Ofcom in their reply make their point clear: "The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom [...]"
They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals, are required to conform with UK regulations in relation to those services, under UK law.
As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.
The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Arguing that my servers and my business are located in the UK is not going to impress the federal judge I'd appear in front of in the morning. Stating the US laws against my activities have a snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the UK is surely going to risk me being charged with contempt.
The Online Safety Act is ridiculous on many levels, but in the same way that Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China, and every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East, the UK has asked that US companies do certain things in the jurisdiction of the UK. I'd argue, less harmful and egregious things in some respects.
Should the UK do this? No, probably not. I think it will just make VPN software vendors richer, and UK citizens - particularly children - barely any safer.
Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add they are legally required to do by the Online Safety Act, by the government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the government would literally be breaking its own law.
TIL that 4chan's lawyer is about as grown up, mature and able to engage in critical thinking about the law as the people who post on his client's site.
Not quite. There are well-established legal mechanisms for Ofcom (or anyone) to try to engage legally with companies domiciled in the US and with no locus in the UK. Rather than using these mechanisms, they have tried to short-circuit the process by sending emails that have no legal force.
Hmmh. If some powerful law enforcement agency was coming after me to stop my website, I sure would hope they would first send me an email asking me to stop.
The US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance treaty imposes obligations on Ofcom which they have not met, 4chan claims:
“None of these actions constitutes valid service under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, United States law or any other proper international legal process.”
MLAT applies only to a narrow set of legal procedures, essentially around criminal activity. I’m a lawyer but this is very specialist stuff. I’m not expert enough to opine on whether MLAT applies here but - simply judging by the quality of their respective legal work on display - I’m minded to believe that Ofcom knows what they are doing. OTOH 4chan’s rhetoric reeks of FUD.
>Lawyers representing controversial online forums 4chan and Kiwi Farms have filed a legal case against the UK Online Safety Act enforcer, Ofcom.
Drumming up public support is a no-go. Rather, I think the intent is to make the stance that if the UK wants to prevent citizens from accessing sites if they are underage, then the UK can do just that, rather than expect random companies around the world to comply.
The way the UK has chosen to do that is to ask companies to find the way that works best for them, rather than impose a single government-owned firewall solution. Those that don't will face UK fines in UK jurisdictions, which they may or may not care about.
The china point is interesting because it's false. Google doesn't censor their results in china. There was a five year period some 20 years ago where they did, but prior to that period, and after that period, they didn't. China still does business with google. This is because china understands that it is their own responsibility to censor their internet. If google is unwilling to do so, they are satisfied with blocking all google services in china.
At a certain point in internet censorship, you exit the arena of sensible, free countries, where everybody can agree to get along and enforce each other's blocks, and enter the realm of a censorious authoritarian country that must constantly patch holes in their filters to protect their citizens from badthink. The UK has entered the second realm, but hasn't realized it yet. They see someone refusing to enforce their block for them as the ultimate scorn. In fact, it is what the vast majority of websites already do to china, iran, or any other similar country. Following regulations implies a willingness to play ball. When you no longer want to play along, you ignore the regulation instead.
>every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East
Can someone expand on this a bit? I'm passingly familiar with the Chinese Google example (though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?) but I know nearly nothing about the Middle East angle.
They bend the knee for censorship requirement. (Not only that, they provided machine learning based filtering service for other Chinese search engine at the time)
According to Google, the China government tried to infiltrate Google's internal computer system. In response, Google stopped the censorship over night, and withdraw from China market shortly afterward.
I still remember night, when _all_ Chinese search engine stopped censoring because Google stopped their filtering service.
The China tech company have evolved much since those days, and they are now much better at censoring compare to what Google had in the early days of the internet.
> On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.
> In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary.
They never had a problem censoring their results. They claimed to pull out "in retaliation" for being hacked; realistically, they noticed that China didn't want them to succeed, and gave up on trying.
