cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35889767
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BYRNE & STORM, P.C.
ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW
Re: Statement Regarding Ofcom’s Reported Provisional Notice - 4chan Community Support LLC
Byrne & Storm, P.C. ( @ByrneStorm ) and Coleman Law, P.C. ( @RonColeman ) represent 4chan Community Support LLC (“4chan”).
According to press reports, the U.K. Office of Communications (“Ofcom”) has issued a provisional notice under the Online Safety Act alleging a contravention by 4chan and indicating an intention to impose a penalty of £20,000, plus daily penalties thereafter.
4chan is a United States company, incorporated in Delaware, with no establishment, assets, or operations in the United Kingdom. Any attempt to impose or enforce a penalty against 4chan will be resisted in U.S. federal court.
American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an e-mail. Under settled principles of U.S. law, American courts will not enforce foreign penal fines or censorship codes.
If necessary, we will seek appropriate relief in U.S. federal court to confirm these principles.
United States federal authorities have been briefed on this matter.
The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was reportedly warned by the White House to cease targeting Americans with U.K. censorship codes (according to reporting in the Telegraph on July 30th).
Despite these warnings, Ofcom continues its illegal campaign of harassment against American technology firms. A political solution to this matter is urgently required and that solution must come from the highest levels of American government.
We call on the Trump Administration to invoke all diplomatic and legal levers available to the United States to protect American companies from extraterritorial censorship mandates.
Our client reserves all rights.
Actually they do if they serves traffic to the UK.
By that token, I could start my own private Island nation, make some batty rules, log into a site, and demand a bajillion dollars because my laws say so.
Internet doesn’t work that way, access is not presence of operations.
4chan can also tell the UK to get fucked
Some countries already do (See fines from Russia to Google), but the compagnies don’t have to operate in those countries and can choose to not serve traffic to IPs from that country.
GeoIP fencing is an eternal whack-a-mole, I’ve had to track down issues where a site owned by MS was blocked because they bought some public IP space previously owned by countries the client blocks.
In the end you have countries trying to get a piece of the pie from a company that they have no ties to but being unwilling to upset the people living there by taking an effort to block it. If they think the company is behaving incorrectly then it’s on them to deny access to their citizens that they have to answer to.
A company can’t reasonably decide which jurisdictions and IPs it should serve at any given time. If I don’t want a site in my house I don’t petition them to block my IP.
Yes they can, intelligence/network compagnies like spur even sell this service, but I give it to you that as an individual it may not be a trivial task.
Ok, so badly phrased, yes companies will do geo fencing principally for security threat containment. If a company has no means to serve customers in a region they may also block access to avoid people making orders that can’t be fulfilled.
Denying service that they functionally can perform because of the whims of politicians and politically minded actors is a foolish behavior though. Every place on earth has some wing of society that would prefer isolationist and ultra conservative practices, to self censor to the lowest common denominator is going to only push away those users who aren’t zealots.
I’m not debating the legitimacy of the law, just the technical feasibility for big compagnies to do it
Not under US law & I say this as a Brit, the UK is massively overstepping their authority at this point. If you’re going to ban it then ban it, imposing fines on very vague legislation is a load of BS.
US law does not cover privacy like GDPR, however compagnies still have to comply with GDPR if they process EU data. Same logic apply here. Also 4chan running to cry to the feds is quite hilarious
In strict legal definitions that’s slightly different due to it handling defined personal data, how its processed and where its located rather than merely “Significant number of UK users accessing the site”. GDPR is also very well written and quite clear unlike the OSA which is vague, with a enforcer that’s already pretty infamous in the UK for being somewhat loopy in how they operate. Under US law and frankly international business law ofcom has pretty much zero mandate to demand what they are demanding of a entirely US domiciled company. Most matters of GDPR in regards to a foreign company will apply to companies with infra and a presence in the EU anyways.
What the UK says here pretty much doesn’t matter in any way shape or form, and if they’re going to ban it then ban it already rather than chasing around with fines and paperwork. I’d still rather this wasn’t happening as the OSA is a massive steaming turd of a law that’ll merely be used to suppress speech.
But yes technically if Hiroyuki Nishimura stepped foot in the UK he might wind up with some flak from it but beyond that this is just posturing.
They say comply or get blocked, we know what is the next step
Aye probs a DNS level block. Either way potato potatø the OSA is a disturbing authoritarian mess of a law, some absolute idiots in government are now advocating to begin gunning for VPNs as well : (.
While I agree with you on the stupidity of the law, Americans company should not get away with not respecting local laws in country they do operate, like in the EU. An example is the fair usage law that is completely ignored by American company.
Mostly agree on the principle but I’ll admit I am so rabidly against this heap of a law I’ll support virtually any site or entity that goes against it. Mark my words this shite will be used to begin targeting sexual minorities given the UKs track record of being TERF island.
While I understand the struggle, I would be careful not to taint the movement by aligning with money grabbers that don’t really care about the fight, just their bottom line. Especially when it’s 4Chan running to the feds 🤣
It doesn’t matter where they “serve traffic”. They do not operate in the EU and thus are not subject to EU law.
The UK is not EU.
They were very clear about that.
Great, they don’t operate in the UK either.
In case of GDPR, this is not true and compagnies are subject to this EU law if they process EU citizens’ personal data. Wether they comply or can be prosecuted is another thing https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
The EU can publish all the laws and articles they want. They have no authority to enforce them.
It’s another debate, but countries do have the authority to enforce their laws on their sovereign scope, which include network infrastructure located in the country, used to transport traffic from foreign compagnies.
How do you suppose they’re going to use network infrastructure to impose fines?
A fine is one possible sanction, imposing local network infrastructure to not carry your traffic is another one that can be used as a leverage to get the fine or to force to compliance a company.
They can block network traffic all they want, they still have no legal mechanism to enforce a fine.
A fine is just a took to force compliance. The company hosted outside of the justification is free to ignore the fine, but they should not expect the government to facilitate their operations within their jurisdiction, and thus apply additional sanctions
I’m going to argue that it’s a little of both. While I doubt Ofcom have much chance being able to actually recover money through legal channels because of US constitutional amendments, they must have thought about this and the next step is likely to be an even more draconian “great firewall of britain” moment. Which of course will likely be equally as trivial to bypass as the age verification so…