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It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and

by gpm 1y ago

It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. Governments can do whatever they damn well please in their own territory. Including arresting you if you ever visit because you violated some law that they wrote that applies to people in the rest of the world, or even you violated some law that a friend of theirs (i.e. a country with an extradition treaty) wrote to apply to people in the rest of the world. If those actions compel people to spend their time, talent, or treasure to enforce their petty rules then they can do that. Whatever "actively reaching out" standard you are imagining doesn't exist in the first place. Even if it did though, you clearly violated it when you sent the reply to the request actively aware that it could go across borders. SCOTUS (with an emphasis on the US) decisions seem rather irrelevant to non-US actors.

Hizonner 1y ago
The US will enforce most UK court judgements. I'm not sure how administrative fines work; there might be a need to involve a court first, but once that's done the US will [on edit- may] enforce them. The US will not enforce UK judgements or fines if enforcing them is contrary to the US' own laws, including its Constitution. SCOTUS ultimately decides when that's the case. So it's really, really relevant to whether a non-US actor like Ofcom can actually collect fines from people inside the US. That's a separate question from what the UK government can do to people from the US who actually enter the UK, and an important one.
- gpm 1y ago
  Sure... I think it's pretty much a given that Ofcom expects the US won't help them enforce this law given the 1st amendment. That doesn't mean they won't/shouldn't do their best to do so by themselves..
  - hunterpayne 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - kelnos 1y ago
    > That doesn't mean they won't/shouldn't do their best to do so by themselves. If I were a UK citizen or resident, I'd probably be pretty pissed off that Ofcom was wasting money and resources on battles they are going to lose. Well, I suppose, since Ofcom is funded in large part by the UK-based businesses it regulates, if I were an officer, employee, or shareholder of one of those companies, I'd be pissed that they're wasting money paid by my company to fund them. And even though Ofcom is not directly a UK government agency, there are certainly political costs to tilting at windmills for the UK government.
kelnos 1y ago
> It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm not thinking about that at all. I do not care about that at all. I am not beholden to the laws of any other nation when I operate my website[0]. I don't care about "reaching out across borders". I don't event know the geographical origin of requests that hit my server, because I don't care, and I have no need or desire to hook up some sort of (error-prone) geoIP database to my logs in order to categorize requests. Once the HTTP response packets leave my server and hit the first router hop, I have no knowledge or interest in where they end up after that. > SCOTUS (with an emphasis on the US) decisions seem rather irrelevant to non-US actors. Not sure why you're bringing that up, as GP didn't mention SCOTUS at all. But as a US citizen and resident, SCOTUS' rulings are all that matter to me when it comes to what I personally do while at home. If SCOTUS says the content on my website is legal based on US law, then I don't really care whether or not it's legal in other countries[0, again], and I shouldn't really have to; life is too short to have to worry about that sort of thing. [0] Sure, I agree with you that this could be a problem for me if I do break any of their laws, and then later decide I want to visit that country. It could also be a problem if that country has an extradition treaty with mine, and my country is for some reason incentivized to give me up.
imtringued 1y ago
>that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. As mentioned in my previous reply, this isn't how the internet works. There is no teleportation or ICBM delivering the packets. There is infrastructure spanning borders and the infrastructure is the thing that is ignoring the laws. The infrastructure has accurate geographic knowledge about the physical connections. The webserver doesn't have that information at all and must infer it. From the perspective of the webserver, the physical world might not exist at all. There is no such thing that can be described as awareness from the website operators perspective. IP addresses do not encode geographic information. The entire point of the OSI layer model is that the higher layers know nothing about the lower layers nor do they know anything about the physical location of the nodes. Again, only the operator of the network has that information and the operator is located inside the UK. It is those network operators in the UK that are wilfully ignorant and aware of the things you claim a website operator from a far away country should be aware of. Just think about how ridiculous your comment is if you sued someone in the US from the UK and brought up their awareness. How would you prove that they knew the location of every single router and fiber cable the packets are traveling through? That's what you're arguing here. You're arguing that there is full and complete awareness.

by gpm 1y ago

Hizonner 1y ago

The US will enforce most UK court judgements. I'm not sure how administrative fines work; there might be a need to involve a court first, but once that's done the US will [on edit- may] enforce them. The US will not enforce UK judgements or fines if enforcing them is contrary to the US' own laws, including its Constitution. SCOTUS ultimately decides when that's the case. So it's really, really relevant to whether a non-US actor like Ofcom can actually collect fines from people inside the US. That's a separate question from what the UK government can do to people from the US who actually enter the UK, and an important one.

gpm 1y ago
Sure... I think it's pretty much a given that Ofcom expects the US won't help them enforce this law given the 1st amendment. That doesn't mean they won't/shouldn't do their best to do so by themselves..
- hunterpayne 1y ago
  [flagged]
- kelnos 1y ago
  > That doesn't mean they won't/shouldn't do their best to do so by themselves. If I were a UK citizen or resident, I'd probably be pretty pissed off that Ofcom was wasting money and resources on battles they are going to lose. Well, I suppose, since Ofcom is funded in large part by the UK-based businesses it regulates, if I were an officer, employee, or shareholder of one of those companies, I'd be pissed that they're wasting money paid by my company to fund them. And even though Ofcom is not directly a UK government agency, there are certainly political costs to tilting at windmills for the UK government.

kelnos 1y ago

> It is a reply... that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm not thinking about that at all. I do not care about that at all. I am not beholden to the laws of any other nation when I operate my website[0]. I don't care about "reaching out across borders". I don't event know the geographical origin of requests that hit my server, because I don't care, and I have no need or desire to hook up some sort of (error-prone) geoIP database to my logs in order to categorize requests. Once the HTTP response packets leave my server and hit the first router hop, I have no knowledge or interest in where they end up after that. > SCOTUS (with an emphasis on the US) decisions seem rather irrelevant to non-US actors. Not sure why you're bringing that up, as GP didn't mention SCOTUS at all. But as a US citizen and resident, SCOTUS' rulings are all that matter to me when it comes to what I personally do while at home. If SCOTUS says the content on my website is legal based on US law, then I don't really care whether or not it's legal in other countries[0, again], and I shouldn't really have to; life is too short to have to worry about that sort of thing. [0] Sure, I agree with you that this could be a problem for me if I do break any of their laws, and then later decide I want to visit that country. It could also be a problem if that country has an extradition treaty with mine, and my country is for some reason incentivized to give me up.

imtringued 1y ago

>that you chose to send despite being fully aware that by doing so you might be reaching out across borders because that's how the internet and your contracts with your service providers works. As mentioned in my previous reply, this isn't how the internet works. There is no teleportation or ICBM delivering the packets. There is infrastructure spanning borders and the infrastructure is the thing that is ignoring the laws. The infrastructure has accurate geographic knowledge about the physical connections. The webserver doesn't have that information at all and must infer it. From the perspective of the webserver, the physical world might not exist at all. There is no such thing that can be described as awareness from the website operators perspective. IP addresses do not encode geographic information. The entire point of the OSI layer model is that the higher layers know nothing about the lower layers nor do they know anything about the physical location of the nodes. Again, only the operator of the network has that information and the operator is located inside the UK. It is those network operators in the UK that are wilfully ignorant and aware of the things you claim a website operator from a far away country should be aware of. Just think about how ridiculous your comment is if you sued someone in the US from the UK and brought up their awareness. How would you prove that they knew the location of every single router and fiber cable the packets are traveling through? That's what you're arguing here. You're arguing that there is full and complete awareness.