First, in 2006, there was still a general belief I think that Western companies could profitably exist in China and be, if not a "force for good", than at least a force for slightly more openness. Google's options were either to not be in China at all, or to be in China and abide by their laws. So when they censored search results in the 2006-2010 time period, at least they told you they were doing it and that it was at the demands of Chinese authorities. I think it's a fair debate to have on either side whether this was a good thing, but I think it's a gross oversimplification to present that this was a simple black-and-white decision and that Google "never had a problem censoring their results."
Perhaps you could quote something from that section that you feel is relevant here. It didn't look relevant to me.
> Google's options were either to not be in China at all, or to be in China and abide by their laws.
OK. So, they chose "be in China and abide by their laws", and you think it makes sense to characterize that as "they left the market rather than bend the knee"? Those are exactly opposite descriptions. They bent the knee rather than leave the market. That's what happened.
4chan is not "operating in the UK". They accept and respond to packets from the UK. If the UK government doesn't like this, they can block 4chan themselves.
If I were to fly to the USA, purchase something that was illegal in my home country (and explicitly state I was going to take it back home), then took it back home - would the vendor be prosecuted?
I'm sorry that you are not familiar with how laws work but it's kind of a big concept and I don't really have time now to teach it to you. I would recommend Wikipedia or perhaps ChatGPT to get started.
Bartenders from other countries don't get locked up the moment they enter the US because they served alcohol to someone (a US citizen?) between 18 and 21. The US does not have jurisdiction over alcohol sales in other countries.
In this scenario, what's more likely to be illegal is bringing the item into the country.
It's difficult to make physical analogies to these types of internet laws. What makes them 'tricky' is how they are not physical.
If they pack the alcohol up in a crate, and then ship it to the person after they make the order in person? Less clear yes?
If the consumer goes to a place it is legal, and consumes it there without bringing any back, most people would say ‘meh’. Depending on the product. Hard drugs and sex work, being two common exceptions that some countries get more worked up about even traveling to ‘enjoy’ it.
But ship it back (especially hard drugs or sex workers!), and almost all people get more concerned.
The issue here is exactly why customs typically is a mandatory ‘gate’ for packages AND passengers entering a country.
Similar, one could say, to a giant country level firewall?
And why it is so lucrative for smugglers, which are defacto performing a type of arbitrage eh?
If you are purchasing any form of financial service that involves moving money around and said financial services provider also happens to interact with a US based financial entity, then yes, Uncle Sam will make life very difficult.
And no before you ask crypto won't solve this because Uncle Sam demands USD stablecoins to have sanctions mechanisms built in and clearing entities that don't implement KYC etc. will find themselves subjected to prosecution in other ways.
Mmmmmhhhhhhh…What if I buy some goods (say electronics) in the EU from a foreign firm (v.gr. China) using mail and these goods do not comply with the EU’s regulations? I really do not know the proper reply to this.
The regulation - and the actions Ofcom are taking - are saying "look, you can deal with this, or you can get blocked and pay our fines the moment we have a way of being able to enforce them. What's it going to be?". 4chan are saying neither. Which means they're going to get blocked.
> The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC.
Countries do things like this when they're run by fools and they can do this because the fools have weapons and prisons. What good has it done the US? Can US patrons of offshore internet Bitcoin casinos no longer find them available? Not a chance.
But then on top of being completely ineffective, it causes exactly what you're saying -- other fools in other countries want to treat the foolishness as precedent for doing it themselves.
Which is why the people in the various countries should put a stop to all of it, before it spreads and they find themselves in a foreign prison because their flight had a layover in a country with a law they didn't know about. And countries themselves should retaliate like hell whenever anyone tries to do it to one of their citizens.
That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time. Whether for a "shopping trip to NYC", or for business reasons. That's why it's a big deal when the US wants somebody.
On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.
Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.
> That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time.
That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino.
> On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.
Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life?
> Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.
The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London.
If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.
Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to.
> If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.
There are two major problems with this.
The first is that you don't actually know which countries you have to avoid. There isn't going to be an app that can walk you through every law in every country.
And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.
> Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to
They already do stuff like this. The fact that they do it is now being used as a justification for doing it more and elsewhere. You can watch people telling you that slippery slope is a fallacy as they're greasing the hill.
