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Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

express.co.uk

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Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#301

Post by flumpcakes »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #54
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to have UK legal presence, and planning to move out. The UK is saying something like "crimes done during your presence won't be ignored". If Imgur never had UK presence, then yeah there would be no teeth. But if you're doing business in a country you can't break the law then leave and expect them to just ignore what you did during that time.

…but how enforceable would the fine be? They pull out and have no UK assets to seize.

Why does it have to be immediately enforceable? Now Imgur have thrown the baby out with the bath water and cannot serve the UK and it leaves a big market for another company to come along and capitalise on that.

American companies are too use to being able to bully their way in America. Some countries do have better consumer protection laws.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#302

Post by flumpcakes »

trinsic2 wrote: post #158

Im sorry, if you run a site some where not in the UK. It doesn't give the country jurisdiction over the entire internet. If a country wants to enforce some kind of rules, they will have to apply them to the countries residents, because its the resident that go out on the net and conduct the behavior, not the other way around. This has been common sense for a long time now. Everybody is going crazy/mad. Must be some s…

If you are serving the UK market, you follow UK laws. It's that simple. In this case they are misusing UK children's information, that's a no-no in a country that has actual consumer protection laws. I'll wait for the EU to catch up on this too.

While the UK and EU (and US) like to pass stupid laws, in this case it's just an American company misusing citizen's data and not giving a crap. Good riddance.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#303

Post by dragonwriter »

nadermx wrote: post #292
dragonwriter wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if I recall he did alledge he followed the DMCA, which if he ever is extradited might save him if it is in fact true. It 100% won’t; there is no DMCA safe harbor for criminal conduct, only for a narrow category of civil liability.

You are misapropriating. Copyright infrigment can become criminal if you willfully violate it. If you then take earnings from the willful infrigment and launder them, it becomes other crimes. But if you follow the DMCA and qualify for safe harbor, what copyright crime have you commited that would go to criminal? Or to give you another example in backpage the founders where aquitted since the judge could not trace tha…

> But if you follow the DMCA and qualify for safe harbor

Yes, it is only possible to qualify for the safe harbor, if you haven’t committed criminal infringement.

But, as criminal infringement is not part of the DMCA, following the DMCA has no probative value against accusations of criminal infringement. Criminal infringement means you aren’t qualified for DMCA safe harbor regardless of whether you follow the DMCA, but following the DMCA doesn’t mean you aren’t guilty of criminal infringement.

> Or to give you another example in backpage the founders where aquitted since the judge could not trace that the money came from a "criminal source"

Backpage has no relevance to criminal copyright infringement. About the only connection between this case and that is that Backpage was also a nexus for a lot of misinformation about a (completely different, Section 230 rather than DMCA) safe harbor provision.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#305

Post by thewebguyd »

Ray20 wrote: post #266
thewebguyd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the company's prerogative of whether they want to have a legal entity falling under the country's jurisdiction Except in this case, Imgur does not have a legal entity falling under the UK's jurisdiction. They are purely a US based company. It's not like Google, Apple, etc. that have offices in the UK. This particular fine is the UK trying to extend its jurisdiction to entities that it has no sovereign authorit…

> Just because some UK user might visit my website doesn't mean I now have to follow all UK laws if I don't actually do business there That's exactly what it means. On what basis should you be allowed to violate British law when interacting with a British resident? Because you're not under British jurisdiction? That would be incredibly illogical. Not only would it mean that people and companies under British jurisdic…

> On what basis should you be allowed to violate British law when interacting with a British resident?

If all I do is host a website that serves images, and I'm not hosting nor operating out of the UK, why would I be subject to their laws? Just because it's accessible globally means I now have to factor in every possible regulation from around the world?

The burden shouldn't fall on me, the website operator, to block UK traffic because they want to restrict content or enforce age verification. Nor should they be able to fine me. It's up to the UK to have UK based ISPs block my site then.

Obviously a different story if I'm deliberately offering a paid service to UK citizens, or advertising to them, etc.

But to suggest that every website owner now needs to be aware of, and follow, ever nation's unique regulations will spell the death of the internet as a global network.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#306

Post by hdgvhicv »

morkalork wrote: post #107
pixl97 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, in the case of the US, you board a plane in country X going to country Z, it flies over country Y which is friends with the US. The US has country Y land the plane and has the plane boarded by armed men that drag you off kicking and screaming where you are put in a cage and then shipped to the US.

Iirc this happened to a Russian man who operated an online gambling site when he went on vacation to the Caribbean. The plane he was on had an unscheduled landing in Florida for a mechanical issue and surprise, surprise, the FBI were waiting there to arrest him!

countries do it all the time

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incide...

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#307

Post by [deleted] »

ljm wrote: post #297
zmmmmm wrote: post #267

There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here give people a simple toggle that manages geoblocks on legal liability factors. It's way too much for every organisation to individually track every country's laws day by day in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. And it sounds like the UK would have just self-selected out of the list of "safe" countries. If something like this was in wid…

So a service like CloudFlare is the Great firewall of the world and CloudFlare can shut you down if you go against their interests as a supranational gatekeeper. Smart thinking Batman.

[deleted]

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#308

Post by lurk2 »

Vespasian wrote: post #205
lurk2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US's gambling laws. Why not just avoid travel to the US?

The US has a huge reach in the western (and global) world and can impact you in a lot of creative and legal ways (e.g. prevent Google / Apple / Microsoft from offering services to you).

I remember this was an issue for The Pirate Bay but so far as I remember they were forced to go through the Swedish court system. It’s been ages since I read about it though so I might be missing something.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#309

Post by MammaMia2025 »

bapak wrote: post #282
mrtksn wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, Why? EU can just tell an LLM to build an alternative app, they can just tell it to make it user friendly and make no mistakes. That's the primary use case of Trillions of dollars of investment in GPUs and electricity to power them. JK(or am I?), a protest will be a boon for EU, which is growing Anti-American each and every day. The EU alternative…

I hate this so bad. You know that the solution will be that EU will block US companies (who do not comply) so EU users will eventually get their own WhatsApp called MsgMeNow. The result is that nobody can talk to people outside their own jurisdiction. This is effectively what we see in China. They only use WeChat, I was unable to register because it says I need someone to verify my account when I try to do it (this h…

No worries! Trump will call Den Von Deleten, whatever her name is -- and she will just do what she is told whatever is the thing she is told to do. Exactly like it already happened with EU buying $700B of natural gas. We paid just a bit over $100B to Russians for the same thing... but you know... Trump told, so here we go!

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#310

Post by [deleted] »

matt-p wrote: post #218
buran77 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following paragraph might shed some light on what that means (emphasis mine): > We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law In that context it's completely fair to say "leaving doesn't absolve you of past transgressions". Edit. If Imgur made any revenue from UK users then it becomes impossible to claim plausible de…

Definition of 'Revenue in the UK' is a bit debatable though isn't it? I sell a advertising package from my US HQ based self serve advertising portal to a British company who use the service to advertise to customers in the UK. Ok - kinda UK revenue. How about 'To advertise to customers in the US' well it's getting highly debatable. What about I sell advertising packages to a US company from my US HQ but someone in th…

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