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

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...…

> staffed by those who couldn't make it as civil servants Still civil service. > I'd be surprised if anyone who works there has ever used the internet They do, but the pricks who created the law are/were reactionary politicians, who couldn’t be bothered to actually draft decent laws. Ofwat and ofgem are different issues, they have suffered regulatory capture. Ofwat has the power to bankrupt the entire water system. W…

they're not civil servants, because the the organisations were deliberately created to be separate from whitehall

(and ministerial interference)

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

#183
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t refer to any specific cases so I can’t offer any specific response, but the key phrase is > under ___ laws. A police state is one where the police arrest whoever the government directs them to arrest (rather than enforcing the law). Keir Starmer is not phoning up Police chiefs to get people disappeared.

The laws are whatever the UK's kangaroo courts decide they are. It's a total police state.

> whatever the UK's kangaroo courts decide

I mean there isn't a UK court. There's the supreme court, but one can still appeal to the Hague to get you out of a jam. But yeah, you keep thinking that. Its not like with have a shadow docket going on, undermining the constitution.

> It's a total police state.

I can still, on record call Starmer "a massive fucking prick".

I can do that on TV.

I will not get arrested, I will not have an ICE raid called on me, I won't get death threats.

I won't lose my job[1]

So no, its not a police state, because the judiciary is still working, more or less

[1] not my current job anyway

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

#184
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforcing bad legislation that was enacted through the democratic process doesn’t make a country a police state. It’s just the rule of law. That has always included the enforcement of bad laws as well as good ones.

> the democratic process There's no such thing. There are many different processes that some people consider democratic and others don't. But "democratic" has no other meaning than rule by the governed. It is not a description of a specific political process. Especially one that bans leading opposition candidates, which is clearly as undemocratic as anything that can occur in government. If a population wants to vote…

The UK does not ‘ban’ leading opposition candidates. The largest opposition party in Parliament is the Conservatives; Kemi Badenoch is not banned. The opposition party leading in the polls is Reform; Nigel Farage is not banned.

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

#185
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

All you did was link to the main page of a wikipedia article and copy and paste the first sentence. Your response is so lazy, it doesn't even deserve a response, but I'm putting this out here for the benefit of the general public:

https://www.icrc.org/en/article/grave-breaches-defined-genev... GC 4 Art. 147. "Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, UNLAWFUL DEPORTATION OR TRANSFER OR CONFINEMENT OF A PROTECTED PERSON, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

1. Foreign heads of state are definitely protected persons.

2. Foreign heads of state transiting to and from diplomatic meetings are engaged in a protected activity.

3. If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.

It turns out I'm even more right that I initially thought: this was not only a breach of the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, it was also a breach of the very letter of the law! Regardless, someone doesn't understand the purpose of the Geneva Conventions in the first place, so I'll elaborate...

Edward Snowden himself is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if Osama Bin Laden was on that plane. The fact is that the US and its allies used deception to illegally ground a diplomatic flight, detain a foreign head of state, and engage in an illegal search and seizure.

Furthermore, whether or not the countries involved were even at war is irrelevant. The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats. If a foreign head of state can be detained or imprisoned, and if his property can be searched or seized, then diplomatic negotiations for anything are now impossible.

It doesn't matter if the reasons for breaking these rules are justifiable or not, the fact is that you're not trustworthy even in a basic capacity that allows for diplomatic negotiation. You're in the same perfidious bucket as Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Saddam Hussein, or Ruhollah Khomeini (Iranian Hostage Crisis).

"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."

-Sun Tzu

P.S. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly forbids detaining diplomats. See articles 27 and 29:

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventio...

YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!

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

#186
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...

Arguing a case in front of SCOTUS still means something today?

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

#187
post #80

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…

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.

The law is law, but Ofcom wrote the regulation (1000+ pages) themselves with their interest groups. A lot of regulators went through revolving door and are now selling services for complying with Online Safety Act.

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

#188

I'm not sure why they should care. Just banhammer the entire island. Everybody should. They can have their own independent internet, that conforms to UK laws. Let's see when HN will be fined, for advocacy of circumvention of local laws, or of strong encryption. Facebook banned all Canadian news outlets, and they were probably actually making a few bucks from them. I can't imagine that 4chan would care too much about…

I think if a country is vehemently an international or foreign website it should be on them to block their citizens access, not on website operators to somehow try to geo-restrict that region from access.

That could lead to tons of countries having their own internet firewalls similar to China, if that's what they want to do. Which I probably wouldn't like.

But the alternative of being liable for any new legislation, fines, etc, from any country in the world just because I operate a small website on the internet seems at least equally bad.

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

#189
Semi-related view from a former oldfag (is that term still used?), I am of the firm opinion that Insta and Twitter are far more damaging than 4chan ever was. Not that it doesn't have its filth, of course. But these image boards are too obscure for broad appeal and do not purposefully mess with people's psyche to show them more ads.

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

#190
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They won't comply so these new restrictions are for your own good, citizen"

Subject, surely?

Sigh. It's been 42 years since it was cleared up and that most people became citizens. Can we stop with that remark already
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