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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

#191

Post by linuxftw »

KaiserPro wrote: post #174
pessimizer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nanny state with the police arresting and jailing people for tweets. It's a police state, but "we" like to identify police states with Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, or whoever the state's enemy is at the moment. When police show up to your door and ask you to apologize to people for causing distress, and to consider not speaking from now on, you live in a police state. When you have banned political parties…

> you live in a police state. sigh You've not lived in a police state, or more accurately, you've been online too much to actually get context. In the UK threatening to kill someone has been illegal since at least ~1880 something. Going online an publicly calling for the death of one or more person (which in the eyes of the law is pretty close to sending a good old paper death threat) is not only widely considered a…

Let's not act like political speech has not been used to arrest people in the UK. To claim otherwise is a lie, or a level of ignorance only afforded to small children.

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

#192

Post by ben_w »

fair_enough wrote: post #185
ben_w wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

So far as I can tell, that claim is your own invention.

Also, according to your own link's link to the full text:

  Article 4 - Definition of protected persons

  Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

  Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.

  The provisions of Part II are, however, wider in application, as defined in Article 13 .

  Persons protected by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949, shall not be considered as protected persons within the meaning of the present Convention.
-- https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...

So, not what you say.

Even if it was, Morales was not detained by another state, nor did his plane land under what is recognised as "coercion": The aircraft was denied overflight by several European states after rumours that Snowden was aboard, so it diverted to Austria, where it landed voluntarily for refuelling. Austria’s authorities requested (but, in a legal sense, did not compel) inspection; Morales, in a legal sense, consented.

Also, "search and seizure"? Nothing was seized, IIRC?

> The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats.

Nope, different laws for that. As you say elsewhere, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Which, importantly, is a different thing than the Geneva Conventions. I mean, you can tell by how most of the words in the name are different…

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

I see you're new here. Such energy doesn't go down well on this site.

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

#193

Post by linuxftw »

KaiserPro wrote: post #178
linuxftw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK locks up political dissidents under draconian 'safety' laws.

> The UK locks up political dissidents under draconian 'safety' laws. We used to just out and out shoot them. We used to demand that they have their voices literally overdubbed by an actor. We used to round people up and jail them for being too irish. We used to be in a civil war, up until the 2000s. You're just having a cyberpunk wet dream. Don't get me wrong, the OSA is an abomination. but you are being a hyperboli…

You're absolutely right, the UK has always been despotic. And that's just at home, to say nothing about the colonies.

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

#194

Post by moomin »

blibble wrote: post #181
KaiserPro wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Looked this up. They’re not part of the civil service transfer scheme so I think you are 100% correct. They also in theory have their own corporate structure but since they literally publish documents explaining how to map it to civil service grades I think it’s fair to say the overall experience isn’t that different. But different tenure, different pension, they’re not civil servants.

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

#195

Post by ben_w »

bendigedig wrote: post #162
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…

> There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? It's a fine for refusing to comply with a law in the UK; any sufficiently competent organisation could choose to comply with censorship/age gating in one country and avoid those restrictions in all others.

> How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US?

As I understand it, not at all.

I don't think the British institutions care at all about their rights to do whatever they want outside the UK; the problem is, 4chan does provide access to people in the UK, so it's a bit like a pirate radio station that the UK would like to not be receiving owing to the station's complete lack of interest in following UK laws.

To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would consider this development to be appropriate. UK might not cancel the penalty fine, but that's because the offence for which it has been issued has already occurred; after all, nobody gets out of an already-issued littering ticket during a holiday by returning to their home country.

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

#196

Post by EarlKing »

bendigedig wrote: post #162
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…

> There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? It's a fine for refusing to comply with a law in the UK; any sufficiently competent organisation could choose to comply with censorship/age gating in one country and avoid those restrictions in all others.

Ofcom attempting to enforce it's laws upon a US-resident corporation that has no business presence in the United Kingdom is the very definition of affecting one's right to free speech in the United States. This is why the US has a rich history of case law to draw upon for defining personal jurisdiction. In this case, Ofcom is perhaps hoping to exploit uncertainty regarding personal jurisdiction to impose its law upon foreign citizens who otherwise have no business in the United Kingdom. So, yeah, it definitely affects a company's right to free speech in the US. It affects EVERYONE's right to free speech in the US, and it should not be dismissed simply because 4chan is the defendant.

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

#197

Post by EarlKing »

ben_w wrote: post #195
bendigedig wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? It's a fine for refusing to comply with a law in the UK; any sufficiently competent organisation could choose to comply with censorship/age gating in one country and avoid those restrictions in all others.

> How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? As I understand it, not at all. I don't think the British institutions care at all about their rights to do whatever they want outside the UK; the problem is, 4chan does provide access to people in the UK, so it's a bit like a pirate radio station that the UK would like to not be receiving owing to the station's complete lack of interest in f…

> To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would be fine with this outcome.

They really wouldn't, otherwise they would've done that already since it is well within their power to command ISPs to blackhole any offending website. That they chose to levy fines instead tells me all I need to know about their true intentions.

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

#198

Post by nly »

subscribed wrote: post #144
alphazard wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 psu…

Oh, they'll just introduce mandatory digital ID, and the vpn registration. Companies will be permitted to use vpns as long as their AUP forbid employees from using their own for personal reasons. Or so. Plenty of the ways authoritarian can go.

Good luck to them.

VPN companies like Mullvad currently accept anonymous accounts with payment via crypto.

You can also just lie about your country of origin when signing up to a VPN account even with a 'compliant' provider that blocks UK IPs.

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

#199

Post by jgsser »

myne_throwaway wrote: post #124
gnfargbl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I'd like to actually know the answer to the question you're posing there. Does discussing suicide increase the overall rate, is it neutral -- or does it even decrease it? The Samaritans are usually regarded as a net public benefit, though they tend not to encourage people to go through with it, whereas the Wikipedia link suggests that the users of that forum have some kind of fetish for it. I would also exp…

Having perused the site a number of times, I wouldn't say many people there "have a fetish for it". You're a million times more likely to be told to kill yourself on 4chan than on SS. SS simply says a) suicide should be your choice, b) dehumanizing people for having suicidal thoughts is bad. Sadly these opinions are so far outside the overton window that suicidal people end up having no choice but to discuss their pr…

[dead]

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

#200

Post by ben_w »

EarlKing wrote: post #197
ben_w wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? As I understand it, not at all. I don't think the British institutions care at all about their rights to do whatever they want outside the UK; the problem is, 4chan does provide access to people in the UK, so it's a bit like a pirate radio station that the UK would like to not be receiving owing to the station's complete lack of interest in f…

> To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would be fine with this outcome. They really wouldn't, otherwise they would've done that already since it is well within their power to command ISPs to blackhole any offending website. That they chose to levy fines instead tells me all I need to know about their true intentions.

I believe the order of escalation here is:

1) Identify non-compliance or risk

2) officially request information from the website

3) wait for reply

4) formal enforcement proceedings: a fine and prep for court action (they are here)

5) convince a court to order the site to be blocked

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...

Note that they themselves say there:

  Where appropriate, in the most serious cases, we can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.
That sounds to me like they consider curtailing speech by blocking a website to be one of the last things to try, not the first.
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