React on Rails HN RSC Demo

Aurornis 17h ago

This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.

I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?

This quote from the court is amazing:

> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution

Indeed. Who could have predicted this?

Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal

vr46 16h ago

The write-up from the lawyers is unintentionally hilarious

1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...

The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.

2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.

We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:

Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.

gcanyon 8h ago

> Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk

Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:

https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...

pcf 1h ago

Kimmel landed on a completely erroneous conclusion based on an insane false flag conspiracy theory – and voiced that live on air: "the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it"

If you think that is not worth attempting to get a host taken off the air for (at least for a while), I don't think you understand how dangerous amplified disinformation can be.

Propelloni 23m ago

Well, people are not trying to take Fox News off the air for their many incidents of amplified disinformation, so maybe people think freedom of speech should be protected, even if people disagree with said speech?

Now consider that one is a comedian and the other is a news outlet, what does that tell you about your argument.

dofm 15h ago

> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here

They have tariffs on foreign double standards because it's a key export business.

jsLavaGoat 12h ago

1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.

2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.

American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.

Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.

I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.

Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.

8note 11h ago

> Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country?

well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying

StanislavPetrov 7h ago

>its gonna have to start complying

This is only true if, to quote the article being responded to:

>Unless Ofcom is prepared to sail a British invasion fleet here and land ground troops

amanaplanacanal 10h ago

That seems... Unlikely?

tzs 7h ago

> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here: [...]

> [...], the CLOUD act, [...]

The CLOUD Act doesn't do what you think it does. Here's a comment from a while ago with more detail [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226822

vr46 2h ago

That comment, your comment, is misleading and legally selective - much like Preston Doo-dah's post.

The CLOUD Act bypasses traditional MLAT procedures, faced significant civil liberties opposition (EFF), and resolved a genuine jurisdictional dispute, not a mere drafting oversight. Claiming that data location is irrelevant ignores foreign laws and national sovereignty. Explaining why the US wants extraterritorial powers doesn't establish that it should have them.

pjc50 12h ago

Donald Trump is currently suing the BBC for their speech.

In a UK court, of course.

pnut 12h ago

It's a US federal court in Florida https://share.google/j1xPrAt1Swvuec7bx

PaulRobinson 1h ago

Which is telling.

Damages awarded for libel/slander in UK courts are outsized super pay days, and many a foreign sheikh or business mogul has tried to establish that the matter under question was made known to UK citizens and therefore UK has jurisdiction, because the damages will beat anything awarded anywhere else in the World.

Weirdly, Trump has argued that this was damaging to his election chances (reminder: he won the election he's arguing about), and in a jurisdiction that the BBC can show the material wasn't available in, at least not legally and through their enablement.

As a result, even the BBC's critics in the UK (of which there are many), are seeing this as just a grifter trying to shakedown an organisation he doesn't like the reporting of, because he can't do it to a US network without getting into a first amendment quagmire.

philipallstar 12h ago

Not for any speech. For misleading cutting his speech together.

amanaplanacanal 10h ago

I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment. The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.

geoduck14 9h ago

>I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.

Is it protected if you are challenging a UK company in the UK?

stinkbeetle 9h ago

> I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.

It is, the government can not prevent or punish people speaking on the basis that the government decides it was misleading.

A civil dispute between private parties is entirely different though. One can be found liable for misleading speech that causes damage to another party.

> The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.

otterley 6h ago

If misleading speech weren't protected by the First Amendment, Trump himself would be first in the frying pan.

AlexCoventry 4h ago

Well, it's been clear for a decade that Trump doesn't respect American values.

immibis2 8h ago

sauce is 404

vr46 2h ago

You're right, and I can't edit it now. Here's the corrected URL:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...

Razengan 12h ago

> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.

You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.

vr46 12h ago

The UK is Russia in denial? I am massively confused

icantevenhold 11h ago

Basically everyone is Russia in denial at this point

trollbridge 10h ago

From the last few conversations I've had with Russians, they aren't remotely in denial but also feel powerless to change anything.

myko 9h ago

Absolutely, Brexit was a Russian psyop

Razengan 11h ago

Oh sorry I assumed you were Murican

Oh well, same thing. At this point the UK is basically the mutant kid sprouting from the body of that guy in Total Recall :)

The same shitty some of the worst authoritarianism among the Western world etc.

afpx 8h ago

sounds like you live in the bastion of righteousness. can we move in?

8note 10h ago

huh? the case here is the UK trying to get the US to enforce some UK law in the US

zahlman 8h ago

Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions (not even that, but third parties' understanding of those opinions). Kirk himself never proposed anything violent; the narrative was promoted based on wild misrepresentations to that effect.

But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.

gcanyon 8h ago

> Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions

Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:

https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...

zahlman 7h ago

By pinning the blame on the wrong ideology (with full confidence, apparently based on nothing but his own world view, and implying that others were dishonest in coming to a different (ultimately shown to be correct, and strongly evidenced at the time) conclusion, he ran cover for the ideological group responsible, and their narrative.

otterley 6h ago

Are you suggesting that it's not OK to take a side in a debate, or that by doing so, you are sympathizing with a murderer?

