This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.<p>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?<p>This quote from the court is amazing:<p>> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution<p>Indeed. Who could have predicted this?<p>Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
The write-up from the lawyers is unintentionally hilarious<p>1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-4chans-case-against-britains-media-regulator-2026-09-16/_" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...</a><p>The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.<p>2. The judge's comments were <i>obiter dicta</i> observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.<p>We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:<p>Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here<p>They have tariffs on foreign double standards because it's a key export business.
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.<p>There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.<p>The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.<p>Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.<p>Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.<p>The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.<p>If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <<a href="https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ-2026-90.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...</a>><p>Or how about the FBI declaring that parents at PTA meetings as “domestic terrorists”? Or targeting the Catholic church as an “extremist organization”?
> That’s incitement to violence<p>While actual incitement to violence isn't protected speech, that wasn't even close to incitement to violence, which requires meeting three prongs clearly defined by SCOTUS.<p>I encourage you to review actual statements which SCOTUS has previously ruled are NOT incitement to violence. It's so incredibly narrow and particular, I was left wondering if <i>anything</i> can meet the definition. Jimmy Kimmel is so far from it your assertion is ludicrous.
Praising a murderer for committing a murder is not incitement and is protected speech. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech loses protection only if it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce it. A comment on a murder after the fact can’t meet this standard unless the comment is “go do another murder right now!”<p>Kimmel also did not praise the murderer. He implied (incorrectly as it turns out) that the killer was right-wing.<p>Your misstatements of the well-known facts and law in this case cast doubt on the effort you put into researching the other issues mentioned.
> There are no book bans in the US. ...<p>Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books that taught slavery was bad, revoked tenure and fired all teachers who were reported teaching that slavery was bad. The new state-approved textbooks teach that slavery taught blacks useful skills and that there was violence on both sides.
> Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books<p>The books are not banned.<p>The public schools don't allow them, which is the case for many things.<p>Whether you agree with it or not, calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking" or "Florida banned pornography" because they're not allowed in schools.
> The public schools don't allow them<p>What's a word that means "forbidden from being included" or "disallowed"? I suspect most people believe the word "banned" is such a synonym, as does practically every dictionary out there.<p>> Calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking"<p>No, it's not dumb. Children don't go to school for the purpose of getting drunk or smoking. They <i>do</i> go to school to learn things, including things that might be politically controversial or divisive.<p>You know what is dumb? Gatekeeping truthful information from being accessible to kids.
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.<p>2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.<p>American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.<p>Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.<p>I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.<p>Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
> Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country?<p>well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying
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> <i>Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.</i><p>You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
Donald Trump is currently suing the BBC for their speech.<p>In a UK court, of course.
It's a US federal court in Florida
<a href="https://share.google/j1xPrAt1Swvuec7bx" rel="nofollow">https://share.google/j1xPrAt1Swvuec7bx</a>
Not for any speech. For misleading cutting his speech together.
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While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.<p>While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
> While Ofcom were barmy to even try this<p>Quote from the article:<p>> Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused<p>Seems like Ofcom broadly got the result they wanted. A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
Standard regulator strategy: try to make the one thing you actually want to comply be the odd one out and then point at them going "but why not you too?" (The FTC do this as well).<p>4chan was absolutely the defining target of this wave of noise, but X is what really bothers the UK establishment.
The rest of them presumably wanted to continue doing business in the UK & did not want to IP-block the entire country.
How many of those organizations had business within Ofcoms jurisdiction? No one operating outside of their legal jurisdiction should have complied.
Presumably a decent chunk of those might now reconsider?
And also this only worked once, but in the future other entities getting sued now know they can just ignore it.
it depends on what those other orgs want.<p>Not being able to do business in (or, depending on how serious they are about enforcement action, visit) the UK is actually pretty constraining. It's understandable if other companies decided they would prefer to find a middle ground that lets them provide one face to the US and another to the UK, or even that they're not interested in 4chan-style maximalism and found it non-onerous to comply with the UK asks because they're pretty in-line with the site's existing standards (I'd have to see the list of sites that complied to have a real opinion on that part).