> And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.
Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.
And yes, that is a thing that some of us do actually need. For example, while I have lived in the West for the past 18 years, I'm still a Russian citizen, and if I ever set foot there again they will likely have some questions for me regarding all the money for the war effort in Ukraine (see Ksenia Karelina for an example). Thus I would very much appreciate the ability to book a flight that is guaranteed to not be diverted to Russia or to any country that is likely to extradite to Russia, and I would pay money for such a service.
> Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.
I mean, that's fine if you want to avoid Russia while flying from California to Quebec, but you don't really need an app for that one. Whereas if you're within the plane's fuel supply of where you don't want to be, how are you supposed to know ahead of time what kind of nonsense is going to happen while you're in the air?
The plane could have a navigation failure over the ocean and end up arbitrarily far off course. Some first class VIP could have a medical problem which is going to force the plane to divert anyway and then the nearest city with the right kind of hospital is in the place you don't want to be. And what if you end up St. Petersberg not because you had a layover in Finland but because Helsinki was your intended destination?
You can't account for any possible contingency obviously, but you can still account for most. Start with just determining possible diversions on the route as it is supposed to be. That route can in turn be replaced with a heatmap of historical routes the planes on it have actually taken. And so on. The point is to not be on a plane that can be diverted to a country where you really can't end up at any likely point of its regular route.
I can't think of a single case other than Ryanair 4978, a plane that was carrying a Belarusian opposition activist over Belarusian airspace. Not saying this was justified in any way, but even Belarus didn't dare to touch any foreign passengers.
If you're aware of any actual case of a first-world airliner from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested, please provide links.
Since we don't use cold-war classifications like 'first-world' anymore, I'll refer simply to National Airlines with long-established US and European route access from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested.
This excludes the (arguably contentious) incidents like:
- 1954 in Israel where forced a Syrian passenger plane to land in order to gain hostages which it then hoped to exchange for captured Israeli soldiers.
- 2012 in Turkey grounded a Syrian plane in 2012 in order to detain and transfer a suspect to the US.
- 2016 in Ukraine grounded a plane with military jets to have a citizen of country C arrested
Bolivian president's jet
- Bolivian president's jet rerouted amid suspicions Edward Snowden on board with France and Portugal accused of refusing entry to their airspace, with plane forced to Land in Vienna due to pressure of US State Department
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden...
A common theme in the last two cases is that the perpetrators did not actually force the plane to land in their own territory. They merely refused entry, forcing the plane to divert to a third country. This means that if they wanted somebody detained, they needed cooperation from that third country. Which only works if the person to be detailed had done something that is also illegal in that third country.
This is different from AnthonyMouse's scenario. Let's return to the hypothetical example of the UK messing with a JFK-CDG flight. The UK can refuse entry to their airspace, "pushing" your plane away. So you might have to refuel in Ireland and enter France over its Atlantic coast instead of crossing Southern England. But you will not be "pulled" into the UK, unless Keir Starmer fancies being treated like Lukashenko in the eyes of the world.
The only example of an actual forced landing is the EgyptAir, which was 40 years ago and had hijackers on board. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's enough of a precedent to justify being paranoid today.
This isn’t about visiting for shopping. Billions of people, the vast majority of humanity, manage just fine without ever taking a holiday in the US.
What matters is if any of their assets are ever denominated in USD, or ever use the international banking system that is also controlled by the US. No other country has that kind of long arm jurisdiction.
The thing I can't understand is that people keep bringing this up as if it's supposed to justify doing it because the US could actually make it work, but then there are still a zillion offshore internet casinos which is strong direct empirical evidence that it does not in fact work.
> They are stating that companies operating in the UK
They are not operating in the UK. ISPs in the UK have chosen to make content from the USA available in the uk (or more accurately, do nothing to prevent it being available)
but ISPs do not have the power to decide if something is infringing a rule or not.
Thus Ofcom goes through the motions of telling 4Chan "hey I think you're not compliant" and if 4Chan says "lol, I'm not serving UK people" _then_ the UK authority will tell the ISPs to block it (and the will be on the hook if they don't).
