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4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

alecmuffett.com

651–660 of 817 posts

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#651

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…

The UK already claims extraterritorial jurisdiction in some extreme cases like pedophilia and terrorism.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways around this too. When the VPN entrance point is a static IP a ban may work but what happens when a product shows up that spins up dynamic VPSs in the public cloud? All the cloud providers have free trials that let people do this for free forever. Sounds difficult but surely people will come up with a streamlined approach if push comes to shove. Even in china where using a VPN is a major crime they are…

Off the top of my head here are some ways you could fairly easily shut down VPNs. The big one is to start whitelisting good protocols only. That means everything must be https and you have to at least pass the hostname in plaintext. Random traffic on UDP ports is now illegal as it is assumed to be VPN traffic. Another one is to pass a law telling ISPs to flag customers with traffic patterns only to a single IP addres…

> Random traffic on UDP ports is now illegal as it is assumed to be VPN traffic.

You do realize that things other than VPNs use UDP right?

The whole post is so nonsensical I would have assumed it's all sarcasm, but the single tag in the middle has me confused.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine. That’s not what’s going on here.

It's entirely up to 4chan whether it decides to comply or not.

No it’s not. Ofcom has no jurisdiction to make a US company do anything. The Internet is a global marketplace. If the UK wants to remove itself from this marketplace, like it did from the EU, it will need to do the blocking itself. But Ofcom knows what the government blocking access to information looks like and they don’t have the balls to do it.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent is the US threatening to arrest the operators of those venues when they set foot on US soil . But in any case, this is different, as the US has only declared these activities as illegal in the US . They haven't enacted laws saying you cannot gamble outside the US. When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the…

> When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty. Moreover, the US government can have you seized and bro…

As we have recently seen, the US may send the military to sink your boat and kill you if they think you might be planning to break a US law. Whether this is legal or not is another matter.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting view. If I were to fly to the USA, purchase something that was illegal in my home country (and explicitly state I was going to take it back home), then took it back home - would the vendor be prosecuted?

No because the sale would have had to occur in the place that it is illegal

If I fire off an agent to buy items at random times from a list which is updated in country, where does the purchase of the list items happen?

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mass killing event which the Chinese government pretends never happened and/or suppresses the information of. Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. From Wikipedia: > The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After we…

So what is Google doing? That was the question. Google isn't available in China.

> Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it.

Google was complying with, what I assume is the law in, China and censoring searches for things China doesn't want talked about. Google has since left China, apparently bowing down wasn't enough.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the older women are being arrested for protesting in the streets against an organisation that is committing terrorism, because the government has deemed that actual terrorism is not terrorism and opposing terrorism is the real terrorism, and a bunch of nonsensical things like that.

I think you consuming too much right wing American media.

I think you're willfully ignoring how authoritarian your country is.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#658

> The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom And so they should, within the borders of the UK. It's illegal to own unlicensed firearms in the UK. In the US, it is legal. UK authorities can prevent ownership of firearms in the UK via penalties, prevent firms from selling firearms in the UK, and set up import controls to prevent pe…

Strange that this is framed as a national sovereignty issue not an issue of UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. This is exactly the thing we don’t want democratic governments to do - congeal with corporate power against their people. Appealing to legality when the laws are themselves unjust is not a defense. The online safety act is broad and vague…

It is an issue of national sovereignty because the UK is trying to force foreign civilians to enforce their laws outside of their jurisdiction for free, by way of bullying, threats, and illegal fines.

What the UK does within their own borders is their business. They don't have any right to force foreign entities to censor themselves or tl block UK citizens, as if that's even a technically feasible request.

The UK's free speech situation is bad, yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about here. The matter at hand is the UK trying to censor free speech by foreign citizens outside the UK and is using illegal threats to do so.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that this is framed as a national sovereignty issue not an issue of UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. This is exactly the thing we don’t want democratic governments to do - congeal with corporate power against their people. Appealing to legality when the laws are themselves unjust is not a defense. The online safety act is broad and vague…

> UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. If the citizens of the UK wish to express discontent, they are free to vote for a different parliament so they enact different laws. We who live outside the UK have no say on their laws.

The government got 33% of the vote. Please tell me how I can vote for a sensible government.

Re: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence

#660
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK No, UK ISPs are importing 4chan into the UK. At no point is 4chan involved in the importing of it's content. It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.

> It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either. It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content. If the user bypasses controls using VPNs or proxies, it's a different thing, but I would expect 4chan to make a reasonable effort on their side in order to prevent a sitewide block.

I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

When a resource exists on the internet, it is available to everyone. That's how the internet works. There is no mechanism by which to exclude any given country. You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

Ofcom is trying to censor the entire global internet. If they want to censor the UK internet, they have much, much better tools.

They're trying to enforce extrajudicial law by way of threats and bullying instead of actually taking proactive steps to "protect" UK citizens from dangerous memes.

Ofcom has the right to censor the internet within the UK. They do not have the right to an opinion about what private entities do in other countries.

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