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> They cannot prevent foreign companies from providing such content.

Said companies often find it less burdensome to comply than the option of being outright blocked from the market. Brazil did that a couple times with a couple different companies. If a company wants to provide services to a given jurisdiction, it needs to comply with local regulations.

Fine. That’s not what’s going on here.

It's entirely up to 4chan whether it decides to comply or not.

No it’s not. Ofcom has no jurisdiction to make a US company do anything. The Internet is a global marketplace. If the UK wants to remove itself from this marketplace, like it did from the EU, it will need to do the blocking itself. But Ofcom knows what the government blocking access to information looks like and they don’t have the balls to do it.

It was done before. Brazil did that to WhatsApp and Twitter and both companies voluntarily complied with the court requests. Rumble remains blocked because it decided it wouldn't comply with the Brazilian court orders.

Those companies were operating in Brazil. They had income booked in Brazil that could be impounded. They had employees there and offices and had to comply with local laws.

4chan isn’t in the UK. 4chan doesn’t have UK employees or offices. 4chan doesn’t book income on the UK. 4chan didn’t have any thing to do with the UK at all.

If this isn’t convincing, consider this: legally what is the difference from Afghanistan requesting anything not legally in compliance with Taliban’s laws be restricted? Would you support that? Legally that is what is going on here.

At one point Elon Musk fired every employee in Brazil in order to prevent that. It didn’t work - the were blocked. After that, Elon caved and named a local legal representative. X has been, since then, very cooperative.

Afghanistan can block anything they want within their borders and hold anyone in contempt if they refuse to comply. Whether I support that or not is immaterial - I would have to comply in order to continue making other content or services available to Afghanistan residents. Being entirely blocked would be worse.

Their executives might be in trouble if they ever visit the UK though.

If they want to run that sort of banana republic nonsense in violation of international laws and norms, they can choose to do so (and make an international incident).

What international law or norms are being violated here? Near as I can tell, this is the UK trying to avoid using the mechanisms of international law or norms to impose domestic law on international firms?

UK has no sovereignty here.

What does it mean to provide services in a jurisdiction?

4chan offers services at it's web servers which are in the US. People from the UK come over, access the servers in the US, and then import the content they see into the UK. 4chan is offering services locally in the US. People come from all over the place to access those services in the US.

Strange that this is framed as a national sovereignty issue not an issue of UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. This is exactly the thing we don’t want democratic governments to do - congeal with corporate power against their people. Appealing to legality when the laws are themselves unjust is not a defense. The online safety act is broad and vague and not in the interests of UK citizens, so sovereignty appeals are completely disingenuous here. When we talk about sovereignty what we are really referring to is the power of the UK government over its people and the subservience expected of entities like 4chan to that end.

We see these exact same mechanisms in the US and that’s precisely why we should not manufacture rationalizations for this kind of policy - the societal decline as a result of this cynical trend is clear.

> UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end.

If the citizens of the UK wish to express discontent, they are free to vote for a different parliament so they enact different laws. We who live outside the UK have no say on their laws.

The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests to the point that governments engage in suppression of free speech and mass surveillance against their populations. (What’s unique to the UK is that it’s government is largely subservient to the US in the international dragnet.) We are all human and share the same human rights regardless of our nationality.

> The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests

A judge will not find this comment amusing, or a justification for breaking the law. You can, of course, engage in civil disobedience, but keep in mind it doesn't shield you from consequences.

Precisely, mine is a moral not legal argument against shallow moral appeals to “sovereignty”.

This is true but it is still ultimately up to the British people to fix. 4Chan cannot change the free speech situation in the UK but they can refuse to help the government censors because they are not under their jurisdiction.

The government got 33% of the vote. Please tell me how I can vote for a sensible government.

The government as it is, was elected by 100% of the vote. The party heading the Executive branch had fewer than 100% of the vote.

That is not the case. The government was elected with 33.7% of the vote.

You were trying to make a distinction between "government" and "executive" -- that's not how it works here, matey. His Majesty's Government is the party in power (or whichever grouping of MPs can hold the confidence of parliament), it is not all the other MPs - they are the opposition.

We don't have an "Executive". We have His Majesty's Government, they head all the departments, they command the civil service, they control the legislative timetable. The rest of the MPs and Lords are just plebs who get to vote on things. The opposition don't get to propose legislation, except when the Government feels generous and lets them (opposition days).