There are clear laws now, so they do have the power to decide if something's against those laws. This is besides the point I'm making though.
Ofcom should be telling the ISPs to take action, not the sites, since the ISPs are the "importers". They should never involve the site in the first place, and certainly not by trying send them empty threats of fines.
If I open a service to pick up stuff from whatever US shop a UK customer wants and then ship it to him would I not be on the hook for the contents? I don't think customs would be impressed with the argument that I don't have the power to inspect sealed packages handed over to me.
It is a mass killing event which the Chinese government pretends never happened and/or suppresses the information of. Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. From Wikipedia:
> The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.
> Between 200 and 10,000 civilians were killed. The Red Cross states that around 2,600 died and the official Chinese government figure is 241 dead with 7,000 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates puts the number of deaths at several hundred to close to 1,000. As many as 10,000 people were estimated to have been arrested during the protests.
> Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it.
Google was complying with, what I assume is the law in, China and censoring searches for things China doesn't want talked about. Google has since left China, apparently bowing down wasn't enough.
your comment seems very insightful but for the layman that I am it seems to ignore the source of international law reach.
the usa does at lot of leg work to set up legal frameworks, suck as forcing transpacific "partnership", which enforce usa IP law overseas etc.
they can enforce some things, like gambling and financial rules, and now intellectual property overseas because there are specific accords for those. every thing else, even hacking and spying, they must wait for the "criminal" to land on it's jurisdiction.
why is this changing anything on all of that?
also, your example of google/china would let this play out opposite of what you suggest: uk gov would please US law to keep doing business there. i fail to see the relevance on that also.
>As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.
The board of directors for a private company is generally secret in the US. Only the "manager" aka president/CEO/whoever at the top is generally named publicly, as well as legal agent.
Not really that easily? Generally, only the legal agent for the private company will know and the direct hires of the board i.e. the CEO/CTO/whoever they name up top. Sometimes board of directors can get named in court records but with the public records redacted. But outside of that? Not even the IRS knows unless the directors get compensation.
MI6 would have to commit a few physical in person crimes to get any details out of any reasonably well run operation.
Add in the list of Directors and Consultants from the Big 4 who are ex-servicemen with various TOP-SECRET clearances and/or working for the Military-Industrial complex. If the US wants to stop that, then the opposing nation has very little to say in the matter unless they're a Superpower.
Same can be said for extra-territorial arrests and extraordinary rendition when suitably large Corporate entities like the MPAA are involved. Non-violent Internet copyright infringement charge brought by the United States, even when its not a crime in the country of origin, is enough to bring the hammer down
>They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals
did you mean to say "companies operating in the UK and(including) companies providing services to the UK"? because the way you wrote it, it would not apply to 4chan
and what is not being mentioned by most commenters is, if the law is unenforceable on a US corp, what is the chance that an individual associated with 4chan Inc could find themselves individually arrested were they to set foot in a Commonwealth country or somesuch
4Chan operates out of the US. The UK can ban it if it wants but it can not unilaterally make demands of 4chan and expect courts to enforce them, because it has no jurisdiction over 4chan's activities.
Ofcom in their reply make their point clear: "The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom [...]"
They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals, are required to conform with UK regulations in relation to those services, under UK law.
As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.
The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Arguing that my servers and my business are located in the UK is not going to impress the federal judge I'd appear in front of in the morning. Stating the US laws against my activities have a snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the UK is surely going to risk me being charged with contempt.
The Online Safety Act is ridiculous on many levels, but in the same way that Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China, and every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East, the UK has asked that US companies do certain things in the jurisdiction of the UK. I'd argue, less harmful and egregious things in some respects.
Should the UK do this? No, probably not. I think it will just make VPN software vendors richer, and UK citizens - particularly children - barely any safer.
Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add they are legally required to do by the Online Safety Act, by the government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the government would literally be breaking its own law.
TIL that 4chan's lawyer is about as grown up, mature and able to engage in critical thinking about the law as the people who post on his client's site.