> A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.<p>The thing is, you can afford sticking the finger to the UK if you do not have any business interests there. A platform like 4chan won't be bothered even if the UK government says "all payments to be made towards 4chan for advertising are hereby seized until the fine is paid off". But places like Twitter or Meta, that derive millions if not billions of euros a year from the UK and European advertisers? Now that's a lot of money to lose, money that even American shareholders will complain about it being missing from the revenue sheet.
Did any of them move to a .onion? I would expect commercial sites to cave and some small sites to just move to Tor which probably accomplishes the same thing as far fewer people use the Tor Browser or Brave. I could also be delusional.
> there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't<p>In my comment I explained how countries, including the US, project their laws by imposing controls within their jurisdiction.<p>The weird part about this case is how they thought they could directly project their laws into another country in a way that overrides that country’s constitution, and they expected the other country to override their own constitution in agreement.<p>That’s not the same. This was something weirder, which is why there is speculation that it was designed to fail as a demonstration.
That's exactly what the US do though. We recently saw server seizures in Amsterdam, there is the US Cloud act and so on.<p>The US fundamentally disagrees with other countries on the limits of their own jurisdiction to include basically anything tangentially related to the US.<p>Again, I am far from anti-US but any outsider can see this for what it is: a one way street.
Why be far from anti-US if this is what the US does?
Was this in violation of the Netherlands constitution or just not explicitly illegal in Amsterdam? I don’t know the details or the incident you’re referencing, but there is generally a distinction.
Basic property rights. If they weren't breaking Dutch laws then the server shouldn't be seizable.<p>Let's see the Dutch get a US based server that is violating Dutch laws. It will never happen.
Were they actually not breaking Dutch laws? Around terrorism-related activities I would guess the laws are fairly similar across Western countries, partly due to 9/11. Speech regulation has been consistently different between the US and Europe, including the UK - the US even passed laws to refuse to enforce UK libel judgments 15 years ago after Americans became aware of their abusive effects.<p>If European countries banded together to direct their banks to offer services to the sanctioned ICC judges, for example, I think the US would back down on that - yes even under Trump, although there would be some bluster first.
A/I didn't break any laws at all, not even US ones. But the US president currently gets to override US laws, so they still committed a crime in the US despite not breaking any law, but even the US president doesn't have that power outside the US. No crime was committed in the Netherlands, nor in Italy. It's actually illegal in Italy for their Italian bank to keep A/I's money, since that's plain old theft - they're currently figuring out a way to give it back to them without triggering the mango.
maduro definitely wasnt breaking venesuelan law, as a clearer example, nor is Brazil's non-visa/mastercard payments system
European countries need to get off Mastercard/Visa and US Tech and Energy dependencies first, otherwise it's just a shakedown by the US every time they hit an external legal system.<p>// If European countries banded together to direct their banks to offer services to the sanctioned ICC judges, for example, I think the US would back down on that - yes even under Trump, although there would be some bluster first.<p>That's a very good way to force the Hague Invasion Act to manifest in some form or another.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...</a><p>Trump personally intervened when two US spooks were driving on the wrong side of the road in London, with the driver most likely on her phone, killed someone, and then fled the country.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn</a><p>Compare this with a hispanic american who severely injured someone in similar circumstances. Extradition granted and was convicted for a 32 month prison sentence in the UK.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y89k07we3o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y89k07we3o</a>
> That's a very good way to force the Hague Invasion Act to manifest in some form or another.<p>You may note from the title that this is the "American Service-Members' Protection Act".<p>The current attempt to destroy the ICC is not due to protection of American service members, but Israeli ones.<p>The admin is going after the court on the basis of it prosecuting American allies. However, America loses NATO if they were to invade over this.<p>The admin (and perhaps many in the country) might like to think they can go alone, but the US has a surprisingly poor record when it comes to fighting without allies.<p>While I'm sure Trump did his usual thing with regards to the death of Harry Dunn, "war crimes" is on a somewhat different scale to "dangerous driving".
This looks to be the case
<a href="https://decrypt.co/381296/terrifying-precedent-dutch-hand-us-data-from-seized-anti-fascist-server" rel="nofollow">https://decrypt.co/381296/terrifying-precedent-dutch-hand-us...</a><p>The servers were seized under a mutual legal enforcement agreement and it remains to be seen if it underwent a separate Dutch legal review.