FPTP creates individual constituencies of roughly 70,000 voters, and the candidate who gets the most votes in one constituency wins a seat. The other candidates in that constituency get nothing, and all votes for them are completely wasted (unlike in other voting schemes). Candidates are usually a member of a political party. The party with the most seats gets first opportunity to form a government.

The 2024 general election was won by Labour with 9,708,716 votes (33.70%) out of 28,924,725 cast. Turnout was 60%, there could've been 48,208,507 possible votes.

The 2019 general election was won by the Conservatives with 13,966,454 votes (43.63%). 2017 was 42.3%. 2015 was 36.8%. 2010 was 59.1%. 2005 was 35.2%. 2001 was 40.7%. You can see the last result was the lowest vote share in decades.

And yet, 33.7% of the vote nets you 100% of the power. Thanks, FPTP!

FPTP forces coalitions to form before the vote, as otherwise they never get power.

In alternative systems, you vote and then coalitions jostle to form a majority afterwards.

> That is not the case. The government was elected with 33.7% of the vote.

My point is that all votes were counted. Some people disagree with the winning choice, but it’s still their legitimate government chosen in a free and democratic election.

I notice you didn't use the word "fair" though. Probably because FPTP is not fair.

In FPTP, if your vote doesn't elect the winner in your constituency, it was wasted. Even if you voted for the eventual government party in a seat that the party didn't win. Your vote did not count. In other electoral systems, it does count.

FPTP means that one vote in one area (e.g. a "safe seat") is not equal to one vote somewhere else. Knowing the geographical distribution of preferences makes gerrymandering possible, and elections have been won not by fair voting, but by unfair redistricting.

FPTP massively punishes any "similar" parties with a vote-split, meaning parties have to become mega-alliances and ultimately they are ground down to just 2 parties. That's the only stable configuration. Any third party has to be mercilessly destroyed, otherwise it will start taking votes from the party it is most similar, leaving their opponent an easy victory.

That's what happened in the 2024 election: Reform UK no longer had the electoral pact they had with the Conservatives in 2019 (where Reform UK voluntarily withdrew from any seats the Conservatives were likely to win), and as a result, the vote-split between Reform UK and Conservatives let Labour romp home to victory.

* Labour got 63% of the seats with 33% of the vote.

* Conservatives got 18% of the seats with 23% of the vote

* Reform UK got 0.8% of the seats with 14% of the vote

* Lib Dems got 11% of the seats with 12% of the vote

That is manifestly unjust. Reform got 5 seats for 4,117,610 votes while Lib Dems got 72 seats for 3,519,143 votes. If that's democratic then I'm a banana.

It is an issue of national sovereignty because the UK is trying to force foreign civilians to enforce their laws outside of their jurisdiction for free, by way of bullying, threats, and illegal fines.

What the UK does within their own borders is their business. They don't have any right to force foreign entities to censor themselves or tl block UK citizens, as if that's even a technically feasible request.

The UK's free speech situation is bad, yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about here. The matter at hand is the UK trying to censor free speech by foreign citizens outside the UK and is using illegal threats to do so.

This is all theatrical. They already know that what they want is a section on what can be see or not within its borders. After this case has been processed and maybe some others some genius will say that internet should be a subset of the whole internet. That's nothing new. For years during war times the post office had followed letters from and to specific destinations/people for conference.

In few years agreeing with you will be considered unsafe

Consider this a glomar response.

Obeying in advance makes them stronger.

My impression is that most UK citizens do in fact support their nanny state and its policies, so this is rather an example of democracy in action.

Your 'impression'.

From the polls, yes.

There are polls for different aspects of OSA but not the OSA itself. For example protecting kids online is popular (big surprise). Yet no polls I can find that frame the OSA itself or the OSA with its trade offs. Seems like the standard practice of asking leading questions so that pollsters can frame popular opinion in some already-decided way.

They're not being lazy. The political reality is that the people of the UK are mostly sick of this shit so harassing the sources (4chan and others) is gonna cause less pushback for the same results than fining people.

We agree in essence. I just called the avoidance of dealing with the pushback laziness.

> and set up import controls to prevent people from importing guns bought abroad.

In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK. I agree though, Ofcom should just go straight to banning these websites that won't comply, rather than this silly and pointless song and dance. Ultimately that's the only real enforcement tool they have. For certain websites that will be enough (Facebook, etc.) for them to follow whatever law for the regions they want to be accessible in.

