4chan Sues UK Ofcom over Online Safety Act
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404media.co
[.pdf] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26076733/govuscourtsd...
I'm confused to see the SPEECH Act (2010) used as a legal basis: I had thought that act was limited to foreign defamation claims—not as a general First Amendment catch-all. And the text of the law seems (IANAL!) to say that explicitly?
> "Nothing in this section shall be construed to—(1) affect the enforceability of any foreign judgment other than a foreign judgment for defamation..."
> 61. Section 179 of the Online Safety Act, the “false communications offence,” makes it a criminal offense to send information which the sender knows to be false if, at the time of sending that message, the person intended the message to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and the person had no “reasonable excuse” for sending that message.
> 62. Section 179 of the Online Safety Act effectively creates a defamation crime in the United Kingdom.
...
> 65. Ofcom's notices and demands to 4chan, including the "legally binding information notice" on April 14, 2025, the "failure to respond" letter on April 30, 2025, the investigation noticeon June 9, 2025, the "final legal notice" on June 16, 2025, the "Preliminary Contravention Email" on July 9, 2025, and the “provisional decision notice” on August 12, 2025, to the extent that they pertain to speech proscribed by Section 179 of the OSA, constitute foreign judgments that would restrict speech protected under U.S. law including under, e.g. the SPEECH Act, 28 USCS § 4101.
> "63. Defamation crimes such as Section 179 of the OSA, including the historical crime of seditious libel, were permanently abolished in the United States when the First Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791."
This just deepens my confusion: defamation crimes most definitely do exist in the US—have not been abolished by courts.
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/u-s-supreme-court-declin... ("U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear First Amendment Challenge to Criminal Defamation Law" (2023))
> "The Supreme Court imposed significant restrictions on criminal defamation laws in the 1960s, and several justices signaled that criminal defamation should be abolished entirely... Despite this, generally applicable criminal defamation laws remain on the books in 14 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands."
Right now there are laws in Utah, Texas, and Mississippi that require you to identify yourself by government-issued ID just to post on social media. These laws are blatantly unconstitutional and currently undergoing legal challenges in court. That unconstitutional laws exist at any particular time or place has no bearing on whether or not they are unconstitutional, nor does the Supreme Court's denial to hear a case as they only take so many cases every year, and that particular one may not have been suitable for review for any number of reasons. Since you just posted the ACLU's press release rather than actual court documents I can't really say one way or another.
In any event, under the SPEECH Act, foreign defamation judgements are generally unenforceable unless they offer at least as much protection as afforded to citizens of the United States under our own laws. That law was passed in direct response to libel tourism. Censors looking to launder their censorship through the UK are effectively thwarted by the SPEECH Act, hence why it was raised in their filing.
If they consider Ofcom to have no jurisdiction over them, why not just ignore Ofcom?
Why attempt to sue Ofcom in a court that Ofcom could claim has no jurisdiction over itself?
It would also be more likely to cause other businesses to adopt the same tactic, which would drown Ofcom's resources to cause further trouble.
> "We are aware of the lawsuit," an Ofcom spokesperson told 404 Media. "Under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based. The Act does not, however, require them to protect users based anywhere else in the world.”
> Update: This story has been updated with a comment from Ofcom.