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Comment by CaptainOfCoit | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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.

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.

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

Block is the only realistically imposable penalty in this case.

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.

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.

>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.

4chan.co.uk value decimated by this analysis

Oh no!

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

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

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

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.

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