You're going to need a jet pack to traverse the logical leaps you're making here.

hardbass 1h ago

All muslims should die, all republicans should die are all protected free speech.

StanislavPetrov 7h ago

Neither Kimmel or Kirk ever said anything that wasn't fully protected under the 1st Amendment, and anyone claiming otherwise is either ignorant of the law, a blind political partisan, or (more likely), both.

fidotron 17h ago

While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.

While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.

margalabargala 16h ago

> While Ofcom were barmy to even try this

Quote from the article:

> Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused

Seems like Ofcom broadly got the result they wanted. A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.

fidotron 15h ago

Standard regulator strategy: try to make the one thing you actually want to comply be the odd one out and then point at them going "but why not you too?" (The FTC do this as well).

4chan was absolutely the defining target of this wave of noise, but X is what really bothers the UK establishment.

quietbritishjim 13h ago

X is different because it does have a business presence in the UK: UK advertisers

ycombinatrix 11h ago

The rest of them presumably wanted to continue doing business in the UK & did not want to IP-block the entire country.

margalabargala 5h ago

Right, thus Ofcom were not in fact "barmy to even try this".

BikiniPrince 13h ago

How many of those organizations had business within Ofcoms jurisdiction? No one operating outside of their legal jurisdiction should have complied.

mschuster91 14h ago

> A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.

The thing is, you can afford sticking the finger to the UK if you do not have any business interests there. A platform like 4chan won't be bothered even if the UK government says "all payments to be made towards 4chan for advertising are hereby seized until the fine is paid off". But places like Twitter or Meta, that derive millions if not billions of euros a year from the UK and European advertisers? Now that's a lot of money to lose, money that even American shareholders will complain about it being missing from the revenue sheet.

ozyschmozy 12h ago

> from the UK and European advertisers Why would "European" advertisers come into this, I don't think ofcom has jurisdiction outside of the UK?

mschuster91 1h ago

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that you can still enforce garnishment orders from the UK and Europe and vice versa. Brexit did not sever all ties.

andybak 15h ago

Presumably a decent chunk of those might now reconsider?

echoangle 15h ago

And also this only worked once, but in the future other entities getting sued now know they can just ignore it.

shadowgovt 14h ago

it depends on what those other orgs want.

Not being able to do business in (or, depending on how serious they are about enforcement action, visit) the UK is actually pretty constraining. It's understandable if other companies decided they would prefer to find a middle ground that lets them provide one face to the US and another to the UK, or even that they're not interested in 4chan-style maximalism and found it non-onerous to comply with the UK asks because they're pretty in-line with the site's existing standards (I'd have to see the list of sites that complied to have a real opinion on that part).

Bender 12h ago

Did any of them move to a .onion? I would expect commercial sites to cave and some small sites to just move to Tor which probably accomplishes the same thing as far fewer people use the Tor Browser or Brave. I could also be delusional.

Aurornis 16h ago

> there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't

In my comment I explained how countries, including the US, project their laws by imposing controls within their jurisdiction.

The weird part about this case is how they thought they could directly project their laws into another country in a way that overrides that country’s constitution, and they expected the other country to override their own constitution in agreement.

That’s not the same. This was something weirder, which is why there is speculation that it was designed to fail as a demonstration.

fidotron 16h ago

That's exactly what the US do though. We recently saw server seizures in Amsterdam, there is the US Cloud act and so on.

The US fundamentally disagrees with other countries on the limits of their own jurisdiction to include basically anything tangentially related to the US.

Again, I am far from anti-US but any outsider can see this for what it is: a one way street.

appplication 16h ago

Was this in violation of the Netherlands constitution or just not explicitly illegal in Amsterdam? I don’t know the details or the incident you’re referencing, but there is generally a distinction.

fidotron 16h ago

Basic property rights. If they weren't breaking Dutch laws then the server shouldn't be seizable.

Let's see the Dutch get a US based server that is violating Dutch laws. It will never happen.

SomaticPirate 16h ago

This looks to be the case https://decrypt.co/381296/terrifying-precedent-dutch-hand-us...

The servers were seized under a mutual legal enforcement agreement and it remains to be seen if it underwent a separate Dutch legal review. Quite of a bit of legal footwork gets skipped when the “terrorism” charge is invoked. But it looks like the servers are not being physically turned over, the disks are being imaged and that is what is being transferred.

GeorgeWBasic 9h ago

Why be far from anti-US if this is what the US does?

AlotOfReading 16h ago

The US also has laws imposing restrictions on institutions outside their borders/jurisdiction. FATCA for example.

kloop 12h ago

But they do that via things in their control. For example, banks that don't follow FATCA cannot access the US banking system. It's rare for the US to send law enforcement to banks that don't comply

The UK would have been perfectly justified in saying 4chan can't access any of their systems.

kitd 15h ago

Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.

rcxdude 13h ago

This. The regulation organisations can sometimes try to make a point when they're tasked with enforcing an unenforceable or otherwise unworkable rule.

tracker1 16h ago

As a US citizen, I'm inclined to agree.

