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Comment by tasuki | Hacker News Reader

> The Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom, and this expressly includes conducting investigations into, and imposing penalties for, non-compliance by providers of online services with their duties under the Act. […] The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect

I don't see anything wrong here: Sure, Ofcom can have the legal authority to regulate online safety worldwide. It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction. How unfortunate!

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There is plenty of precedence for this, and I am about to fudge a bunch of details. The basic point is that the United Kingdom can make any law it sees fit to any place or person. Even though it may only exercise punitive issues once they arrival inside the physical jurisdiction. So the example I was taught, the UK can pass a law banning smoking in Paris, but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK. This means that the Sovereign power is omni-whatevers, unless you explicitly say otherwise eg The UK Legislated their way out of South Africa and Canada expilictly. If 4Chans money ever passes through a UK bank, I'm sure Ofcom will grab what they can. It's a very British shakedown.

The United States (eg. illegal gambling, hacking), South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad) and many other countries operate the same way.

> South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad)

And gambling, too. Remember in 2013 when all those celebrities got busted for gambling in Macao?

> After getting caught gambling illegally, Shinhwa’s Andy, Boom and Yang Se Hyung received their punishments.

> On November 28, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Andy, Boom, and Yang Se Hyung to monetary penalties. Andy and Boom must pay 5,000,000 won, while Yang Se Hyung will pay 3,000,000 won.

> The fines were dependent on how much money each person bet. Andy spent 44,000,000 won, Boom 33,000,000 won, and Yang Se Hyung 26,000,000 won.

> The three are all currently pulled out of all schedules and self-reflecting on their actions.

> Meanwhile, Lee Su Geun, Tak Jae Hoon, and Tony An are waiting for their first trial to take place on December 6. They bet more than several hundred million won.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.inte...

There's also all the countries that have laws regarding sex-tourism abroad as well.

That's different in that it prosecutes citizens of those countries for things done outside their borders, not unrelated people doing things elsewhere.

America will prosecute Americans for doing certain things that are illegal inside America outside its borders. As another example, if you take a boat to international waters and kill someone on it, you're going to get arrested and prosecuted when you get home.

America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

Ok, hypothetically though, and going back to the smoking in Paris law, if the UK banned smoking in Paris, and a French citizen proven to have smoked in Paris vacations in the UK, the only thing stopping the UK from prosecuting them is that it would be kinda "act-of-war-ish" to start imprisoning French citizens. Technically they could under their own law, they just wouldn't dare since they don't want to start a major diplomatic incident or war.

Once you're in another country's jurisdiction, all bets are off. You're subject to those laws, unless there's a treaty or similar saying that you're not. In another post, I mentioned writing nasty blog posts about Kim Jong-un. If you do that, it's probably a very bad idea to visit North Korea.

In this case, the operator of 4Chan is free to blow off the UK's law. They may wish to account for that in future travel plans, though.

This is one of those technically true but defacto false things. Its legal under UK law, but if they want the variety of benefits they get from the US then it isn't. If the UK government starts arresting vacationing Americans for things that aren't a violation of US law, its all a matter of if the US governments wants to make an issue of it. Maybe you get lucky and nothing happens, or maybe you lose your military protection and 25% of your GDP. Plus your tourism businesses take a hit. You really want to take that risk?

But given the behavior of the UK government lately, doing something suicidally stupid seems on brand for them.

This is why we are not travailing the US right now.

Because you think ICE will arrest you for being an illegal immigrant? If you seriously believe this, then probably its best you don't go outside anymore.

Every time the media reported something like this, turned out they were leaving out something important. Like the professor who was smuggling biological samples into the US. Turns out that's illegal, that's why she went home. If you aren't doing something like that, you will be fine.

As someone who has travelled a fair bit across the border between Canada and US, CBP agents have always tended to be dicks drunk on their power. I've seen plenty of blatant abuse at the border. So really the only thing that needs to happen for CBP to ruin your day is for an agent to have a bad day for their own. The only difference between then and now is that they're given more tools to do so and actively encouraged to use them.

