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4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

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Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#251

Post by RobotToaster »

dijit wrote: post #16

The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards). If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported. Jus…

In theory you can still sue for a faulty product under UK consumer protection laws if it was sold by an international retailer, of course enforcement is "difficult".

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#252

Post by 3rodents »

anigbrowl wrote: post #216
3rodents wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't wish to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to defend U.K. laws so I'll keep this short. You're being intellectually dishonest. That page does not back up your assertion. You have said "If it causes anxiety to someone, it is illegal" but the page says "intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress" which has a different meaning.

This is a meaningless standard since anyone can claim they were alarmed or distressed and there's no way to invalidate such a subjective claim. I can say I'm alarmed by your comment, does that mean it's valid for Ofcom to fine you?

Again, that's not what the law states. The law is not broken when someone is alarmed or distressed by a comment. The law is broken if you post something that is "likely or intending to" which is not judged by the victim. If you walk into a police station in England and tell them that this comment on Hacker News alarmed and distressed you, it doesn't matter, it is up to the legal system to judge my intent, i.e: whether my comment was "likely to" or "intending to" cause alarm and distress.

Whether you agree with the law or not, it is important to be accurate when discussing it. The U.S. vs. U.K. (not) free speech law discussion online so often seems to frame them as fundamentally different, but they are on the same spectrum. The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#253

Post by gzread »

michaelt wrote: post #209
DevKoala wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds so gross. Why do British people tolerate that? It’s as if British people belong to their government.

The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates. The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative. As such our windsock government with no strong beliefs does what the survey says is most popular.

Interesting - There was once a movement in Germany to criminalise bestiality, and the opposition to this movement were vocal enough to hold street marches for the right to fuck dogs. https://www.webpronews.com/zoophiles-march-on-berlin-to-dema...

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#254

Post by michaelt »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #220
michaelt wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates. The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative. As such our windsock government with no strong beliefs does what the survey says is most popular.

The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates. The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative. I think there is an argument to made the pornography in general is harmful. But to single out one single type of porn strikes me as... very odd. Maybe politicians can list, explic…

I chose incest because https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/pornography-sexual-relationshi...

> So-called "barely legal" pornography and content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives are set to be banned amid efforts to regulate intimate image sharing.

> Peers agreed by a majority of one to ban videos and images depicting relationships that would not be allowed in real life.

> They also agreed by 142 votes to 140, majority two, to bring intimate pictures and videos of adults pretending to be children in line with similar images of real children.

There's actually a 200+ page government review of pornography https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-a-safer-...

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#256

Post by epolanski »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #5

4chan's lawyer's response: "In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment."[0] [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko

But 4chan doesn't geoblock users?

So it's clearly operating globally.

Country flags are a major feature of the board.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#257

Post by saaaaaam »

strideashort wrote: post #237
Ajedi32 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a physical product. A better analogy would be a phone call, initiated by someone in the UK to a foreign country.

What if I send http request over snail mail? And they send me back printed http/html response? Is it “different” then? Being serious here.

I think (but am not sure) that there are long established postal laws in most territories about sending “obscene” material through the mail. I think this was used to prosecute pornography publishers in earlier times. BUT you needed to (a) intercept mail and (b) have a good reason and (c) get a warrant to open (interfere with) that mail.

Possessing pornography was a separate issue which may or may not be allowed. Typically (I think) authorities went after publishers not consumers - because they were easier targets to pin down.

Which would seem to imply that if you’re sending encrypted traffic at the request of a recipient the as a publisher of “obscene” material then unless you are delivering very clearly illegal content to a user then you should not prosecuted.

I haven’t got a single source for anything I’m saying, so I might be entirely wrong - I’m simply going off half-remembered barely-facts. So please do argue with me!

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#258

Post by wao0uuno »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #103
vasco wrote: post #11

People used to tell kids to not go to a shady part of town while they spent their afternoons outside unsupervised. Can parents not tell kids to not go to certain websites? We still went to the shady part of town and the kids will still go to 4chan but at least we don't need to give away freedoms. Such erosion of freedom for the common person because parents can't have an awkward conversation is irritating.

I'm moving away from that line of thinking. We can discuss how poorly formulated this law is, and the implications for privacy of internet control bills, and the resulting eroding of our freedom of speech. It's correct to be suspicous of attempts to regulate the internet. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "for the sake of the children" such measures are necessary. The reality is that most kids these days h…

4chan is probably one of the least brain damaging sites kids can go to these days. It has porn and stupid memes, true. But so does google if you turn the safe search off. It's the corporate run sites and services with ai powered recommendation engines that are the most problematic. Infinite scroll sites like reddit or tiktok are what really fucks up your brain. I used to frequent 4chan as a kid back in the day when it was truly a wild corner of the internet and I turned out just fine.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#259

Post by throwawaytea »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #229
EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #184

Ofcom is currently threatening a Canadian forum that exists to help people with depression. Ofcom claims that geoblocking blocking the UK is "insufficient": > I've also gone back to Ofcom explicitly telling them the UK was now geoblocked (twice now) and I received a response that this was insufficient. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1rk690v/i_ru... Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply gl…

I think anyone running a website should avoid visiting the UK from now on.

A gf asked to go on a trip to England/Ireland and I told her I will go to Brazil or Colombia before I go to the UK. Im not going to risk getting in trouble because I made a post online or discussed immigration or trans people in the wrong way according to them.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#260

Post by jimnotgym »

dijit wrote: post #16

The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards). If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported. Jus…

> yet it continues to be legally imported.

I am not sure it is legal to import dangerous electrical equipment to the UK.

It may be unenforced, that doesn't make it legal.

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