Quite of a bit of legal footwork gets skipped when the “terrorism” charge is invoked.
But it looks like the servers are not being physically turned over, the disks are being imaged and that is what is being transferred.
The US also has laws imposing restrictions on institutions outside their borders/jurisdiction. FATCA for example.
But they do that via things in their control. For example, banks that don't follow FATCA cannot access the US banking system. It's rare for the US to send law enforcement to banks that don't comply<p>The UK would have been perfectly justified in saying 4chan can't access any of their systems.
Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.
As a US citizen, I'm inclined to agree.
The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.
Ofcom didn't "try this"<p>4chan is suing Ofcom, not the other way round.
Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.<p>4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.
That's not unique to their culture. Remember The Alamo? That was 190 years ago and we still celebrate our defeat.
Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
I thought the claims of Iran winning were based on Iran's opponent collapsing. But it's a very slow collapse, and still not definitive yet, but some people are extrapolating the trajectory, to see that at the current rate, Iran's enemy will fall long before Iran does.
I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive. So it is a victory of sorts so far: the US has not achieved its strategic goal of regime change, and Iran has managed to inflict a fair amount of pain in retaliation.<p>(You could say the Taliban were even more thoroughly 'defeated' in Afghanistan while the country was occupied by the US, but it can hardly be said that it was a victory for the US either, given what happened as soon as they left).
> I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive.<p>No it wasn't. If Iran's only goal is to survive then it would have made peace with the USA and surrounding Middle Eastern territories decades ago.<p>This whole war is happening because Iran had great political ambitions than just thriving on its own.<p>Iran has been funding proxy terrorist groups for a long time now, specifically because it is trying to achieve larger goals than just surviving.<p>And on those fronts, well those proxy groups have taken a ton of damage and aren't long for this world.
Their goals are to survive and control the strait of Ormuz. And they will do both because eventually the US will pull out, because to try to hold the strait is a financial drain. Just like Afghanistan. So it's a waiting game and everyone knows Iran will win. Orange man can say he won every day and after a year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years eventually the US will have to admit defeat.
> Their goals are to survive<p>As I just said before, if this was their only goal, they could have had it decades ago by choosing peace instead of funding proxy milita groups en mass.<p>The fact that they fund all they proxy groups shows that actually yes they have other goals beyond surviving (They they are quickly failing to achieve as their proxy groups get dismantled), and they are actually willing to risk war and risk their survival to attempt to achieve them.
Quite the contrary. It doesn't matter what Iran does: their crime is existing without being under the control of the US. The US installed a puppet regime in Iran in 1953, and had a powerful vassal in the middle east, close to the Soviet Union. They freed themselves in 1979, gaining control of their own resources, and the US never forgave them for it. The only way the US would have allowed them to go on existing without attacking would be for them to become slaves again.
They did make peace with the US. It was a whole thing, papers were signed, agreements were made, they pinky-promised to not make nukes, everyone walked away happy. Except the Israelis, who don't like their regional power status being challenged, and apparently Trump, who... didn't like that the Iranians gave up on their nuclear armament program?<p>Either way, the US and Iran were at peace right up until we decided to pull out of our disarmament treaty with them. And then executed a decapitation strike against them.
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?<p>Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.<p>Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.<p>Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
Maybe they weren't allowed to not try? Like adding Denuvo to your game doesn't stop piracy, but your investors will be angry if you don't make the (wasted) effort at due diligence.
I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.
I am surprised that <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/4102" rel="nofollow">https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/4102</a> was not cited.<p>It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
I actually wouldn’t have been shocked if other countries had helped, and the powers that be may regret enforcing their sovereignty here.<p>Countries used to enforce this at their borders (for foreign information) because it largely worked. They couldn’t stop 100% of the copies of the book, but they could stop there being enough copies for it to be part of the cultural zeitgeist (most of the time).<p>Not anymore. The companies don’t have a local HQ to harass, and the information doesn’t flow through infrastructure the government owns. They’ve pretty much entirely lost the ability to control the flow of information, and they’ve largely lost the ability to control its direction either with the fall of major news outlets.<p>I don’t think they have the support for a China-style great firewall, but I’m not British so maybe I’m wrong.<p>I think it’s a good thing information is set free, but I see why they tried it. It’s the only politically tenable way they had to try to keep that control.