Gibbon1 12h ago

The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.

philipwhiuk 16h ago

Ofcom didn't "try this"

4chan is suing Ofcom, not the other way round.

squidmaster 16h ago

Ofcom started it. They sent nasty legal letters to 4chan first.

malfist 13h ago

Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who, this is supposed to be a happy occasion!

onetimeusename 13h ago

Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.

4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.

nonethewiser 12h ago

This is how the UK gets it's own great firewall.

Demand online services change their services to conform to their law. Because its accessible from the UK.

Services refuse.

Up goes the wall.

miohtama 2h ago

The UK has has this for years.

4chan was already blocked by ISPs and you need to call them to unblock it on your connection.

Because of this, it is questionable why Ofcom picked 4chan as a target it the first place.

vr46 9h ago

I guess you don't know what actually happened. All but four of the 200 companies Ofcom asked for compliance, complied. The point is about any business that operates in the UK, and especially if it generates income from the UK, should be subject to certain laws in the UK. Not because they're accessible from the UK.

jack_pp 17h ago

It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.

nilamo 16h ago

That's not unique to their culture. Remember The Alamo? That was 190 years ago and we still celebrate our defeat.

drnick1 13h ago

Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.

immibis2 8h ago

I thought the claims of Iran winning were based on Iran's opponent collapsing. But it's a very slow collapse, and still not definitive yet, but some people are extrapolating the trajectory, to see that at the current rate, Iran's enemy will fall long before Iran does.

rcxdude 13h ago

I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive. So it is a victory of sorts so far: the US has not achieved its strategic goal of regime change, and Iran has managed to inflict a fair amount of pain in retaliation.

(You could say the Taliban were even more thoroughly 'defeated' in Afghanistan while the country was occupied by the US, but it can hardly be said that it was a victory for the US either, given what happened as soon as they left).

stale2002 12h ago

> I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive.

No it wasn't. If Iran's only goal is to survive then it would have made peace with the USA and surrounding Middle Eastern territories decades ago.

This whole war is happening because Iran had great political ambitions than just thriving on its own.

Iran has been funding proxy terrorist groups for a long time now, specifically because it is trying to achieve larger goals than just surviving.

And on those fronts, well those proxy groups have taken a ton of damage and aren't long for this world.

rcxdude 7h ago

I'm not talking about beforehand (I said 'the whole war' for a reason). When the US attacked Iran, the Iranian government were either going to fight the war or they (the individuals that made up most of that government) were going to die. It's not surprising they are picking the first option by any means necessary, regardless of how they got into the situation in the first place. It's also what made the attack a very high-stakes gamble on the part of the US government, because either the somehow the Iranian government was going to crumble quickly in the attack (despite the best efforts of people who are quite literally fighting for their lives and still quite widespread support amongst the population), or the US was going to find itself embroiled in yet another overseas war with dubious benefits and high costs. To be clear, I have a level of love for the Iranian government that makes me think the first option is perhaps a little too good for them, but it still doesn't make the US's strategic decisions make sense.

istjohn 8h ago

This whole war is happening because after his easy coup in Venezuela, Trump thought he could just do it again in Iran, and now he can't extricate himself without losing face. And American politicians on both sides of the aisle are subserviant to Israel.

OkayPhysicist 9h ago

They did make peace with the US. It was a whole thing, papers were signed, agreements were made, they pinky-promised to not make nukes, everyone walked away happy. Except the Israelis, who don't like their regional power status being challenged, and apparently Trump, who... didn't like that the Iranians gave up on their nuclear armament program?

Either way, the US and Iran were at peace right up until we decided to pull out of our disarmament treaty with them. And then executed a decapitation strike against them.

potatototoo99 11h ago

Their goals are to survive and control the strait of Ormuz. And they will do both because eventually the US will pull out, because to try to hold the strait is a financial drain. Just like Afghanistan. So it's a waiting game and everyone knows Iran will win. Orange man can say he won every day and after a year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years eventually the US will have to admit defeat.

kstrauser 9h ago

> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?

Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.

Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.

everforward 17h ago

I actually wouldn’t have been shocked if other countries had helped, and the powers that be may regret enforcing their sovereignty here.

Countries used to enforce this at their borders (for foreign information) because it largely worked. They couldn’t stop 100% of the copies of the book, but they could stop there being enough copies for it to be part of the cultural zeitgeist (most of the time).

Not anymore. The companies don’t have a local HQ to harass, and the information doesn’t flow through infrastructure the government owns. They’ve pretty much entirely lost the ability to control the flow of information, and they’ve largely lost the ability to control its direction either with the fall of major news outlets.

I don’t think they have the support for a China-style great firewall, but I’m not British so maybe I’m wrong.

