Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

express.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 735 posts

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

#341

Post by ben_w »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #261
ben_w wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat apps were already so oversupplied as to be free even before AI could vibe code them. Or, indeed, before the US relented on export bans for remotely adequate HTTPS implementations. In other words: What pain?

Good luck with that!

Do I detect some sarcasm in that response? If so, why? The Internet is literally just a communications protocol, adding a chat system on top of that it is not difficult.

Nor even was it when Skype and IRC were made (by Europeans). SMS (also European) was slightly harder to invent because that's not on the internet.

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

#342

Post by stingraycharles »

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.

Cloudflare just provides the tools, ultimately it’s the website owner’s decision how to use them.

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

#343

Post by EasyMark »

buran77 wrote: post #57
elAhmo wrote: post #37

> The ICO also confirmed that companies could not avoid accountability by withdrawing their services in the UK. This is quite a slippery slope. If I host a website in one country, I do not necessarily care where people access my website from. It is not like I actively provide a service to them - they just use internet (decentralised network) to access it. What if I publish a newspaper here, someone takes it where the…

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…

how can you be charged after you leave if you leave before the law goes into effect? doesn't the UK have ex post facto protections?

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

#344

Post by nadermx »

lokar wrote: post #315
kimixa wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content. Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state. And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to trac…

Don't nations have some right to enforce their copyright laws (civil and criminal) outside their own territory, via treaty?

If you’re an author from a Berne country, you get the same rights in every other Berne country as the nationals of that country.

Example: If you’re from Mexico and your work is infringed in France, French law protects you like a French author. So you could sue where the infrigment is happening, ie france.

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

#345

Post by EasyMark »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #172
chmod775 wrote: post #7

Imgur only has yearly revenues of around $30m. The money they make in the UK specifically likely doesn't justify wasting resources on compliance.

It is an image storage service masquerading as a business. It will be of no loss if it were to fail entirely.

I highly doubt if they will fail just because they block UK IP addresses?

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

#346

Post by ben_w »

martimarkov wrote: post #324
MammaMia2025 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Any source for this comparison? Also did the EU buy it or said they will?

We said we would aspire to buying US gas. EU can't order member states around like that, and the member states themselves can't order private businesses who to buy from; US can't actually ship much more, even if it could it can't do so to us; and that's about 100% of our imports anyway (not just replacing Russian, replacing all of it) and the way global markets and fungible goods work is that it makes no difference who we buy it from or who sells it to us anyway.

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

#347

Post by JimDabell »

kimixa wrote: post #237
nadermx wrote: post #144

The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…

The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content. Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state. And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to trac…

> The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.

There’s been multiple cases where non-US gambling websites have had their domains confiscated by the American government because they have American users, going back about 20 years.

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

#348

Post by Ray20 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #305
Ray20 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> why would I be subject to their laws?

For the same reason that a person under British jurisdiction is subject to its laws. I mean, laws, including British ones, exist for a reason. And usually, that reason isn't "because they're British," and this reason makes sense regarding to non-residents as much as it does to residents.

> Just because it's accessible globally means I now have to factor in every possible regulation from around the world?

Literally. Unfortunately, international laws and international cooperation are not yet sufficiently developed, and extradition requests for such reasons are not a common occurrence yet.

> The burden shouldn't fall on me

The burden doesn't fall on you. That's not how laws work. Laws usually work like this: The British government decides that certain actions are harmful to the UK, and to prevent them, it punishes those who commit them. So, on what basis should you be granted an exception to this logic? These prohibited actions don't become any less harmful to the UK just because they were committed by someone in another jurisdiction.

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

#349

Post by michaelt »

lurk2 wrote: post #170
seanhunter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already need to care depending on what you are serving, and this has been the case for at least 20 years to my knowledge. The most obvious example of this is websites from the UK or Europe which operate any kind of gambling. [1] This may well be legal (based on licensing) in their jurisdiction, but they still need to restrict access to prevent US people from accessing the service or they will be breaching the US'…

> 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?

Yes, you can do that. The thing is, that'll apply to all your employees, no matter how junior.

And it also extends to countries with extradition treaties to the US; holiday in the the Dominican Republic? You can be arrested and extradited to the US (Gary Kaplan). And of course if you change planes in the US (David Carruthers)? Arrested. Only broke the laws of one US state, and you change planes in another? Arrested (Peter Dicks).

Although perhaps the real lesson there is to be better at avoiding the US.

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

#350

Post by Aurornis »

kimixa wrote: post #237
nadermx wrote: post #144

The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…

The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content. Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state. And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to trac…

> The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.

Committing crimes remotely from another country was never a loophole to escape the laws of that country.

When a country requests extradition they’re not claiming jurisdiction over another country. They’re saying that a crime was committed in their country by the person and they’re asking the foreign country for cooperation in prosecuting that person.

The MegaUpload case is not equivalent to what the UK is doing. MegaUpload was operating as a business, taking payments, and exchanging money. Once you start doing explicit paid business in a country you can’t claim you’re not involved with that country.

If a country starts claiming that merely making content accessible globally is a crime in their country, that’s an entirely different issue. Not equivalent to the MegaUpload case.

> Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state.

Again, false equivalence. MegaUpload was operating as a business with US customers. They also had some hosting in the United States if I recall correctly.

Once you start doing business in a country and have customers there, you’re involved with their laws.

Post reply on HN