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Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

theregister.com

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Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#131

Post by numpad0 »

aunty_helen wrote: post #92
alphazard wrote: post #74

What do they seek to accomplish here? There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. No UK bureaucrats are going to make a career out of this. Going after a company that can defend itself and can't be intimidated, will prevent them from bluffing successfully against smaller companies, who could realistically be intimidated. If I were working at Ofcom, I would stay away fro…

4chan are the “think of the children” bad guys to make an example out of. This isn’t a play to get money or 4chan to comply, it’s a play to increase the strength of their legislation. So expect stronger blocking etc to be on the cards to prevent foreign entities from avoiding the law.

Yeah, the ultimate goal is to end all user-generated content, first through moderation and then by algorithms, motivated by structural deficiency in commissioned for-profit contents that it is no match against user-generated. And the response sorely needed right now is resurgence of a distributed social media system that do not grossly undermine copyrights.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#132

Post by bigbadfeline »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #105
basisword wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> When 4chan successfully defends itself How do you expect this to happen? The law is pretty clear and afaik 4chan has been pretty explicit that they know the law and they're ignoring it. 4chan's 'out' is that they don't have any legal presence in the UK. More legitimate enterprises do so the results of this will have no bearing on them.

If this is deemed illegal in an US court then the OSA will be unenforcebale against US entities in the US (though not sure what's needed to set precedent). This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.

> This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.

UK law is generally unenforcible in the US except extradition agreements for crimes commuted while residing in the UK. That's not the case here and there's no agreement that applies to this case.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#133

Post by alphazard »

andy_ppp wrote: post #95
aunty_helen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan are the “think of the children” bad guys to make an example out of. This isn’t a play to get money or 4chan to comply, it’s a play to increase the strength of their legislation. So expect stronger blocking etc to be on the cards to prevent foreign entities from avoiding the law.

Yes the government have already talked about banning VPNs and government taking copies of your private keys :-/

This is a little wild to think about. It would make infosec impossible in the UK.

Imagine the IT departments of every mutltinational corporation desperately trying to sort out permissions to keep important information off of machines deployed in the UK. New authorization groups for everyone in the UK, lots of meetings with lawyers to sort out what they can have access to. Everyone in the UK becomes a second class psuedo-trustworthy employee overnight.

Were I in charge of IT, when that bombshell came across my desk, I think I would give every UK employee a chromebook, and migrate all workloads to the cloud. No data could be saved locally. No thumb drives. Depending on the availability of good cloud tools, the productivity hit might be so large that layoffs would be warranted.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#134

Post by [deleted] »

quercusa wrote: post #122
fusslo wrote: post #67

One interesting bit is that the lawyer, RONALD D. COLEMAN is (or at least was) a youtube lawyer. He'd pop into 'law streams' from time to time to talk about cases and discuss newsworthy events out of the courts. He is as if New Jersey was transmuted into a man (I say that with great affection). I want to say, and I could be wrong, I became familiar with his name during the Rittenhouse trial. Or maybe the couple high…

Coleman won the 'Slants' case at SCOTUS, so he's the real thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matal_v._Tam https://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/legal-publications-ron...

[deleted]

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#135

Post by ben_w »

fair_enough wrote: post #111
cma wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the US and Europe do this as well, Evo Morales grounding incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

I still cannot believe the Geneva Conventions allowed this. This should have ended with John Kerry and Jen Psaki in a Swiss prison for at least 10 years, if not Barack Obama himself. We managed to convict accused war criminals with a lot less evidence in the Nuremburg trials. FOR EMPHASIS: I'm not comparing the severity of the crimes, I'm comparing the evidentiary basis for securing convictions. "It may be dangerous…

  The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

What would those have to do with "intelligence contractor leaked our stuff, might be on the Bolivian president's plane, oh no a diplomatic incident"?

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#136

Post by blibble »

alphazard wrote: post #74

What do they seek to accomplish here? There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. No UK bureaucrats are going to make a career out of this. Going after a company that can defend itself and can't be intimidated, will prevent them from bluffing successfully against smaller companies, who could realistically be intimidated. If I were working at Ofcom, I would stay away fro…

> it doesn't look like these Ofcom guys are playing with a full deck

they're a quango, staffed by those who couldn't make it as civil servants (not a high bar)

I'd be surprised if anyone who works there has ever used the internet

similarly useless are ofwat (water) and ofgem (energy), both of which allowed massive scandals to happen on their watch

ofwat: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/21/new-powerfu...

ofgem: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63805028

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#137

Post by noir_lord »

Hamuko wrote: post #110
andy_ppp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the government have already talked about banning VPNs and government taking copies of your private keys :-/

What private keys? Any private keys?

No one has seriously discussed banning VPN's - one minister mentioned they where looking it and no one said anything about private keys either as far as I know.

If I'm wrong someone can drop me a link since I live in the UK.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#138

Post by ben_w »

haunter wrote: post #115
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK is a police state. No it isn’t.

It's a nanny state which is even worse

Criminal 1: "Quick, hide the money!"

Criminal 2: "Coppers?"

Criminal 1: "Worse. Nannies."

Nah, it's not worse.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#139

Post by themafia »

sunaookami wrote: post #24
DataDaemon wrote: post #19

poor Brits

Every country gets the government it deserves.

You can cheat elections with enough money. Excepting that citizens are generally not on an equal footing with their own government. Party politics exist.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#140

Post by ToucanLoucan »

laughing_man wrote: post #126
foldr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re overanalyzing it. They’re just enforcing the law. You and I may agree that it’s a bad law, but that doesn’t mean that the people in charge of enforcing it necessarily have complex and sinister motives.

You're underestimating how much thought governments put into things. Bureaucrats wouldn't be showcasing their own impotence with no reason.

You're overestimating how much thought governments put into things.

Governments are just organizations and organizations are made of people. We see plenty of folly in the private sector; the government can do it too, don't you worry. Arguably they can do folly in ways the private sector only dreams of, what with being funded by the taxpayer.

The org is enforcing the law as written. The law, as written, is fucking stupid. Ergo the enforcement actions that derive from it themselves look fucking stupid.

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