I think it’s a good thing information is set free, but I see why they tried it. It’s the only politically tenable way they had to try to keep that control.

nephanth 12h ago

No need gor a china-style great firewall. Just compel your local dns providers to stop resolving that website. That's what they do for copyright violations

Easy to circumvent ? Sure, but most people don't know how, so you've made the website inaccessible to the vast majority

Bender 11h ago

The infrastructure is already in place for a global great firewall. One need only to compel Google and Cloudflare to block a site in their DNS and most of the planet will not be able to reach it.

immibis2 8h ago

I'm continually surprised there are no operating systems, not even Linux distros, that run their own resolvers by default.

nonethewiser 12h ago

>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?

Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.

Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.

philipov 17h ago

Maybe they weren't allowed to not try? Like adding Denuvo to your game doesn't stop piracy, but your investors will be angry if you don't make the (wasted) effort at due diligence.

DANmode 17h ago

Those toolkits don’t even seem to be intended to stop piracy - they seem to add value by slowing it down long enough to make the first 2 weeks (days) of sales. The people using them usually understand that.

Gormo 16h ago

Yes, but the point is that the motivation for taking these actions isn't for them to be effective, but to satisfy performative requirements imposed by external parties.

munk-a 15h ago

There is an old saying "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM". This is just yet another facet of CYA where we know it's of limited utility and the cracking will happen either way but if you specifically argued against Denuvo before the cracking happens it's your ass on the line for it.

DANmode 16h ago

Yes

gambiting 2h ago

Just to clarify something - these toolkits have gotten to a point where they can now go months without being broken. Yes everyone involved knows they will get broken eventually - but as you noticed the intention is to protect the majority of the sales which happen within the first weeks after launch. Just wanted to make it clear that the timescales have shifted from just hours and days to months lately.

account42 16h ago

I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.

btilly 13h ago

I am surprised that https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/4102 was not cited.

It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.

tamimio 52m ago

It’s not weird when you add a missing detail, that it is a honeypot!

mattlondon 16h ago

The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.

By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.

Or they really are delusional. I dunno.

Arch-TK 9h ago

> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.

Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.

lqstuart 5h ago

GDPR set a pretty bad precedent (unless they were following another) of having a law that magically applies to their citizens everywhere in the entire world. And all of big tech followed it because of corporate greed I guess? Seems like it'd be pretty easy to just ignore it and then just not pay whatever fines. See how random countries like not having Google.

stinkbeetle 9h ago

> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?

State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.

chrisjj 10h ago

>> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution

How this judgment do that?

immibis2 8h ago

They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.

chrisjj 1h ago

Thervare trying to punish violation of the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act.

What's that got to do with the US constition?

spwa4 12h ago

> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?

Not European politicians.

You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.

Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.

schleck8 16h ago

> Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates

When something can be explained by both incompetence and conspiracy, the correct explanation is usually incompetence.

nickdothutton 17h ago

It’s largely political. Even the rank and file staff there agree that it’s nonsense, being done for appearances.

topspin 17h ago

Exactly. Ofcom understood it needed a dog and pony show to answer the latest UK moral panic over 4chan. The headlines have moved on, and they can safely take off their costumes.

p-e-w 17h ago

> they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?

Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.

Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities, have to declare compliance with US laws (FATCA) when opening a bank account in India with an Indian bank. This is enforced by the Indian government.

Muromec 16h ago

>Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities

That's just one handshake away from their bank which does have business with US and their dollaridos.

thaumasiotes 15h ago

> Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.

The surprise is that Britain is a local backwater and the United States isn't. You can't throw your weight around if you don't have any weight.

wonderwonder 17h ago

The difference is that Britain is not a super power and has not been for a long time. There is only China and the US. All other western nations and many eastern ones are shells of what they once were.

cjs_ac 17h ago

This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)

Defletter 15h ago

Here's the link to Parliament's own on-demand video: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c32e3478-65af-41b2-aa7...

I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.

For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:

- 22nd April 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88b...

- 3rd June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e6...

- 10th June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e...

- 15th July 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af6...

- 2nd September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab...

- 16th September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-922...

Defletter 13h ago

Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...

Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.

pja 11h ago

Failing to do anything constructive about the problems he’s identified is Cummings’ whole thing though.

He’s like an incompetent Cassandra: people keep on agreeing with his diagnoses, giving him power in the hope that he’ll fix things at which point he makes a complete hash of everything and leaves in a huff having made things worse than they were before.

If the right ever takes power in the UK in the near-ish future I expect us to go through exactly this cycle again. Cummings seems to be very bad at the politics of driving organisational change & making it stick, which is ironic given that criticising public bodies is what he spends so much of his time doing.

cjs_ac 13h ago

Sure, but even if he provides no solutions, providing insight into the problems is a worthwhile contribution.

Defletter 12h ago

Except that his grievances are extremely surface level.

For example, he claims that legal experts, regardless of their political leanings, agree that the small-boats crisis cannot be solved without primary-legislative changes to the Human Rights Act. Does he mention how the HRA is obstructive? No. Does he mention even one change to the HRA that would help? No. Does he mention the scale of changes required? No.

What's funny is that I'd actually use his HRA example as an example of our constitutional safeguards working exactly as intended: it's for Parliament to decide what our human rights are and their extent, not the whims of ministers. That the Prime Minister and Parliament are refusing to make those changes because they find them to be politically untenable is actually how a democratic system ought to work.

