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.
4chan’s actual legal response to this can be summarized as “We are incorporated in Delaware which has not been subject to UK law since 1783. See the Treaty of Paris”.
I have never seen this. It is on my list now
Gone
4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
I wanna see how a website would be sent to jail.
Clearly they’re after the notorious hacker known as 4chan
All 4 of them face charges.
I see you never downloaded a car before.
They could go after the owner. I believe he lives in Japan, all the UK has to do is send an extradition request to the Japanese government, bing bang boom all done.
Which they would laugh at. Even the Chinese government would laugh at such a request. It isn’t something that is considered universally a crime, like robbery and murder, but the type of shit they are asking for is so fucking unprecedented and unreasonable it’s stupid.
It would be like if the UK demanded that France immediately extradite all legal handgun owners in France (where handguns are legal) because it is a crime to possess one in Great Britain and therefore they are criminals. Makes no sense.
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.
British government 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. It’s like banning a book and then getting mad at the author when one of your citizens buys one on holiday and brings it back with them
Salman Rushdie: First time?
Pretty sure 4chan is Japanese owned now so I’m confused. I guess they still operate out of the USA. Idk. Currently owned by Hiroyuki Nishimura, who also owns 2channel. He acquired 4chan from Christopher Poole 2015. Good Smile Company is a major investor but he’s still in charge.
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.
You probably don’t want Iran to have jurisdiction over your dot-com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Iran.[2] The list of crimes punishable by death includes murder; rape; child molestation; homosexuality; drug trafficking; armed robbery; kidnapping; terrorism; burglary; incest; fornication; adultery; sodomy; sexual misconduct; prostitution;[3][4] plotting to overthrow the Islamic government; political dissidence; sabotage; arson; rebellion; apostasy; blasphemy; extortion; counterfeiting; smuggling; recidivist consumption of alcohol; producing or preparing food, drink, cosmetics, or sanitary items that lead to death when consumed or used; producing and publishing pornography; using pornographic materials to solicit sex; capital perjury; recidivist theft; certain military offences (e. g., cowardice, assisting the enemy); “waging war against God”; “spreading corruption on Earth”; espionage; and treason.[5][6] Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016,[7] and at least 507 executions in 2017.[8] In 2018 there were at least 249 executions, at least 273 in 2019, at least 246 in 2020, at least 290 in 2021, at least 553 in 2022, at least 834 in 2023,[9] and at least 901 executions in 2024.[10] In 2023, Iran was responsible for 74% of all recorded executions in the world, with the UN confirming that at least 40 people were executed in one week in 2024.
Frankly, 4chan users or operators would probably have violated some of those, were they under jurisdiction of Iranian law.
I think that’s what @ArmchairAce1944 was getting at
Yeah, not disagreeing with him.
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
The UK had a Brexit just so they could leave the EU.
Ignoring that the UK isn’t part of the EU, the EUs privacy laws extend to all European citizens, and it has treaties with most of the world (including the US) allowing it to enforce those.
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.
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!
Imagine running a website for 20 years, changing absolutely nothing, and one day you’re being targeted because someone else on the other side of the planet changed something at their end.
Tell them to piss off.
They’ll come after your phpbb instance next.
“Block us 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… attached with a photo of tubgirl or something for the classic lawls.
Ok I wish I did not search for tubgirl now
i will learn from your mistake
They have no way of making them pay.
Million is spelled with a M
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)
Actually they should close that loophole.
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.
It’s selling 4chan passes, yeah it’s a thing unfortunately
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?
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?
That’s kind of exactly my point? If China came to you and said you owe us fines, why would you voluntarily do so?
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.
You shouldn’t… As you said, how are they going to make you?
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.
Yeah, and a county could say “you can’t do business in our county anymore” and block them
A country can ban dildos, but they don’t get to tell a foreign factory they can’t make dildos. If an importer orders dildos anyways, that’s between the importer and customs. Which in this case the importer is the ISP
Otherwise the internet as we know it is very much over, and what we have instead is a mesh of country-nets.
which, TBH, doesn’t seem so bad to me. as an european, i’m personally sick of all the sick (as in, unwell) culture from america swapping over via the internet and poisoning people’s minds.
i mean, all the culture war is literally instigated by american capitalists to disrupt society and to disrupt the people’s coherence, to make them weaker and therefore easier to exploit.
If it wasn’t for continuous exposure to american influence, europe would long have drastic left-wing political reforms, i guess.
Oh yes, because it’s not like Nigel Farage, Victor Orban and a bunch of other populists didn’t make use of US companies and advisors (and russian funds…) on how to best fracture societies to their end. Clearly nuking the internet would put an end to that, and all would be well.
Why would a local Lemmy instance ever pay a fine to China?
Same way ofcom expects anyone outside UK to pay up, I guess.
The global push for censorship is accelerating and not nearly enough people are woke to it.
So then… Potential arrest and imprisonment for 4chan for no proven damage. Meanwhile, Trump can visit the King.
Potential arrest and imprisonment for failing to pay the fine, you mean? That would be a proven damage, wouldn’t it?
This is a case of stupid laws that still don’t understand the internet (35+ years in to wide use, mofos)
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.
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.
By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.
No. Every ad platform out there has the advertiser choose what region to advertise in. Nobody wants to pay to advertise in countries where they don’t sell their products.
And as a website you don’t deal with any of that, you just implement an ad platform’s ad window and they serve whatever regional ads are relevant to your visitors. So yes, practically all websites with advertising would be operating in every country worldwide, by your logic.
Again you’re just factually wrong. The website operator has a wide degree of control over what can appear on their site in the admin panel. They even have the choice of which platform to go with if they don’t. And even if they didn’t, it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
it’s still an argument that relies on “everyone does it ergo it must be ok”, which wouldn’t stand on its own terms either.
Given that’s how the entire Internet works, it does stand on its own terms. The UK isn’t influential enough to force the entire Internet to follow suit. They can take it or leave it.
Great analogy.
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.
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.
They were defanged many years ago by the new owners and raiding is banned.
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 unworkable 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.
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”.
That would amongst other things neatly explain why they went around and implemented the stupid law.
It also doesn’t help that they’re being advised by people who don’t understand the world anymore and who’s last real contribution was probably in the 1970s. The fact that they can’t even capitalise on the fact that Boris Johnson has been found guilty of misappropriation of government funds is just ridiculous and shows how incompetent they are as politicians.
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.
Th US has taken it to step further. Somehow they’ve managed to convince a significant junk of the population that a tariff is not a tax, and that the tariff is paid by the importing country, even though that’s not how tariffs work. They don’t require reality to actually do anything, they just require the populace to be mind numbingly stupid. Fortunately, they are.
It’s pretty ironic, the United States was founded on the back of unfair taxation, and yet financial literacy is probably lower in the US than it is in any other country in the world.
I remind people as much as possible that it is essentially a federal sales tax.
Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts.
You mean lobbyists?
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.
They’re retiring or dying of old age soon, they think now’s the time to shit all over the floor and trash the place.
They’re retiring
Retirement is when it’s about time to get into big politics. Most politicians on higher levels are 60+ y.o.
Well, death makes exceptions for no one, so
UK cabinet is mainly GenXers. I didn’t count exactly, but Boomers still seem to outnumber Millennials. Definitely on the way out, though.
I wouldn’t mind the politicians from 30 years ago, who stayed away from this bullshit.
The UK didn’t ban leaded petrol until 1999 meaning most millenials will suffer from the boomer-loony disease as they were poisoned during their childhood.
Let’s also not forget that fuel for light aircraft still contains lead :/
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