Yeah these people that think there is any measurable risk to going to the US as a normal tourist or businessman respecting US laws while there really need to get out of whatever bubble is feeding them that fear.

This is also why a lot of people refuse to travel to the UK now.

That's reasonable.

The US have done this a lot, luring “hackers” and other criminals to the US and then arresting them.

I declare categorically that UK law does not apply to me, here in California.

However, if I'm going to break one of their laws that they feel very strongly about, I'm probably not going to travel to the UK. That's just begging for something bad to happen. Why risk it?

So in this case, if you know the US is looking for you, why, oh why, would you travel to the US?

They can issue an arrest warrant, though, and then file an extradition request to the US which you then have to fight.

The US doesn't extradite citizens for things that are not a crime in the US.

That's the "you then have to fight" bit.

There are a few cases of claiming universal jurisdiction criminalizing what citizens of other countries do even outside the country, but that's generally things like crimes against humanity.

> America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

Sure it will. Citizenship is irrelevant. If you travel abroad to have sex with underage people and then come to the US, you can be prosecuted regardless of your nationality.

Boats are considered the territory of the flag state.

You are saying that when US citizens engage in illegal gambling in other parts of the world, the US sues and threatens the foreign gambling venues? That South Korea sues marihuana dispensaries in the US when they sell to visiting Koreans?

The equivalent is the US threatening to arrest the operators of those venues when they set foot on US soil.

But in any case, this is different, as the US has only declared these activities as illegal in the US. They haven't enacted laws saying you cannot gamble outside the US.

When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.

> When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.

Moreover, the US government can have you seized and brought to the US without a treaty (or even in violation of a treaty), which may become a diplomatic and/or international legal issue between the US and the state where you were seized, and may subject the agents doung the seizing to personal legal difficulty in that state, but has no bearing on the validity of the criminal process brought against you once they haul you back to the US. See, e.g., U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992).

As we have recently seen, the US may send the military to sink your boat and kill you if they think you might be planning to break a US law. Whether this is legal or not is another matter.

Or at least, they’ll claim they did it for that reason after they blow up your boat and kill you.

Notably, if you survive, they’ll send you back home without bothering with a trial?

The USA has gone after gambling site operators in other countries, yes

I think he is saying that once US citizens return to the US, then they will be arrested.

The US has seized non-US citizens, abroad, for acts committed abroad, over which the US asserts (and exerts) extraterritorial jurisdiction, not just US citizens, and not just waiting until they enter the US on their own.

If they were talking about the US arresting US citizens, then the equivalent would be Ofcom sending a fine to the UK visitors of 4chan. That's clearly not what they're doing.

Sure, but those laws apply to US Citizens, and typically aren't enforced until the person returns to US soil.

Sovereignty is a big thing in international politics. Countries as a whole are loath to meddle in other countries domestic affairs, even in extreme cases like genocide/ethnic cleansing. Violating weird online protection laws are not the sort of thing a country is going to risk an international incident over.

Sure you can find some examples of countries that violate those norms, but they are the exception not the rule.

This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries going after a Parisian tobacconist.

Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the client is.

Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.

Not exactly. It's like if a brit goes to paris to buy cigarettes, the UK is stating that it's the tabac's job to refuse the transaction.

They can say whatever they want, but the UK can't conduct an extra-territorial police action in france. They can bar subject from traveling to france instead. The onus is on the UK.

They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK. The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

In the complaint[1], they explicitly state "4chan has no presence, operations, or infrastructure outside of the territorial limits of the United States." So, no, 4chan is not bringing their services into the UK: UK users send requests that travel to the US and hit 4chan servers/CDNs there.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...

No, the ISPs who operate the ASes and routers that make up "the internet" are the ones who bring the service to the UK.

4chan does not reach out to UK users in any way, only responds to their incoming requests.