In fact, I'd summarise his testimony as him being irritated at constitutional safeguards working as intended. For example, he claimed that the biggest enemy to British Special Forces is not Russia, China, or Iran but the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence lawyers. Oh no, our ministries are operating within the law! How terrible! He seems to advocate for ministers and ministries to instead adopt an 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' mindset with regards to the law, particularly given his testimony on how things were done during the chaos of the pandemic:

> That led to some very big decisions inside No. 10 where, essentially, I said on behalf of the PM, for example, "Call the airlines. Commandeer the planes. Fly the planes to China. Pick up all our PPE. Fly back here. We don't care if the officials all say it's unlawful. If we don't get all this PPE back, God knows how many doctors and nurses are going to die as a consequence. Do it, and, if there's a judicial review that says it's all illegal, whatever, the PM will deal with that down the line".

pxeger1 12h ago

"parliamentlive.tv" doesn't sound any more reputable, but apparently it's official despite the foreign TLD!

pjc50 12h ago

Cummings is an absolute crank. He had the opportunity to try and he ended up failing spectacularly, like Liz Truss or Yannis Varoufakis.

braiamp 8h ago

It’s funny because "no one with talent wants to work there" would explain an organization failure only if there were a competitive job market, one where talented people can freely choose their employer. There isn't, so the actual description is that the British Civil Service, due to having crappy managers and policies, can't do anything useful.

I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal

rahimnathwani 13h ago

He also talked with Dwarkesh Patel: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dominic-cummings

14113 13h ago

Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.

simoncion 14h ago

In an ideal world, exclusively-US-based companies that host message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging services, and the like would look at this saga and

1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are very low

2) Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story

Alas.

philipkglass 14h ago

Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector...

Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based? Big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.

simoncion 14h ago

> Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based?

That is an issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.

Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was exclusively about US-based companies.

And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.

philipkglass 13h ago

According to Discord's careers page, they're currently hiring people in the US, UK, Singapore, Portugal, and the Netherlands:

https://discord.com/careers

They have a registered office in Schiphol:

https://discord.com/company-information

Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other companies it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

simoncion 13h ago

> They have a registered office in Schiphol:

Ah, I stand corrected. Discord has a branch office in the Netherlands. Thanks for the correction.

> Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

As I said:

  And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be *far* less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.

Trampling on fundamental rights in order to chase marginally more money is neither admirable nor prosocial behavior.

dogleash 11h ago

>It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.

philipkglass 11h ago

I'm commenting on how non-US laws may affect businesses, descriptively speaking, without prescriptively stating what I think that the law ought to be.

I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)

However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.

gpm 13h ago

Discord does business in the UK, Australia, and just about every other country of any relevance. It would be trivial for the UK courts to collect fines against them simply by ordering the payment processors handling payments for them in the UK to redirect those payments, for instance.

4chan is only reasonably immune from this because it's not really operating as a business...

simoncion 13h ago

> 4chan is only reasonably immune from this because it's not really operating as a business...

4chan is absolutely operating as a business ("4chan community support LLC") that accepts payments [0], as is Kiwi Farms ("Lolcow LLC") [1]. There is zero doubt in my mind that both companies have users in the EU, UK, and other jurisdictions that have the sorts of awful regulations that we're discussing. I expect that they also receive payments from users in those jurisdictions.

Given that you report that it's trivial to do, I wonder why Ofcom declined to levy its fines by way of commanding UK-based payment processors...

[0] <https://4chan.org/pass>

[1] The link that leads to [2] is labelled "Donate", but a sixty-second search turns up no indication that Lolcow LLC is a registered US charity

[2] <https://kiwifarms.net/account/billpay-support>

GeorgeWBasic 8h ago

Just bear in mind that many US states are implementing the so-called age verification laws, which will soon turn into identity verification laws. So simply being in the US doesn't protect them against having to comply with these things. Someone is going to have to fight the laws.

throwawayffffas 13h ago

The main difference is that most of the big players have physical presence in the UK. You can't argue British law does not apply to you when you have a campus in Kings Cross.

tourmalinetaco 14h ago

4chan and Kiwi Farms (via Lolcow LLC), to be more specific.

simoncion 14h ago

Rad. Thanks for the correction.

shadowgovt 14h ago

Here's the thing though: nobody has to agree 4chan is the hero of the story. It's also reasonable to look at 4chan and say "Gross and legally correct is still gross" and let them soldier on alone.

You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures. It doesn't say "First they came for the KKK." And, of course, it doesn't say "First they came for the Nazis."

simoncion 13h ago

> You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures.

Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.

If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.

To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.

Klonoar 8h ago

You’re just deploying the standard 4chan argument tactic of appealing to some supposed higher level of emotional maturity.

It was cute in 2004.

shadowgovt 13h ago

> scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.

And they got it. "I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." But that doesn't mean anyone needs feel sympathy for the devil. We're not obligated to cheer when the wretched hive of scum and villainy keeps its liquor license another year. The law was followed and we can move on.

