nexus. UK citizens send requests to it - just like all other countries citizens do, so either the website would be covered by all laws or just the places where it has nexus. This is especially true in the US, where speech is strongly protected - making Ofcom's assertion that its regulation overrides the first amendment especially egregious. The UK government's behavior here is a bit shameful.
  - flumpcakes 1y ago
    > If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand. It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK. Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?
    - trhway 1y ago
      >Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal? Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal? I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200 countries and at any given moment, especially while online, you're probably violating some law of some country. Before internet globalization, the geography based jurisdiction was such an objective approach. Now it is more like "catch me if you can" which is obviously not a solid foundation to build on. Like that plane that had emergency landing in Minsk, and the Belorussian dissident flying on that plane was arrested by the Belorussian police. And many here on HN were critical of MBS when Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul - what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...
wisty 1y ago
Jurisdiction only applies within a sovereign country. If there's some dispute that crosses national lines, you don't call the International Bureau of Investigations to send International Agents in to drag the perp before the Planetary Supreme Court.
estimator7292 1y ago
"Offering to" is a nonsense term. The website exists on the open internet regardless of jurisdictional borders. A UK citizen must actively go to the website, initiating a connection from within the UK and requesting data from an IP address that may or may not have some kind of relationship with geography. 4Chan isn't popping up unbidden on people's phones. Wither a UK citizen chooses to visit a website is no business of the website operator. To say that 4Chan is somehow responsible for the actions of unknowably many private citizens is absurd. If the UK wants to enforce internet censorship within their borders, that's their own business. Putting pressure on wholly independent foreign businesses for the crime of existing is not reasonable. This is just as bad as US credit card companies censoring adult material from the entire global online economy. They're trying to censor large parts of the global internet for everyone, not just their citizens. If they cared about UK citizens so much, they'd do something like proactively blocking noncompliant websites to force them to immediately either comply or fuck off. They should be trying to protect their citizens instead of trying to bully foreign companies they have no jurisdiction over. It's their responsibility to enforce their laws, not the US courts.
nprateem 1y ago
Yeah this line of thinking worked really well for Assange

knorker 1y ago

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? If I transmit insults of dear leader Kim Jung Un on amateur radio, then those radio waves will reach DPRK. I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power? Same reason my decree that guns are now banned in the US is not even refuted, but ignored. 4chan has no obligation or even reason to even respond to the UK except as entertainment (this reply was entertaining), and to send a message to the US that (in its opinion) the US government cooperating with the UK on this would be illegal by US law, the only law that matters to the US legal system. Other countries laws only matter insofar as they are allowed by US law. Foreign laws will not get US constitution bypass unless the US constitution itself allows it. It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy. All that US citizen cares about is to give a heads up to the US that "if these people come knocking, tell them to go fuck themselves". What is the UK government going to do, send bobbies over to attack 4chan owners with nerve gas on US soil? What's the alternative? I'm sure there are countries where it's illegal for women to show their faces on TV. Why wouldn't that country have the power to hold any website where women's faces are shown accountable? On a more depressing note, as is super clear in the US lately, crime is perfectly legal, if your friend (or POTUS you bribed) orders you to not be prosecuted. Or pardons you for being a drug kingpin and mobster ordering murders of innocent people (Ross Ulbricht). Power ultimately comes from the exercise of violence. The UK cannot exercise state violence on US soil. That's a US monopoly under very harsh penalty. On US soil only US law (or in the case of Trump, lawlessness) can de facto be exercised. Also, from their reply: > The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student. Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws? If POTUS orders that taking $50k in cash as a bribe is not to be prosecuted, then you won't be prosecuted.

flumpcakes 1y ago
I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability. I agree with the gist of your argument though, the UK cannot _force_ a US only company, but it doesn't change the fact it is breaking UK law. > I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power? They do as a sovereign nation. But what most people seem to be missing is that you're not going to DPRK and the US Government doesn't care so you can go about your life breaking DPRK law as much as you want.

estimator7292 1y ago

Putting the burden on site operators to geoblock UK users is not only placing an incredible burden on individual operators, it doesn't even work. It is not the responsibility of foreign companies to enforce or even acknowledged the UK's laws. If the UK has a problem, they have tools to solve it on their own soil. If they want to enforce their laws they need to pay for it. The UK is trying to bully and scare foreign website operators regardless of scale or type of business into paying to enforce UK laws outside of the UK. If they want a website blocked, the only way to make that work is to block it and pay for it themselves.

james_in_the_uk 1y ago
Relevant here is that 4Chan appears to explicitly target the UK users for commercial purposes, and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil. Whether one agrees with the policy aims of the OSA or not, there are some complex jurisdictional and enforceability issues at play here. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as you make out.
- inkyoto 1y ago
  > […] and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil. Still, not quite. Servers in the UK ≠ targeting the UK – courts on both sides of the pond will ask whether the operator directed activity at the forum. Merely serving content from UK edge nodes because a CDN optimises latency is usually incidental and does not, by itself, show a «manifest intent» to engage with UK users. There is an established precedent in the US[0]. If a UK-established CDN processes personal data at UK nodes, the CDN itself may be subject to UK GDPR. That does not automatically drag a non-UK website operator into UK GDPR unless it offers services to or monitors people in the UK. Accessibility or passive CDN caching alone is insufficient. And modern UK statutes mirror this; for example, the Online Safety Act bites where a service has a significant number of UK users or targets the UK – not simply because a CDN happens to serve from UK equipment. From the horse's mouth: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/guide-for-services?language=en https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... Then there is a nuance – explictly configured Cloudflare (1) vs automatic «nearest-edge» (2) selection: 1. Explicit UK-favouring config (for example, rules that prioritise UK-only promotions, UK-specific routing or features tailored for UK users) is a relevant signal of targeting, especially when combined with other indications such as UK currency, UK-specific T&C's, UK marketing or support. In EU/UK consumer cases the test is whether the site is directed to the state – a holistic, fact-sensitive enquiry where no single factor is decisive. 2. Automatic «nearest-edge» selection provided by a CDN by default is a weak signal. It shows global optimisation, not purposeful availment of the UK market. US targeting cases say much the same: you need directed electronic activity with intent to interact in the forum; mere accessibility and generic infrastructure choices are not enough. [0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293/707/521921/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293...