It really is analogous to UK users going to a foreign country, buying something that their home country has an issue with, having a third party ship it to their home country, and then their home country getting mad at the store.

To argue the details, no they don't bring their service to the UK. Rather, they surface their services where ever their servers are. And then "the internet", other people's hardware and such that they have no control over, bring it to the UK. I know it's pedantic, but this particular thread is _about_ the pedantics.

You can argue that either way. It's not the best analogy. I extrapolate in another comment in this thread.

NZ agreed to cooperate with the US request. That made all the difference. If the US agrees to allow UK to proceed, then that's trouble for 4chan.

From what I've heard, their servers are in the US, so UK residents are connecting to the US to access the site and not the other way around. 4chan sells memberships that allow users to bypass some of the rules. If they accept payment from UK banks (no idea if they do or not), then perhaps the UK can make a claim they're doing business in the UK.

4chan brings their services into the UK

How exactly do they do that? Do they have peering agreements with UK-based ISPs?

> They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK.

They don't bring their services to the UK, ISPs and other network operators do - the UK can go after those and force them to implement the Great Firewall of Britain but that would be less popular so they don't yet.

> The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. The UK can try to go after US citizens abroad if they want to but they will quickly find out why that's a bad idea.

The most important difference between this and Kim Dotcom is the US has a lot of weight to throw around, evidently having enough to lean on the governments of small countries like NZ. In the case of 4chan though, it's a once-great but now relatively minor country trying to have their way with an American company, meanwhile America has laws explicitly for the purpose of telling the British to fuck off with the imposition of any of their free speech violating antics against Americans.

The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to throw around.

Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!

There was an Australian case, I'll look it up, but the relevant bit, the publishing of the web page happened on a computer in Australia, which they claimed (successfully) gave them jurisdiction

But what does successfully mean? An Australian court can rule on it, but Australia is going to have to take it up with US State from there. Or send the navy, I guess...

I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.

I could be milk, right? Or a sheet of paper.

I'll concede that it's not terribly far fetched. If the french entity produced a good that is illegal in the UK put it in the post to be delivered to the UK, then we have something like an analog to producing HTML in one place and displaying elsewhere.

However, the thing about sovereignty is that you don't have it if you can't enforce it.

No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.

yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was shipped there.

No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to Britain.

Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace “tobacco” with “cocaine” and “Parisian” with “Colombian”.

Still sounds absurd to me.

> UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.

I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats currently: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trum...

(I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and probably criminal.)

They likely do not have a flag state and could be considered pirates. Fisherman dont have 100k worth of outboard motors either.

Which law allows the death penalty for allegedly transporting drugs?

Shooting first and asking questions later is how we got into this mess of deporting us citizens.

Sections 105 and 108 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows any country to go after drug smugglers in international waters but it does require that a court in that country approve of the action. It's certainly worth questioning if a court can issue a preemptive ruling on a proposed action against alleged drug smugglers. There's also the issue that Maritime Law is weird, convoluted, and probably sanctions most state actions if you dig around enough.

Since you are going all lawyer on this one, you should know they weren't flying any national flag. Technically, if you do this in international waters you are a pirate and anyone can legally do what the US did in that situation. Maritime law is very old and has some interesting provisions in it. The parts you quote only matter if a national flag is being flown at the time.

Cite on not flying any national flag?

Both the US and Venezuela are non-parties to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That is the war on drugs yes?

It still sounds absurd to me. Nations should not be in the business of passing laws that apply to extraterritorial actions of foreign citizens. I know that it happens, especially with the US, but IMHO it’s just not how things should work.

This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines. Just wait until 30 years from now when you can’t safely visit anywhere in the far East because you made a subversive comment about China. Although I’m sure the same people will hypocritically wail and gnash their teeth about the laws made by those people, when of course our extraterritorial laws are just fine.

The end punishment will still end up being that 4chan is not allowed to do business in the UK. If they want their website to work in the UK, they should follow UK law.

Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses outside their control.

If this kind of BS becomes too common then running a small internet business will become impossible. Even if you don’t do business in a country, you will have to consider whether or not they might consider you in violation of some obscure law and then consider whether or not that country has the leverage to impact your business or even your own personal safety. It’s utterly ridiculous. This would spell the end of the global internet, except for megacorps. It’s already a tough business environment as it is.

The status quo is that some countries have these laws, but they are generally ignored unless you’re a citizen, you manage to do something geopolitically significant, or you get involved in transnational crime rings. This seems acceptable to me. If countries don’t like the free internet, then ban it so we can all see what you’re really up to.

> This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines.

This has been happening long before the US started doing it.

If anything, it's normalized in the US because of the bad behavior prior to the US doing it. China's a great example. What does brutally crushing dissent internally and abroad without even a facade of a single care about human rights get you? Well, in their case, damn near superpower status. Been that way since at the very least Nixon's administration.

The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy". The concern for human rights shown since the end of WWII in the West (particularly the US) is an exception, not norm, in history.

>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".

Who are these people you're talking about, tankies, faschists?

The Chinese have the government that they deserve. They screw each other over, and what goes around comes around. It's a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.

What about marijunana? It's absurd for the UK government to try and go after a legal California weed store.

If the California stores ships to the UK, you can be certain that they will.

And they'd be right to do so as a country has sovereignty over what is allowed or not in their country, not matter the country of origin of the seller.

They have a right to stop the packages at the border. They have no right to go after the stores themselves and more importantly they have no power to do so unless the US helps them, which they would never do over a free speech issue.

It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice of a fine to Pablo Escobar.

Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.

Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good luck with sending warships to invade the US.

> but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK

Many entities assert extraterritorial jurisdiction [0] for a broad range of activities. The critical question is if the offense would be categorized under an existing extradition treaty's list [1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition

> The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect

It also continues like this:

> This does not mean that the Act extends to all use of in-scope services globally. […] “The duties extend only to the design, operation and use of the service in the UK and, for duties expressed to apply in relation to ‘users’, as it affects the UK users of the service”

Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors? So if you're building a general service for no particular residents/citizens, the Act doesn't apply to you? Or am I misunderstanding something?

That's not what the text means, but even if it did, you cornered yourself, since if you have no particular care for UK users, you won't care if they are blocked from your general service.

Blocking UK users from your service does not put you out of scope of OSA, according to Ofcom.

4 days ago:

> "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist "

It is worth noting that the other sites swept up in this current batch have had their investigations closed by restricting, though.

My read on "remain on our watchlist" was them monitoring for if that block lapses, etc.

I do expect UK's internet insanity to reckon with VPNs sooner rather than later, though.

Sure, its cheap and easy. Plus you know those UK users will just get a VPN and come anyway so you don't lose a thing. Its only 4chan that wants to make this public. They don't have much in the way of advertising revenue so there isn't much damage that can be done to them. Either way, the actions of the UK government are largely irrelevant again.

If the UK government bans VPNs, now they have more people in jail for speech violations than Russia and a more restricted Internet than China. The jokes write themselves at that point. It also becomes a virtue to dunk on the UK government worldwide. All to keep people from reading a site that the majority of people have no interest in. Its sad really...

That's strange, because protection is supposed to be implemented by blocking.

Could you help a fellow out and translate what it actually means in plain language?

The duties extend to the use of the service in the UK.

Remember that they're threatening a fine, and failing to pay fines can be a criminal matter. Simply blocking the site would be less of an issue, at least in terms of legal consequences.

If non-payment of the fine became a criminal matter, would the operators of 4chan be at risk when leaving the US and entering a country willing to arrest them on behalf of the UK?

The UK has already arrested foreign nationals for speech violations when they traveled to the UK. I'm sure that's doing wonders for the British tourism industry.

But it doesn't seek to block 4chan, it seeks to impose penalties.

Block is the only realistically imposable penalty in this case.

>Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors?

Clearly not considering that there's nothing in 4chan that would make it explicitly targeted towards the UK. Unless Ofcom is saying something and doing the opposite.

I low key want to see official documents stating the name of some of those threads: all the "bongland" and" have you got a loicense" threads with some of their respective comments.

4chan does have very minor explicit support for UK users; on some boards it puts a UK flag on their post (as it does with all other countries and territories.) It could perhaps be argued that this constitutes the site being consciously designed with UK users in mind. Hardly matters though, there's nothing the UK can do about it. They aren't a superpower anymore and it's time for them to realize it.

I am not a 4chan user. How is this flag assigned? Automatically by 4chan based on some criteria? Or chosen at will by the user?

Presumably if the latter, one may express their support of the flag of their choice; or indicate their heritage; or any number of other reasons.

If the former, and considering the existence of a .uk TLD, they probably are considered to be “targeting” that market.

You get one automatically assigned based on GeoIP. It's even mentioned on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//pol/

Non compliance will require the setting of a security flag in the IP header.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

That's only on /pol/ though, and it's based on GeoIP. No other board has flags other than complete meme ones like /int/

Off topic, thread moved to /bant/ >>420694069

4chan should troll the UK by replacing the UK flag with a roman one or another past occupier of their choice.

During the Euros they replace the British flag with flags for England, Scotland and Wales on the sports board.

4chan.co.uk value decimated by this analysis

Oh no!

It’s presumably meant to be effective against global corporations like Meta and Google that have significant operations in the UK. They can be liable for non-compliance globally and Ofcom doesn’t have to show it occurred within the UK.

Yep, then and their German counterpart have many times asked Facebook to censor stuff for the entire world and they've complied every time.

The concern is they decide a site non-compliant, can't do shit about it in absence of British presence, then go after Britons accessing the site.

Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement but rather because they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.

> Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement

That's exactly what anyone wanting to save face would say though.

> they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.

There's a contradiction here: if you want to protect British citizens from being jailed for accessing a website then you should tell them not to use your website, not “use an alternative way to connect", because that will still get people to jail if they get caught by other means (I don't think you can, in fact be jailed for accessing a website in the UK in the first place).

Can probably arrest the founder in Heathrow, like Durov's arrest in France.

Look at this page: https://www.4chan.org/advertise

It explicitly says that 7% of their users are coming from UK. If UK blocks them, they will loose noticeable part of advertising revenue. If there was no money at stake, they could just ignore Ofcom and sleep well. But they appear to be very agitated about the fact that they may loose their second biggest market.

Honestly, I don’t understand anyone on 4chan side here: they are de facto in UK jurisdiction because they earn money from that user base, so either they comply or they leave. All of this freedom-of-speech and US lawsuit hype is just a distraction circus.

Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.

This is important because if it was advertisers, it would be much easier for UK to have actual power over them, since the UK business actually would be under UK jurisdiction.

4chan gets money by selling (with crypto) "passes" to their users. These passes allow users to post using VPNs. Being banned in the UK will increase demand for these passes, probably increasing 4chan's revenue over all.

You can buy passes with a regular credit card

Not these days. If you go through the process of buying one, crypto will be the only option given.

>Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.

It doesn’t matter. They loose the audience - they loose advertising revenue. The only difference is that UK cannot seize the money to collect the fine (the fine now is the price of the return ticket), but the fine wasn’t big anyway and complete loss of the market has bigger economic consequences. UK doesn’t have power over US corporation, but they have power over their distribution channel and they have full sovereign right to exercise that power.

That assumes UK deploys technical measures to prevent their own citizens from accessing the website, which costs more political capital than fining a corporation. Or makes it illegal to access the site, which is even more unpopular.

The difference is significant.

Realistically, UK is a big market for 4chan, but is 4chan big enough for UK? What share of its 70M+ population will flip their vote because of this specific case? How many people will just switch to Reddit or something else and won’t even connect that block to any political party?