No need gor a china-style great firewall. Just compel your local dns providers to stop resolving that website. That's what they do for copyright violations<p>Easy to circumvent ? Sure, but most people don't know how, so you've made the website inaccessible to the vast majority
I'm continually surprised there are no operating systems, not even Linux distros, that run their own resolvers by default.
The infrastructure is already in place for a global great firewall. One need only to compel Google and Cloudflare to block a site in their DNS and most of the planet will not be able to reach it.
>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?<p>Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.<p>Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?<p>Didn't the USA kidnap a president from another country from that country, just the other day?
The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always <i>obviously</i> never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.<p>By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.<p>Or they really are delusional. I dunno.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?<p>State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
>> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution<p>How this judgment do that?
They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<p>We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
> Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates<p>When something can be explained by both incompetence and conspiracy, the correct explanation is usually incompetence.
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?<p>Not European politicians.<p>You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.<p>Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
It’s largely political. Even the rank and file staff there agree that it’s nonsense, being done for appearances.
> they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?<p>Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.<p>Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities, have to declare compliance with US laws (FATCA) when opening a bank account in India with an Indian bank. This is enforced by the Indian government.
>Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities<p>That's just one handshake away from their <i>bank</i> which does have business with US and their dollaridos.
> Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.<p>The surprise is that Britain is a local backwater and the United States isn't. You can't throw your weight around if you don't have any weight.
The difference is that Britain is not a super power and has not been for a long time. There is only China and the US. All other western nations and many eastern ones are shells of what they once were.
In an ideal world, exclusively-US-based companies that host message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging services, and the like would look at this saga and<p>1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are <i>very</i> low<p>2) Notice that <i>4chan</i> is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story<p>Alas.
<i>Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector...</i><p>Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are <i>not</i> exclusively US based? Big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.
> Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are <i>not</i> exclusively US based?<p>That is <i>an</i> issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.<p>Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was <i>exclusively</i> about US-based companies.<p>And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be <i>far</i> less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
According to Discord's careers page, they're currently hiring people in the US, UK, Singapore, Portugal, and the Netherlands:<p><a href="https://discord.com/careers" rel="nofollow">https://discord.com/careers</a><p>They have a registered office in Schiphol:<p><a href="https://discord.com/company-information" rel="nofollow">https://discord.com/company-information</a><p>Discord <i>could</i> keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other companies it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
>It would rather pursue more business opportunities.<p>You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.
I'm commenting on how non-US laws may affect businesses, descriptively speaking, without prescriptively stating what I think that the law ought to be.<p>I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)<p>However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.
> They have a registered office in Schiphol:<p>Ah, I stand corrected. Discord has a branch office in the Netherlands. Thanks for the correction.<p>> Discord <i>could</i> keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.<p>As I said:<p><pre><code> And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be *far* less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
</code></pre>
Trampling on fundamental rights in order to chase marginally more money is neither admirable nor prosocial behavior.
Discord does business in the UK, Australia, and just about every other country of any relevance. It would be trivial for the UK courts to collect fines against them simply by ordering the payment processors handling payments for them in the UK to redirect those payments, for instance.<p>4chan is only reasonably immune from this because it's not really operating as a business...
Just bear in mind that many US states are implementing the so-called age verification laws, which will soon turn into identity verification laws. So simply being in the US doesn't protect them against having to comply with these things. Someone is going to have to fight the laws.
The main difference is that most of the big players have physical presence in the UK. You can't argue British law does not apply to you when you have a campus in Kings Cross.
4chan and Kiwi Farms (via Lolcow LLC), to be more specific.
Here's the thing though: nobody has to agree 4chan is the hero of the story. It's also reasonable to look at 4chan and say "Gross and legally correct is still gross" and let them soldier on alone.<p>You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to <i>all</i> subcultures. It doesn't say "First they came for the KKK." And, of course, it doesn't say "First they came for the Nazis."
> You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to <i>all</i> subcultures.<p>Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.<p>If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.<p>To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.