> If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good

... It is usually the case when we're talking about 4chan (and always when talking about Kiwi Farms) that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for. 4chan's most positive benefit to society is as a litmus test for precisely how far the [xkcd-1357](https://xkcd.com/1357/) principle goes. They are 100% welcome, per their freedom of the press (and the freedom of speech of their users), to host their website. On their infrastructure. With their own DOS protection. In a country that recognizes those rights and protects them. That's the system working as intended.

simoncion 13h ago

> ...that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for.

No? Saving a child from being swept away in a freezing river is an unalloyed good, no matter how terrible the scoundrel that did it.

Like I mentioned, it looks like you still have quite a lot of emotional maturity to develop.

(You might also benefit from checking out 4chan boards that aren't /b/, /pol/, and /gif/.)

LoganDark 12h ago

> Saving a child from being swept away in a freezing river is an unalloyed good

What if it's only as part of kidnapping the child and forcing them into grueling slave labor until the day they die? Is that still perfectly unalloyed?

(Not that I'm saying 4chan is metaphorically doing that here; just for the sake of argument.)

murphyslab 12h ago

The original German of the poem does say, at the final line, "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." That is, "When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest."

So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.

It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.

Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.

However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":

> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"

Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own.

So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.

See:

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

It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:

> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church#Aftermath

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marga_Meusel

Alpha3031 10h ago

> extend to all subcultures

> every voice of opposition to totalitarianism

Unless your definition of "opposition to totalitarianism" is very different from mine, I would hope it is transparent that the examples given in the comment you replied to are not such voices.

shadowgovt 10h ago

What of the wellbeing and interests of the vulnerable who stumble onto /b/ ill-equipped for the firehose? Are we their keepers also?

This may be one of those "not everyone gets to win everywhere" situations. And if I have to choose protecting 4chan vs. protecting children...

... I can see two positions on the topic which have merit. So it's a good thing there are separate nations to decide on different bars of safety.

I would have no problem with a world where 4chan is free to operate in the US and blocked in the UK. Different countries with different cultures.

Levitz 5h ago

>This may be one of those "not everyone gets to win everywhere" situations. And if I have to choose protecting 4chan vs. protecting children...

Which to be clear, is nothing but a fiction you built yourself in order to insist on your failed arguments, 4chan is a 18+ site and it enforces the rule. It's literally the second rule of the site just below not posting illegal content.

lukewarm707 10h ago

Think of the children!

This message was sponsored by SafetyTM.

Every single day And every word you say Every game you play Every night you stay

I'll be watching you

StanislavPetrov 7h ago

>What of the wellbeing and interests of the vulnerable who stumble onto /b/ ill-equipped for the firehose? Are we their keepers also?

No, in a free society the government doesn't decide, via its monopoly on violence, what it's okay for consenting adults to say or hear. And in a sane society, parents are responsible for policing what their children see and hear, and not the government.

mm263 17h ago

This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”

ifwinterco 16h ago

I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.

The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great

u8080 43m ago

I heard the same argument for several years in Russia while government was building competences. They have money, so could just hire top tier commercial companies who are the best it their field.

jubilee33 9h ago

Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent? They look pretty incompetent from my perspective. Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.

ifwinterco 9h ago

There are examples of the apparently ineffective British state suddenly gaining some teeth and some competence when they actually care.

One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.

That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.

If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area

Orygin 16h ago

They already track everything going through the undersea cables, why couldn't they start blocking at those points?

ifwinterco 14h ago

Getting the raw data is relatively straightforward, but my understanding is doing real time DPI at country scale without being easily circumvented (and without breaking the rest of the internet you want to work) isn't so easy.

If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through

superxpro12 14h ago

i too love the idea of deep government inspection of every piece of data i send

dannyw 12h ago

Splicing and mirroring a cable is about 10x easier than filtering it.

u8080 11h ago

Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.

Just a recap how it happened in Russia:

1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8

2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.

3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).

4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).

5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).

6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.

7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).

bnastic 12h ago

That's already been done, on the ISP level, some time ago. For torrent sites and similar, if I remember correctly.

crimsontech 12h ago

I'm pretty sure it was to protect the children, or fight terrorism, or to save the NHS, or lower taxes.

TZubiri 16h ago

deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.

mm263 16h ago

You just need to follow this to the logical conclusion. They’ll ban using your proposed method, people will switch to VPN and other modern methods and to combat people still accessing the forbidden internet they will need DPI and TSPU-like devices

9x39 15h ago

I think the conclusion is more like mandating home and business web access is proxied at a national level and most other protocols disallowed. Use of VPNs without a VPN tax stamp and key escrow is prima facie evidence of violation of the Counter-Terrorism and Security act. Use of non-standard protocols is assumed to be criminal intent. Check with your approved internet provider for how to access the Internet safely.

TZubiri 15h ago

What proposed method? I'm explaining how things work. In order to send a packet, the destination address needs to be known to the delivering entities. Encryption occurs by using enveloping, the envelope is unencrypted, but the content is encrpyted.

This is how it works, if you want I can explain to you why it works like this, or you can work it out from first principles. But this is not a proposal.

