If 4chan continues to ignore Ofcom, the forum could be blocked in the UK. And 4chan could face even bigger fines totaling about $23 million or 10 percent of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. 4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.

  • nucleative@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    This is a case of stupid laws that still don’t understand the internet (35+ years in to wide use, mofos)

    If an http GET request initiated from country A traverses routers and wires around the globe to grab some data from a server in country B, then we have to accept that the owners of the server are not “operating in country A” and in fact the user in country A is responsible for import.

    If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.

    All that is tongue in cheek to say they can fuck right off.

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      4 hours ago

      Blocking america as a whole would do the uk some good tbh

    • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      If some laws in country A have a problem with this, then they should unplug their internet wires at the border, or at least learn how to use them and/or govern their citizens.

      What used to be called The Great Firewall of China. It used to be unthinkable for western countries.

      You can’t blame this on old people. This is only happening now that the Boomers are on the way out. People who sent international letters or made international phone calls were aware that they were communicating with a different country with different laws. I think we are seeing this now, because now we have people who experience the internet as something happening on their own phone, at their location.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        The boomers are not on their way out. We have the exact same politicians in power that we had 30 fucking years ago.

        • Semperverus@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          They’re retiring or dying of old age soon, they think now’s the time to shit all over the floor and trash the place.

        • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          UK cabinet is mainly GenXers. I didn’t count exactly, but Boomers still seem to outnumber Millennials. Definitely on the way out, though.

          I wouldn’t mind the politicians from 30 years ago, who stayed away from this bullshit.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 hours ago

        Funnily enough the CIA (yes, the CIA) was largely involved in keeping the internet a free and open space for all, heck they even contributed encryption algorithms to keep data private and such …

        The reason why the free internet existed for so long was because it was a big ideological project for the US. (the internet is the space of all ideas and as such represents the platonic/christian concept of heaven). It’s only now ending because it’s served its purpose. The people have exchanged ideas worldwide, and that only needs to happen twice, similarly to how you can only infect yourself with the same virus once (because the second infection does way less impact), you can only infect yourself with the same idea once. So, once the worldwide ideas are exchanged, the internet serves very little purpose anymore.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      9 hours ago

      Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts. But the politicians that were in power when all this was first been decided were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.

      Then Labour got in and for some reason implemented the stupid law anyway despite having heard none of the consultations, and of course now it turns out that the consultations told them not to do it. Now I’m sure the industry experts would have been ignored anyway but Labour look really daft now.

      They have basically accepted that this law is unworkable and is basically going to be ignored by everyone, but they still have to go through all of the pantomime of trying to enforce it. I’m sure eventually they’ll quietly kill it because the whole thing has been such an embarrassment for them.

      • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        Yeah it’s a stupid law and they were told it wouldn’t work by industry experts.

        You mean lobbyists?

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 hours ago

        I think it’s well established by now that this bunch of Labour politicians too are “arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself”.

        That would amongst other things neatly explain why they went around and implemented the stupid law.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          6 hours ago

          It also doesn’t help that they’re being advised by people who don’t understand the world anymore and who’s last real contribution was probably in the 1970s. The fact that they can’t even capitalise on the fact that Boris Johnson has been found guilty of misappropriation of government funds is just ridiculous and shows how incompetent they are as politicians.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        were Conservatives and therefore arrogant and of the opinion that if they don’t like something, it’s realities responsibility to reconfigure itself.

        Which is exactly what they have done with tariffs in the US.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          6 hours ago

          Th US has taken it to step further. Somehow they’ve managed to convince a significant junk of the population that a tariff is not a tax, and that the tariff is paid by the importing country, even though that’s not how tariffs work. They don’t require reality to actually do anything, they just require the populace to be mind numbingly stupid. Fortunately, they are.

          It’s pretty ironic, the United States was founded on the back of unfair taxation, and yet financial literacy is probably lower in the US than it is in any other country in the world.

    • Spaz@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Also why the fuck would you piss off 4chan with their years of stalking, ddosing, swatting, etc of successful campaigns against anything they felt wrongged or even just annoyed them.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        9 hours ago

        Because these people have never even heard of it. The whole party is a bunch of absolute technophobes. You should see that online advertising it’s pathetic.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK. It’s not reasonable to make the argument that you should be able to do business with a country and opt out of its laws simply by running the physical servers abroad. We don’t tolerate it for wire fraud or CSAM, but nobody’s rushing out to defend the sovereign rights of child abusers and scammers.

      I don’t agree with the Online Safety Act on its own terms, but this is a dud of an argument.

      • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        With wire fraud and csam, the activity is illegal in the host country as well as the target country, which is not the case here.

        If 4chan make revenue by advertising UK goods and services to UK users, then they are very much operating in the UK.

        By your logic, any website with advertising is operating in EVERY country worldwide.