You’re just deploying the standard 4chan argument tactic of appealing to some supposed higher level of emotional maturity.<p>It was cute in 2004.
> scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.<p>And they got it. "I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." But that doesn't mean anyone needs feel sympathy for the devil. We're not obligated to cheer when the wretched hive of scum and villainy keeps its liquor license another year. The law was followed and we can move on.<p>> If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good<p>... It is usually the case when we're talking about 4chan (and always when talking about Kiwi Farms) that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for. 4chan's most positive benefit to society is as a litmus test for precisely <i>how</i> far the [xkcd-1357](<a href="https://xkcd.com/1357/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1357/</a>) principle goes. They are 100% welcome, per their freedom of the press (and the freedom of speech of their users), to host their website. On their infrastructure. With their own DOS protection. In a country that recognizes those rights and protects them. That's the system working as intended.
> ...that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for.<p>No? Saving a child from being swept away in a freezing river is an unalloyed good, no matter how terrible the scoundrel that did it.<p>Like I mentioned, it looks like you still have quite a lot of emotional maturity to develop.<p>(You might also benefit from checking out 4chan boards that <i>aren't</i> /b/, /pol/, and /gif/.)
The original German of the poem does say, at the final line, "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." That is, "When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest."<p>So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.<p>It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.<p>Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.<p>However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":<p>> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"<p>Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own.<p>So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.<p>See:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came</a><p>It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:<p>> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church#Aftermath" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church#Aftermath</a><p><a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marga_Meusel" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marga_Meusel</a>
> extend to all subcultures<p>> every voice of opposition to totalitarianism<p>Unless your definition of "opposition to totalitarianism" is very different from mine, I would hope it is transparent that the examples given in the comment you replied to are not such voices.
What of the wellbeing and interests of the vulnerable who stumble onto /b/ ill-equipped for the firehose? Are we their keepers also?<p>This may be one of those "not everyone gets to win everywhere" situations. And if I have to choose protecting 4chan vs. protecting children...<p>... I can see two positions on the topic which have merit. So it's a good thing there are separate nations to decide on different bars of safety.<p>I would have no problem with a world where 4chan is free to operate in the US and blocked in the UK. Different countries with different cultures.
This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE</a> (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
Here's the link to Parliament's own on-demand video: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c32e3478-65af-41b2-aa72-4d801cd52914" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c32e3478-65af-41b2-aa7...</a><p>I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.<p>For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:<p>- 22nd April 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88ba-a8aa8dc84be3" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88b...</a><p>- 3rd June 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e62-e5c1a40e0dbc" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e6...</a><p>- 10th June 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e9-57d5ca1bfc3a" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e...</a><p>- 15th July 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af69-64e3ad305879" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af6...</a><p>- 2nd September 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab5-0fac7546ab97" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab...</a><p>- 16th September 2026: <a href="https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-9229-6fcd78d5f28d" rel="nofollow">https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-922...</a>
Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitutional-safeguards/" rel="nofollow">https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...</a><p>Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
Failing to do anything constructive about the problems he’s identified is Cummings’ whole thing though.<p>He’s like an incompetent Cassandra: people keep on agreeing with his diagnoses, giving him power in the hope that he’ll fix things at which point he makes a complete hash of everything and leaves in a huff having made things worse than they were before.<p>If the right ever takes power in the UK in the near-ish future I expect us to go through exactly this cycle again. Cummings seems to be very bad at the politics of driving organisational change & making it stick, which is ironic given that criticising public bodies is what he spends so much of his time doing.
Sure, but even if he provides no solutions, providing insight into the problems is a worthwhile contribution.
