I think you’re overanalyzing it. They’re just enforcing the law. You and I may agree that it’s a bad law, but that doesn’t mean that the people in charge of enforcing it necessarily have complex and sinister motives.
Even if the goal is just enforcement, you would get more enforcement, collect more fines, if you didn't put your ability to actually collect fines into question. When 4chan successfully defends itself and the UK extracts no money, that will show US companies which would have been in doubt, that they can also defend themselves.
I think you may be giving them too much credit. You're essentially saying that their real goal is to get an ISP block and everything they are doing now is performative to get to that real, unstated goal.
On the other hand I may be underestimating them as, to me, they just seem like power-tripping troglodytes.
How do you expect this to happen? The law is pretty clear and afaik 4chan has been pretty explicit that they know the law and they're ignoring it. 4chan's 'out' is that they don't have any legal presence in the UK. More legitimate enterprises do so the results of this will have no bearing on them.
If the company is in the UK, then yes, they are obviously screwed. The damage to the UK's web presence has already been done. I don't expect anyone would want to incorporate an internet dependent company there.
This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.
UK law is generally unenforcible in the US except extradition agreements for crimes commuted while residing in the UK. That's not the case here and there's no agreement that applies to this case.
I suppose the action 4chan is taking in US court is exactly to avoid this possibility.
I am curious as to how that could possibly work. Is there some trade agreement that requires the US to respect UK court rulings? Generally the US has sought to distance itself from any kind of foreign influence or control.
I do wonder if you bother to actually read the stuff you are typing.
like have you _met_ anyone from ofcom? or seen the shit that 4chan routinely post?
4chan is literally the living embodiment of what the OSA was designed(and will probably fail) to stop. No moderation, loads of porn, incitement to violence
but to your point, `claims of "hate speech"` Ofcom have no mandate for hate speech. But then I imagine facts are less interesting than a daydream of cypherpunk rebellion.
It used to be more extreme, it's not today. It's why spinoffs like 8chan were created, they felt there was too much moderation on 4chan. If you hear of some diabolical internet stunt, these days it was probably soyjak.party that organised it, not 4chan's /b/
As you allude, Ofcom cares not, they just want all sites to bend the knee to them.
Governments are just organizations and organizations are made of people. We see plenty of folly in the private sector; the government can do it too, don't you worry. Arguably they can do folly in ways the private sector only dreams of, what with being funded by the taxpayer.
The org is enforcing the law as written. The law, as written, is fucking stupid. Ergo the enforcement actions that derive from it themselves look fucking stupid.
They are enforcing the law, but why pick out 4chan? Because everyone has heard of 4chan.