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

4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

alecmuffett.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 817 posts

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#431

Post by flumpcakes »

trhway wrote: post #419
flumpcakes wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand. It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK. Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?

>Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal? Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal? I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200…

> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?

That's illegal in Russia. Russia has fined Google more money than exists in the world. It doesn't mean anything, but you bet the CEO of Google isn't going to visit Russia. Russia can choose to block any websites that hurt their feelings. Much like the UK and 4Chan.

> what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...

Then you hope to God that the people with the bone saws don't read hackernews.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#432

Post by wisty »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #394
flumpcakes wrote: post #352

I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this... The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan is providing a service to UK people (a website you can access) and is not implementing the law. Ultimately the UK cannot enforce this law until money destined to/from 4Chan passes through the UK or people associated with the site visit UK territories. In practi…

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? Literally because the entity is not under the jurisdiction of the UK. The UK can force domestic companies to block the website but they cant force the website itself to do anything. The claims of fines against 4chan are therefore nonsensical. Probably just part of the legal proceedings prior to blocking the site I guess but still strange to see.

Jurisdiction only applies within a sovereign country. If there's some dispute that crosses national lines, you don't call the International Bureau of Investigations to send International Agents in to drag the perp before the Planetary Supreme Court.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#433

Post by malfist »

mothballed wrote: post #411
malfist wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the state. You absolutely cannot order alcohol online in Kentucky

buywinesonline.com (random retailer I found) says they do Buy Wines Online currently does not ship alcohol to AL, MI, MS, UT, HI, AK Says it requires an "adult signature" but anyone who's signed for fedex/ups knows they don't check your ID. I can say, when I was in high school, they did not check...

Kentucky has some weird laws. You can ship, but only if the distillery makes less than so many gallons of stuff per year

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#434

Post by hunterpayne »

lelandfe wrote: post #285
833 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking UK users from your service does not put you out of scope of OSA, according to Ofcom. 4 days ago: > "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist "

It is worth noting that the other sites swept up in this current batch have had their investigations closed by restricting, though. My read on "remain on our watchlist" was them monitoring for if that block lapses, etc. I do expect UK's internet insanity to reckon with VPNs sooner rather than later, though.

Sure, its cheap and easy. Plus you know those UK users will just get a VPN and come anyway so you don't lose a thing. Its only 4chan that wants to make this public. They don't have much in the way of advertising revenue so there isn't much damage that can be done to them. Either way, the actions of the UK government are largely irrelevant again.

If the UK government bans VPNs, now they have more people in jail for speech violations than Russia and a more restricted Internet than China. The jokes write themselves at that point. It also becomes a virtue to dunk on the UK government worldwide. All to keep people from reading a site that the majority of people have no interest in. Its sad really...

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#435

Post by tremon »

knorker wrote: post #405
flumpcakes wrote: post #352

I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this... The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan is providing a service to UK people (a website you can access) and is not implementing the law. Ultimately the UK cannot enforce this law until money destined to/from 4Chan passes through the UK or people associated with the site visit UK territories. In practi…

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? If I transmit insults of dear leader Kim Jung Un on amateur radio, then those radio waves will reach DPRK. I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power? Same reason my decree that guns are now banned in the US is not even refuted, but ignored. 4chan has no obligation or even reason to even respond to the UK except as entertainm…

It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy

Not really. It's more like DPRK messaging a private US citizen directly, repeatedly and incessantly, that they will be executed for blasphemy. Ofcom is not using proper diplomatic channels here.

Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws?

Everyone here seems convinced that Parisians should care about this, because the majority opinion seems to be that it's perfectly acceptable for the UK government to arrest Parisians for having ever smoked a cigarette in Paris, should they set foot on UK soil. I do not agree that this is a defensible application of law.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#436

Post by TheRealPomax »

nradov wrote: post #417
delfinom wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 board of directors for a private company is generally secret in the US. Only the "manager" aka president/CEO/whoever at the top is generally named publicly, as well as legal agent.

I suspect that MI6 could find a US private company's directors names if they wanted to. We're not talking about nuclear launch codes here.

I suspect MI6 has much better things to do.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#437

Post by emmelaich »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #191
mikkupikku wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan does have very minor explicit support for UK users; on some boards it puts a UK flag on their post (as it does with all other countries and territories.) It could perhaps be argued that this constitutes the site being consciously designed with UK users in mind. Hardly matters though, there's nothing the UK can do about it. They aren't a superpower anymore and it's time for them to realize it.

I am not a 4chan user. How is this flag assigned? Automatically by 4chan based on some criteria? Or chosen at will by the user? Presumably if the latter, one may express their support of the flag of their choice; or indicate their heritage; or any number of other reasons. If the former, and considering the existence of a .uk TLD, they probably are considered to be “targeting” that market.

Non compliance will require the setting of a security flag in the IP header.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#438

Post by sib »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #366
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 t…

Not quite. There are well-established legal mechanisms for Ofcom (or anyone) to try to engage legally with companies domiciled in the US and with no locus in the UK. Rather than using these mechanisms, they have tried to short-circuit the process by sending emails that have no legal force.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#439

Post by lurk2 »

Razengan wrote: post #279
pstuart wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moderation of this site is top notch and a key component of its quality, and I say that as someone admonished by dang more than once.

Oh please. Vote-based social networks are way too vulnerable to burying the truth and boosting lies. It just takes the first 3-4 viewers to downvote you to prevent the next 10000 people from seeing what you said. There's no downside to downvoting just because you don't like what someone says, even if it's true. And usually no amount of corrections can outshout a lie/mistake with 100+ votes.

Vote manipulation is a non-issue here because users require a minimum of 500 karma to vote, and because the site is so much smaller than Reddit it can take months to reach that threshold. Downvoting is also capped so that you're very unlikely to get pushed back below the 500 karma threshold unless you are consistently making comments that the community doesn't like. I post things I know won't be well-received here all the time and it's quite rare for a comment to go below -2 karma, but comparatively common for these sorts of comment to get flagged despite not breaking any rules.

4chan was great in 2015 precisely because anyone could comment, but it's a young man's website in that scrolling through a 300 comment thread to find the worthwhile parts of the discussion will require upwards of fifteen minutes, whereas on Reddit or Hacker News most of that sorting is already done. This does have censorial effects, so it isn't ideal for controversial topics like politics, but it's better for almost everything else.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#440

Post by hunterpayne »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #325
nitwit005 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that they're threatening a fine, and failing to pay fines can be a criminal matter. Simply blocking the site would be less of an issue, at least in terms of legal consequences.

If non-payment of the fine became a criminal matter, would the operators of 4chan be at risk when leaving the US and entering a country willing to arrest them on behalf of the UK?

The UK has already arrested foreign nationals for speech violations when they traveled to the UK. I'm sure that's doing wonders for the British tourism industry.
Post reply on HN