Except that his grievances are <i>extremely</i> surface level.<p>For example, he claims that legal experts, regardless of their political leanings, agree that the small-boats crisis cannot be solved without primary-legislative changes to the Human Rights Act. Does he mention how the HRA is obstructive? No. Does he mention even one change to the HRA that would help? No. Does he mention the scale of changes required? No.<p>What's funny is that I'd actually use his HRA example as an example of our constitutional safeguards working exactly as intended: it's for Parliament to decide what our human rights are and their extent, not the whims of ministers. That the Prime Minister and Parliament are refusing to make those changes because they find them to be politically untenable is actually how a democratic system <i>ought</i> to work.<p>In fact, I'd summarise his testimony as him being irritated at constitutional safeguards working as intended. For example, he claimed that the biggest enemy to British Special Forces is not Russia, China, or Iran but the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence lawyers. <i>Oh no, our ministries are operating within the law! How terrible!</i> He seems to advocate for ministers and ministries to instead adopt an <i>'ask for forgiveness, not permission'</i> mindset with regards to the law, particularly given his testimony on how things were done during the chaos of the pandemic:<p>> <i>That led to some very big decisions inside No. 10 where, essentially, I said on behalf of the PM, for example, "Call the airlines. Commandeer the planes. Fly the planes to China. Pick up all our PPE. Fly back here. We don't care if the officials all say it's unlawful. If we don't get all this PPE back, God knows how many doctors and nurses are going to die as a consequence. Do it, and, if there's a judicial review that says it's all illegal, whatever, the PM will deal with that down the line".</i>
"parliamentlive.tv" doesn't sound any more reputable, but apparently it's official despite the foreign TLD!
Cummings is an absolute crank. He had the opportunity to try and he ended up failing spectacularly, like Liz Truss or Yannis Varoufakis.
He also talked with Dwarkesh Patel: <a href="https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dominic-cummings" rel="nofollow">https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dominic-cummings</a>
Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.
This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”
I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.<p>The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent?
They look pretty incompetent from my perspective.
Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.
There are examples of the apparently ineffective British state suddenly gaining some teeth and some competence when they actually care.<p>One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.<p>That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.<p>If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area
They already track everything going through the undersea cables, why couldn't they start blocking at those points?
Getting the raw data is relatively straightforward, but my understanding is doing real time DPI at country scale without being easily circumvented (and without breaking the rest of the internet you want to work) isn't so easy.<p>If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through
Splicing and mirroring a cable is about 10x easier than filtering it.
Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.<p>Just a recap how it happened in Russia:<p>1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8<p>2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.<p>3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).<p>4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).<p>5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).<p>6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.<p>7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).
That's already been done, on the ISP level, some time ago. For torrent sites and similar, if I remember correctly.
I'm pretty sure it was to protect the children, or fight terrorism, or to save the NHS, or lower taxes.
deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.
Likely yes IMO, especially since the UK is making moves to militarize.
Think of the kids the world we failed to protect by not having passport checks and government snitch at the 4chan login.<p>But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).<p>And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action-arrest-facebook-police-raid-b2811996.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action...</a>
> No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.<p>Does _not_ need to be foreign.<p>People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.<p>Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.<p>So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.<p>It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.
For some reason we keep forgetting to make it illegal school kids to have sex with adults too.<p>I thought the Russel Brand case might cause someone to ask why it's even legal for a grown man to pick a kid up from the school gates to have sex with them, but apparently not.<p>Would be nice if foreigners who raped 30+ kids could get more than 14 years in prison before we release them too.<p>I get the concern about kids on 4chan, but it just feels like such low priority that I'm surprised the government keep forgetting to tackle the more important stuff that's happening in real life.
> I wish them luck in that important work. In the meantime, we Americans have plenty more work to do on this side of the pond to protect our border and prevent the British, Australian, Russian, and other foreign censorship regimes from crossing it.<p>We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.<p>And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act
I think this is just one more case of “we thought we lived in Western Civilisation and all agreed on how to handle the problems of the world”. And we are discovering that we actually live in American Civilisation, and the differences are becoming insurmountable.<p>The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends
I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.<p>Though I guess we've already seen something similar in France with Telegram...
When European governments say they will lead in technology regulation, this is what they mean.
I'm not sure who the other three clients are,
But in the case of 4chan, people are also forgetting that it is well known to be an intel gathering and propaganda disseminating platform closely aligned if not run indirectly by the US government.
It's not blocked anywhere that much more tame sites are usually blocked, perhaps china is the only one I know of and even google is blocked there, and that makes me suspicious.
Yes there are organic users on there outside of the political places,
But many, especially those that are disgusted by the site, forget the very real impact that 4chan has had on current events, I just don't see any of this situation as organic.