VPNs are an asterisk and they work not by avoiding this natural unavoidable principle, but by tunneling, the VPN or proxy vendor is putting themselves on the headers, and on the backend they still route the packets to the destination by putting the intended destination on the headers.

If these VPNs don't comply with local regulations and are used to evade national restrictions they can and are often themselves subject to bans. But even if not, it acts as a sort of waiver and compromising element for all illicit activity.

Sometimes it's not necessary to completely outlaw something, it is sufficient to make it so that engaging in the outlawed activity is sufficiently uncomfortable and clear that it is illegal, forcing users to undeniably acknowledge they are avoiding the law. An example of this is trying to watch pirated movies without paying for them, yeah you can do it, but you gotta do some shady shit and dodge a lot of malware, and eat shady gambling ads and etcetera.

In addition to making you feel like an asshole, it removes any recourse you may have, it's very hard to make any claim later, you cannot really complain later if you were accessing it illegally to begin with. Nobody is going to pursue you to the end of the world not to access a pirated movie or an illegal website, but they pursue the distributor and make things very uncomfortable enough so that you are effectively hiding like a fiending outlaw.

iamnothere 17h ago

Likely yes IMO, especially since the UK is making moves to militarize.

hardbass 1h ago

Sounds good. Why don't you want a strong military in European countries? They should pay their own military tab.

andyhedges 17h ago

I hate to break it to you, but the UK has had a military for some time now.

mahboi 16h ago

This isn't what "militarize" means in this context or mostly anywhere

DANmode 17h ago

So has France, but their nuclear weapons program is new.

I don’t think it’s weird to point out the little guys (especially former or current EU) getting strapped.

mig39 16h ago

I think both the UK and France have had nuclear weapons programs since the 50s and 60s. Are you thinking about the "Northwood declaration" ? Where they both said they would coordinate their nuclear responses?

AnonymousPlanet 16h ago

The first nuclear weapon tests for the UK and France were in 1952 and 1960, respectively. Nothing about that is new.

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

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

DANmode 16h ago

> Nothing about that is new.

Now we’re both wrong!

The French are now using submarines (striking distance and speed, blah blah)

and are apparently being looked at as the leader of “forward deterrence” in the region.

https://tvpworld.com/93637117/frances-nuclear-umbrella-which...

miohtama 16h ago

Think of the kids the world we failed to protect by not having passport checks and government snitch at the 4chan login.

But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).

And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action...

DoingIsLearning 10h ago

> No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.

Does _not_ need to be foreign.

People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.

Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.

So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.

It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.

lifeisstillgood 11h ago

I think this is just one more case of “we thought we lived in Western Civilisation and all agreed on how to handle the problems of the world”. And we are discovering that we actually live in American Civilisation, and the differences are becoming insurmountable.

The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends

sampli 5h ago

Because America courts should enforce foreign censorship?

trinsic2 12h ago

> I wish them luck in that important work. In the meantime, we Americans have plenty more work to do on this side of the pond to protect our border and prevent the British, Australian, Russian, and other foreign censorship regimes from crossing it.

We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.

And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act

outoftheabyss 12h ago

Your quote references censorship specifically and while there are some creaks in the first amendment here and there, it is nothing compared to the censorship machine running in the UK and Europe.

trinsic2 8h ago

What the hell are you talking about? We have the same problems as the UK and they are just as bad. We are at the cusp, while the UK is further in, but we still have the same problems..

nickdothutton 17h ago

When European governments say they will lead in technology regulation, this is what they mean.

gupti 15h ago

I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.

Though I guess we've already seen something similar in 2024 with France and Telegram...

gupti 15h ago

I hope the precedent doesn't change to trying to enforce fines on foreign companies by instead arresting and fining employees upon arrival to the UK.

Though I guess we've already seen something similar in France with Telegram...

game_the0ry 12h ago

Its adorable that the UK gov thought they could beat the internet.

The world wide web remains undefeated.

not-kinsale-joe 16h ago

It's annoying, in the UK you can browse 4chan but not Imgur

jubilee33 10h ago

I'm not sure who the other three clients are, But in the case of 4chan, people are also forgetting that it is well known to be an intel gathering and propaganda disseminating platform closely aligned if not run indirectly by the US government. It's not blocked anywhere that much more tame sites are usually blocked, perhaps china is the only one I know of and even google is blocked there, and that makes me suspicious. Yes there are organic users on there outside of the political places, But many, especially those that are disgusted by the site, forget the very real impact that 4chan has had on current events, I just don't see any of this situation as organic.

lukeify 13h ago

We need to start collectively shaming individuals in the tech sector who work for these censorious government agencies and do their bidding.

MisterMunchkin 15h ago

Good, fuck off ofcom. We always mocked Chinese censorship but we’re not really any different now.

TZubiri 16h ago

does this mean the UK will block 4chan in the UK? if the defense is jurisdictional then 4chan can continue to serve US users, but there would be no recourse if the UK blocks it in their jurisdiction

miohtama 16h ago

The UK ISPs already did this earlier. What Ofcom really wanted is to flex their muscle and kill 4chan because it represents Satan for them.

