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Comment by soco | Hacker News Reader

I think people here are also more fond of 4chan than the average citizen, and also in general rather fond of technological freedom of anything. Makes sense, being players basically in the team about to get a red card. Like it or not, the global internet became a convenient way to skirt local laws and I don't see any reason why exempting something in one place only because it originated in some other place. Is now enforcing a law "the CCP way"? Should internet be kept lawless only because... internet?

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Of course, because they're not proposing "apply our laws in our country" they are proposing "apply our laws in another country". If you want to enforce this law you need to do it the CCP way (punish your ISPs for alllowing it into the country and monitor your citizens for accessing it) because you don't have the jurisdiction to enforce it otherwise. Let's not forget how many UK criminals have made fun of Kim Jong Un's haircut and are getting away with it because the UK is such a lawless place that doesn't enforce DPRK law.

Why should it be done that way?

If a country has media or broadcast standards laws, and you distribute or broadcast content in that country that violates those laws, that’s on you. The country can just fine you if you chose not to comply. Just the same as they would if you were doing it while living in that country. You’re not obliged to care about the fine if you don’t live there and never intend to travel there. But if you do then you’re going to be subject to their laws at that point, for violating those laws when you distributed that content in that country.

It should be done that way because nominally the law is supposed to address a serious problem (supposedly protecting kids) as they justify that as the reason for an invasion of privacy and additional business regulations. Ignoring the reality of what the internet is and passing a law that clearly won't achieve it's stated goals but has serious drawbacks that will be enacted is not good governance, at best it's showboating at worst it's a deliberate step towards an Orwellian panopticon.

This is nonsense.

The hardware that propagates the data transmission is owned partly by the UK and partly by Canada. The Canadian website operator has turned off the transmission to the UK on their side and has fulfilled their obligations. The UK is complaining that they didn't turn off transmission on their side.

What you're saying is that the website operator should travel to the UK to enforce UK law from Canada. It's nonsensical.

Edit: If this wasn't clear enough here is a cartoonish version:

Ofcom: Your site violates UK law. By allowing UK citizens access, you must abide by UK law.

Website operator: I do not care about serving UK citizens and am now blocking UK IP addresses. Thank you for notifying us.

Ofcom: We have decided that we will not block access to your website from the UK. Therefore it is theoretically possible to access your website anyway, which is a violation of UK law. No matter how much effort you spend on ensuring that UK citizens do not gain access to your website, we will make sure that there will always be a non zero possibility of violating UK law. Since we are not blocking anything, the blame cannot lie in UK users circumventing a UK side block, which would force us to prosecute UK citizens rather than you as the website operator.

Please shut your website down to ensure compliance.

Website Operator: Okay so you're telling me I have to build the great firewall in the UK, make all ISPs adopt it and lobby a change in UK law to make the firewall mandatory, just so I can host my website?

Ofcom: yes

> Website operator: I do not care about serving UK citizens and am now blocking UK IP addresses. Thank you for notifying us.

Wait did 4chan actually block UK addresses? My understanding was it hadn’t which makes your story fall apart.

The idea that a router is responsible for the packets it forwards rather than the person that made the content and put that content in those packets is getting silly.

Yes it should, there is no global law, and hell forbid there ever should be.

It's fucking stupid that an American site that is afforded free speech protection in its own country has to deal with the UK acting like a tyrant.

> there is no global law, and hell forbid there ever should be.

There are so many global laws that are actually enforced. Of course they all origin in the US. See KYC/AML laws.

You know a bunch of people feel that way about the US forcing it’s copyright laws on everyone, right?

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