Its adorable that the UK gov thought they could beat the internet.<p>The world wide web remains undefeated.
I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.<p>Though I guess we've already seen something similar in 2024 with France and Telegram...
Note this nonsense headline and article is just more puffery from the theatrical 4chan side and doesn't represent any official legal position.<p>Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.<p>The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.
It's annoying, in the UK you can browse 4chan but not Imgur
We need to start collectively shaming individuals in the tech sector who work for these censorious government agencies and do their bidding.
Good, fuck off ofcom. We always mocked Chinese censorship but we’re not really any different now.
4 chan is the most bent place on the internet that is just wide open, and in my short forrey I did see and read a bunch of horrible stuff, but there are other areas in there where certain counter culture groups with no violence or ranting seem to be hiding out for the privacy, and there are also people who go in to challenge some of the worst obscenities, and as it turned out I have a friend who does just that, even going so far as to learn the intricasies of these groups and chase them around the net to pick there horrible theories and causes apart, driving some of them completly insane in the process.
it's not like there are not worse places, and 4 chan realy is sort of cartoonish and juvenile, so the best thing is to openly acknowledge it and like all the bad stuff label it and remind people of the risks of getting caught up in this, or any, cult.
does this mean the UK will block 4chan in the UK? if the defense is jurisdictional then 4chan can continue to serve US users, but there would be no recourse if the UK blocks it in their jurisdiction
The UK ISPs already did this earlier. What Ofcom really wanted is to flex their muscle and kill 4chan because it represents Satan for them.<p>What Ofcom wants next is to make VPNs illegal.
It is not blocked in the UK.<p>I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.
Did they fully block it or just put it on the blocklists that you can turn off in your account settings?<p><a href="https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://www.4chan.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://www.4chan.org</a> suggests the latter to me, but the checks aren't very recent
Using a nationwide default blocklist to address 4chan would be appropriate behaviour for Ofcom, given its duty to protect kids.<p>Beyond that, it is just madness to try to control the US company or fine it. Going beyond this duty shows that not all biscuits are present at the afternoon tea.<p>It's not like Facebook, or anyone's personal life or business, depends on 4chan.
In my experience, ISPs just 'block' it at the DNS level. Using another DNS provider 'unblocks' everything.
This is my experience too, I don't know why they don't do IP level blocks. It's pretty trivial to evade a lot of bans.<p>I think the Spain-Cloudflare case does IP level blocks and it has a lot of side effect damage, but if I recall they do IP-block level blocking because the vendor, cloudflare, provides header/envelope encryption and pooling, so the Spanish courts considers it legal to block the whole service even, alleging that they are not collaborating with court orders, they just choose not to block the whole provider to reduce the collateral damage, even if they consider they have jurisdiction to block all of CF
4chan <i>and</i> Kiwi Farms, which is something the article intentionally glosses over. Honestly, KF is a far more “dangerous” place in the eyes of the UK government, as 4chan hasn’t been relevant for around a decade, and the combined efforts to deplatform KF traditionally has been fruitless.
Why would they block it if they hope to get money from it.
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution<p>Good grief. This is sad stuff.
What else should happen in this case?
No, it's called sovereignty.
Are you saying it is sad that American courts do not enforce foreign laws if they violate the US constitution? If so, then are you in favor of Russian, Chinese, various Muslim countries' laws being enforced in the US?
Iranian Fatwas enforced/carried out by American courts, that could get interesting.
I think you meant to ask "are you in favor of the CLOUD Act and FACTA (among others) being enforced outside the US?"
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This was a fairly stupid case. Ofcom didn't try to enforce it abroad, 4chan sued Ofcom in case it did (mostly for PR purposes).<p>Ofcom knows its rulings don't apply internationally.<p>So yes, the status quo is enforced by the US courts, as if it was ever in doubt and nothing at all has changed.
Cool. So 4chan is going to get DNS blocked in the UK and I can finally stop hearing about this and all the Americans takes on what my country's enforcement mechanisms should be.
It was clear to me from the moment this began that this case would end in humiliation for the British government/regulator. A good reminder that Britain is a declining nation that still likes to pretend it is an empire.