What Ofcom wants next is to make VPNs illegal.

crtasm 16h ago

Did they fully block it or just put it on the blocklists that you can turn off in your account settings?

https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://www.4chan.org suggests the latter to me, but the checks aren't very recent

miohtama 14h ago

Using a nationwide default blocklist to address 4chan would be appropriate behaviour for Ofcom, given its duty to protect kids.

Beyond that, it is just madness to try to control the US company or fine it. Going beyond this duty shows that not all biscuits are present at the afternoon tea.

It's not like Facebook, or anyone's personal life or business, depends on 4chan.

ryankrage77 15h ago

In my experience, ISPs just 'block' it at the DNS level. Using another DNS provider 'unblocks' everything.

TZubiri 11h ago

This is my experience too, I don't know why they don't do IP level blocks. It's pretty trivial to evade a lot of bans.

I think the Spain-Cloudflare case does IP level blocks and it has a lot of side effect damage, but if I recall they do IP-block level blocking because the vendor, cloudflare, provides header/envelope encryption and pooling, so the Spanish courts considers it legal to block the whole service even, alleging that they are not collaborating with court orders, they just choose not to block the whole provider to reduce the collateral damage, even if they consider they have jurisdiction to block all of CF

miohtama 10h ago

Pirate streams have better access to public IP addresses than legitimate services, so blocking Cloudflare does nothing but destroy legitimate businesses.

pjc50 12h ago

It is not blocked in the UK.

I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.

EmbarrassedHelp 11h ago

They only temporarily backed down on targeting VPNs, while also saying that online platforms should block all VPN users who don't verify their ages.

Bender 11h ago

They will never stop trying. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vf2citudDA

tourmalinetaco 14h ago

4chan and Kiwi Farms, which is something the article intentionally glosses over. Honestly, KF is a far more “dangerous” place in the eyes of the UK government, as 4chan hasn’t been relevant for around a decade, and the combined efforts to deplatform KF traditionally has been fruitless.

whywhywhywhy 12h ago

Why would they block it if they hope to get money from it.

metalman 10h ago

4 chan is the most bent place on the internet that is just wide open, and in my short forrey I did see and read a bunch of horrible stuff, but there are other areas in there where certain counter culture groups with no violence or ranting seem to be hiding out for the privacy, and there are also people who go in to challenge some of the worst obscenities, and as it turned out I have a friend who does just that, even going so far as to learn the intricasies of these groups and chase them around the net to pick there horrible theories and causes apart, driving some of them completly insane in the process. it's not like there are not worse places, and 4 chan realy is sort of cartoonish and juvenile, so the best thing is to openly acknowledge it and like all the bad stuff label it and remind people of the risks of getting caught up in this, or any, cult.

draw_down 17h ago

> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution

Good grief. This is sad stuff.

mahboi 16h ago

What else should happen in this case?

drnick1 13h ago

No, it's called sovereignty.

ImJamal 14h ago

Are you saying it is sad that American courts do not enforce foreign laws if they violate the US constitution? If so, then are you in favor of Russian, Chinese, various Muslim countries' laws being enforced in the US?

chihuahua 13h ago

Iranian Fatwas enforced/carried out by American courts, that could get interesting.

deaux 13h ago

I think you meant to ask "are you in favor of the CLOUD Act and FACTA (among others) being enforced outside the US?"

philipwhiuk 16h ago

This was a fairly stupid case. Ofcom didn't try to enforce it abroad, 4chan sued Ofcom in case it did (mostly for PR purposes).

Ofcom knows its rulings don't apply internationally.

So yes, the status quo is enforced by the US courts, as if it was ever in doubt and nothing at all has changed.

Orygin 16h ago

Didn't Ofcom send multiple threat letters to 4chan, requesting they comply with UK laws? That counts as trying to enforce it

tourmalinetaco 14h ago

Yes. Ofcom sent multiple extortion letters to 4chan and Kiwi Farms, demanding they pay up and/or submit to British rule. Saying it was for “PR purposes” is equivalent to saying that reporting blackmail is for PR. GP also fails to understand that specifically US courts have no jurisdiction to stop international extortion, which is a loophole through the FSIA. For now, this creates a gridlock: the UK has no ability to seize assets from non-UK entities, but are free to fine and declare non-UK entities as in violation, which aids internal and even international pressure to censoring speech critical of the UK government. In response, US legislation is being proposed (GRANITE Act) that aims to close this loophole.

mellosouls 13h ago

Note this nonsense headline and article is just more puffery from the theatrical 4chan side and doesn't represent any official legal position.

Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.

The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.

jalev 15h ago

Cool. So 4chan is going to get DNS blocked in the UK and I can finally stop hearing about this and all the Americans takes on what my country's enforcement mechanisms should be.

privacyishuman 14h ago

What should the rules and enforcement mechanisms be? It seems your country is unfree and getting worse in terms of digital freedom.

https://eylenburg.github.io/countries.htm

Ofcom concedes defeat in 4chan case (prestonbyrne.com)