> In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK

No, UK ISPs are importing 4chan into the UK. At no point is 4chan involved in the importing of it's content. It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.

> It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.

It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content. If the user bypasses controls using VPNs or proxies, it's a different thing, but I would expect 4chan to make a reasonable effort on their side in order to prevent a sitewide block.

I certainly wouldn't. Let the UK block if they want to. At least the voters there will know who to be angry at.

Why would anyone sane be angry at not being able to access 4chan?

Those people are already angry at so many things it would be hard to measure the change.

The only ones angry here are Ofcom/the UK government. Everyone else thinks this is stupid/hilarious.

I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

When a resource exists on the internet, it is available to everyone. That's how the internet works. There is no mechanism by which to exclude any given country. You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

Ofcom is trying to censor the entire global internet. If they want to censor the UK internet, they have much, much better tools.

They're trying to enforce extrajudicial law by way of threats and bullying instead of actually taking proactive steps to "protect" UK citizens from dangerous memes.

Ofcom has the right to censor the internet within the UK. They do not have the right to an opinion about what private entities do in other countries.

> I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

No, but it's a relatively trivial setting to block IP ranges, especially for a service the size of 4chan.

> You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

It's not a ridiculous burden (the ranges are easy to obtain - I did it before) and it's not expected to be 100% effective against a dedicated user because proxies exist.

It is a strange definition of relatively trivial to ask each and every person on the planet who has served content to be aware of all constantly changing local judicial content restrictions, to identify the location of their users, and to identify which specific bits of the content they are serving is problematic.

It is a massive global undertaking involving untold collective man hours developing, implementing, and updating. They may as well be adding an invisible 1/2 pent tax on every man woman and child like some sort of hidden global sovereign.

This is a war they lost long ago and they keep trying to take power to which they are not entitled. The correct answer is like the Boston tea party dumping their imperial assumptions into the ocean.

If they want to block content they should take the responsibility to do so themselves. Even just blocking advertisers who fund problem sites would probably take care of whatever problem they are trying to solve.

Not all people who serve a website need to be aware of that - I don't think my personal blog will be declared illegal anywhere, for instance. If a post is, I might just spare myself the pain and remove it. If a country wants to notify me, I'm pretty easy to find.

Now, for a relatively high-profile website such as 4chan, who deliberately dodges responsibility for the content it knowingly hosts, I'd say it is not a huge effort. They have the staff for that kind of thing. If they decide they aren't complying, then the UK government might order UK-based ISPs to block access and they will comply - as they did many times before. The people in charge of the company might face charges if they ever set foot in the UK, but that's a risk they need to balance.

And, in the light of legislation that sanctions whoever does business with sanctioned companies, sanctioning advertisers can go a long way to force compliance.

> It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content

This is not true. There are many steps before the content is provided to IPs in the UK, with the pertinent ones being after it reaches the ISP from the backbones.

If I order something from AliExpress shipped from China, I’m importing it, and the vendor exporting it. They’re not importing it to me, and I’m not exporting it to myself.

Same thing if I make a web request for content on a server overseas.

Alibaba has warehouses & hubs in Europe (and I assume the US), where it first imports to its own subsidiary here, so this is somewhat debateable.

With Alibaba it gets complicated. There are things like duty free warehouses where things can be on US soil but legally have not yet been imported. But that does not apply in the UK. 4chan does not have servers or proxies in the UK. If it did, Ofcam can go after those local entities and I would not bat an eye.

Ok- a transcontinental pizza order from a slice shop in Beijing, then. AliExpress’s logistics are obviously not relevant to the metaphor.

4chan is exporting. The consumer is importing. That distinction matters.

Perhaps the terms import and export aren’t suitable for internet content? Perhaps new terms with legal implications are needed for internet age?

That might be the case. However, we should not invent new things where old things suffice. Maybe it is as simple as importing digital content, and all that is different in this case is the medium. It's already illegal to import DVDs that contain illegal content into the UK. The person or company that is doing the importing is on the hook. Apply that logic to the the internet medium and we're all set.

As was mentioned in another thread, it is simpler to go after the companies abroad than to build out measures that would prevent such import. Those measures would probably take the form of some sort of firewalls. They would be noticeable to the British people, and the British people, being sensitive about their civil liberties, would not like that. It's easier for Ofcam to go after a couple bigger companies, impose no cost on the British public, and tramp national sovereignty into the ground a bit along the way.