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.
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