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4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

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Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#361

Post by Bender »

mmooss wrote: post #355
Bender wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's ever a hornets nest you don't want to fuck with it's 4chan That certainly used to be the case pre-2012 . All the former hactivists have long since left. marriage, kids, real life, etc... Now it's mostly handfuls of edgy boys on cell phones in school and 4chan-GPT creating and responding to threads. I wish I were wrong. The site went mostly dead for about two weeks when USAID was defunded and had to shift f…

4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?

4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?

I never said that. USAID manipulate narratives on all popular multimedia and social media sites. Anyone may post on 4chan and anyone with a 4chan-pass may use proxies and VPN's.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#362

Post by EarlKing »

alt227 wrote: post #311
paxiongmap wrote: post #54

"The least bad thing that Ofcom and the Government could do is to quietly let the matter drop whilst focusing on education." This generalises very well for all Government. Shame we're a couple of generations into education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings.

> education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings. You cant have things like computers and smart phones if you dont have millions of pliant workers mass producing them for you. If you want the technological world that we live in to be possible then you should accept that it requires this concept. If everybody is a creative independant free thinking individual, then nobody is a w…

Generations of wave solder machines and pick-and-place machines beg to differ...

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#363

Post by [deleted] »

James_K wrote: post #342
zettabomb wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough luck, if you don't like it, then you (or your government) should block those websites. It's not job of the US businesses nor US government to enforce another country's laws.

Let me put this very simply to you: if I go to a country where the age of consent is 14 and start a business streaming child porn to America, I should be stopped from doing that. This is the same principle with a lesser offence.

[deleted]

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#364

Post by pclmulqdq »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #326
kstrauser wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're in another country's jurisdiction, all bets are off. You're subject to those laws, unless there's a treaty or similar saying that you're not. In another post, I mentioned writing nasty blog posts about Kim Jong-un. If you do that, it's probably a very bad idea to visit North Korea. In this case, the operator of 4Chan is free to blow off the UK's law. They may wish to account for that in future travel plan…

This is why we are not travailing the US right now.

This is also why a lot of people refuse to travel to the UK now.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#365

Post by mmooss »

Bender wrote: post #361
mmooss wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?

4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke? I never said that. USAID manipulate narratives on all popular multimedia and social media sites. Anyone may post on 4chan and anyone with a 4chan-pass may use proxies and VPN's.

> USAID manipulate narratives on all popular multimedia and social media sites.

I wouldn't be surprised to read that on 4chan, but on HN ... we need some credible citations. :)

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#366

Post by PaulRobinson »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #235

From the attorney's post: > The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student. Initially this seems like disrespect for another country's sovereignty. But really the crucial thing is: > We ex…

Not quite.

Ofcom in their reply make their point clear: "The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom [...]"

They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals, are required to conform with UK regulations in relation to those services, under UK law.

As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.

The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Arguing that my servers and my business are located in the UK is not going to impress the federal judge I'd appear in front of in the morning. Stating the US laws against my activities have a snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the UK is surely going to risk me being charged with contempt.

The Online Safety Act is ridiculous on many levels, but in the same way that Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China, and every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East, the UK has asked that US companies do certain things in the jurisdiction of the UK. I'd argue, less harmful and egregious things in some respects.

Should the UK do this? No, probably not. I think it will just make VPN software vendors richer, and UK citizens - particularly children - barely any safer.

Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add they are legally required to do by the Online Safety Act, by the government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the government would literally be breaking its own law.

TIL that 4chan's lawyer is about as grown up, mature and able to engage in critical thinking about the law as the people who post on his client's site.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#367

Post by jolmg »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #356
James_K wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put this very simply to you: if I go to a country where the age of consent is 14 and start a business streaming child porn to America, I should be stopped from doing that. This is the same principle with a lesser offence.

You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil. Ofcom notably is not setting up a "great firewall," but instead sending takedown notices to websites about content that is already blocked from British IPs.

> You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil.

You're showing yourself to believe that America can regulate conduct that never touches American soil.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#368

Post by Vespasian »

michaelt wrote: post #263
watwut wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under no circumstances should be US businesses treated as authorities. They are not mom nor should have any kind of leadership position.

On the other hand, the limited size of the British market limits Parliament’s ability to pressure foreign companies. China may be able to bully Apple into letting it snoop on its citizens’ icloud backups, but when the UK wants the same illiberal snooping powers, with 10% the population it’s 90% easier to walk away.

It's quite ironic that they would have an easier time enforcing that if they were still part of the EU and could have been the deciding factor towards more regulation faster.

The EU is big and rich enough to force Big Tech into submission under threat of loosing the market.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#369

Post by pclmulqdq »

jolmg wrote: post #367
pclmulqdq wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil. Ofcom notably is not setting up a "great firewall," but instead sending takedown notices to websites about content that is already blocked from British IPs.

> You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil. You're showing yourself to believe that America can regulate conduct that never touches American soil.

America won't go after you. America will go after Americans who access your site and American ISPs will block your site. That's not America regulating your behavior. You're still free to do whatever you want.

If you enter America, there may also be consequences, but you don't need to enter America.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#370

Post by downrightmike »

riazrizvi wrote: post #175

More odious nannying by silly civil servants. If Britain is to restore cultural leadership it needs to move policy away from this horrible trend of policing what people say and think, and focus its energy on better policing what people do.

England was cooked in WW2. While the USA was landing on hte moon and back, the UK borrowed $1Billion dollars because they caused a deficit after the war. Rather than moving forward, the monarchy held the UK back from progress. And they still are, Brexit was the latest scheme. charlie isn't going to help them get out of the 18th Century.
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