No, it really isn't. Plus the free advertising this gets them will be worth more than any market other than the US.

If they hope that they will get more audience from elsewhere because of this, it certainly explains all the circus.

Comply, leave, or fight the law if you think it's stupid.

Lots of laws are stupid. If you think they're stupid, you're allowed to try to fight them.

Well, you’re allowed to try to fight them in some places, some of the time - with often severe consequences if you don’t win.

If you think foreign laws directly targeting you are stupid, not only do you have few ways of fighting them, trying to fight them might often be criminalized as well ("foreign interference" laws etc.)

Yes, sure, they can fight the law - in UK. It’s not what they are doing.

You seem to be under the false impression that 4chan makes money, as in, is profitable. It's very much not. Nor does advertising, much less UK advertising, constitute an important influx of money into the "business".

A rather strange conclusion from my words. I do not assume it’s profitable, but it’s pretty logical that a for-profit organization running a service that is based on user engagement will have its revenue from the sources linked to the audience, be it advertising, subscriptions or donations. If you cut a visible slice of that audience, it’s going to impact the revenue. It’s still not profitable, 10 years after acquisition? May the investors be blessed for their charitable attitude, but it doesn’t change anything.

What makes you think it's a "for-profit organization"? Or that it has investors?

It does have investors according to sources cited by Wikipedia. Whether it’s non-profit or for-profit LLC and on what terms it was acquired doesn’t matter at all.

if the uk wants to be a authoritarian state then do it properly and not this grey area of "you're passively sending packets so you're fined a billion dollars so you block us"

it's worse than china's firewall

> It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction.

That appears to be the widely held understanding in this particular case.

I'm not so sure. This isn't a strictly black letter law matter. It probably should be, and I'd prefer that it was, but I see political angles to this.

Right now, it is improbable that Trump's DOJ has any interest in doing Ofcom's bidding in the US for UK "online safety" violations, real or imagined. But a world where the US DOJ might does exist. We're the political vectors aligned differently; say, for example, Ofcom was pursuing 4chan for "supporting" ISIS in the UK, I think few people would be surprised learn that Trump's DOJ was eager to "investigate," and perhaps synthesize some indictable offenses, and perhaps even extradite.

Have we not seen, and are we not seeing now, ample examples of similar abuses of power?

So I see much of the rhetoric, and also this lawyer's flippancy, as naïve. Given the optimal set of office holders and sufficient moral panic over some matter, Ofcom et al. could very well have real leverage in the US.

Sure, that would require the Democrats win an election first. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Its not like Trump is the most inspiring candidate. When you lose 2 out of 3 to him, perhaps time to take a long look in the mirror. But no, the dems will probably run someone like AOC next time and lose badly. Even worse, once 2030 comes around there is a new census. This matters because enough people have moved from blue to red states that Republicans will no longer have to win any swing states to win both the House and POTUS. Unless something dramatic changes, like say the Dems run a southern governor instead of a coastal progressive, then we are looking at quite a while before we have to worry about that.

PS Don't yell at me about this, I'm just explaining the situation.

> Unless something dramatic changes

Dramatic things happen with regularity. Wars, viruses, economic calamities... there is no predicting any of it. For all you or I know 4 years from now the (D)s will own everything. Maybe then Ofcom gets a hearing. Maybe Ofcom doesn't exist any longer. This misses the point.

The point is that the hubris exhibited here, in this forum, and also by this lawyer, behaving as though there is some perpetual immunity in effect, is naïve. It is entirely plausible that some foreign regulator with intentions that happen to align well with the prerogatives of prevailing office holders right now or at any point in the future could have have powerful leverage in the US.

It doesn't go nearly as far as US legislation such as the trade embargoes against Cuba, Iran, or Venezuela. In that the US effectively harms any company that does business with a sanctioned country by sanctioning the company in the US. By the same logic, the UK could sanction any company that does business with 4chan and prevent it from doing any business in the UK.

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