cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35889767
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BYRNE & STORM, P.C.ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW
Re: Statement Regarding Ofcom's Reported Provisional Notice - 4chan Community Support LLC
Byrne & Storm, P.C. ( @ByrneStorm ) and Coleman Law, P.C. ( @RonColeman ) represent 4chan Community Support LLC ("4chan").
According to press reports, the U.K. Office of Communications ("Ofcom") has issued a provisional notice under the Online Safety Act alleging a contravention by 4chan and indicating an intention to impose a penalty of £20,000, plus daily penalties thereafter.
4chan is a United States company, incorporated in Delaware, with no establishment, assets, or operations in the United Kingdom. Any attempt to impose or enforce a penalty against 4chan will be resisted in U.S. federal court.
American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an e-mail. Under settled principles of U.S. law, American courts will not enforce foreign penal fines or censorship codes.
If necessary, we will seek appropriate relief in U.S. federal court to confirm these principles.
United States federal authorities have been briefed on this matter.
The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was reportedly warned by the White House to cease targeting Americans with U.K. censorship codes (according to reporting in the Telegraph on July 30th).
Despite these warnings, Ofcom continues its illegal campaign of harassment against American technology firms. A political solution to this matter is urgently required and that solution must come from the highest levels of American government.
We call on the Trump Administration to invoke all diplomatic and legal levers available to the United States to protect American companies from extraterritorial censorship mandates.
Our client reserves all rights.
By that token, I could start my own private Island nation, make some batty rules, log into a site, and demand a bajillion dollars because my laws say so.
Internet doesn't work that way, access is not presence of operations.
4chan can also tell the UK to get fucked
Some countries already do (See fines from Russia to Google), but the compagnies don't have to operate in those countries and can choose to not serve traffic to IPs from that country.
GeoIP fencing is an eternal whack-a-mole, I've had to track down issues where a site owned by MS was blocked because they bought some public IP space previously owned by countries the client blocks.
In the end you have countries trying to get a piece of the pie from a company that they have no ties to but being unwilling to upset the people living there by taking an effort to block it. If they think the company is behaving incorrectly then it's on them to deny access to their citizens that they have to answer to.
A company can't reasonably decide which jurisdictions and IPs it should serve at any given time. If I don't want a site in my house I don't petition them to block my IP.
Yes they can, intelligence/network compagnies like spur even sell this service, but I give it to you that as an individual it may not be a trivial task.
Ok, so badly phrased, yes companies will do geo fencing principally for security threat containment. If a company has no means to serve customers in a region they may also block access to avoid people making orders that can't be fulfilled.
Denying service that they functionally can perform because of the whims of politicians and politically minded actors is a foolish behavior though. Every place on earth has some wing of society that would prefer isolationist and ultra conservative practices, to self censor to the lowest common denominator is going to only push away those users who aren't zealots.
I'm not debating the legitimacy of the law, just the technical feasibility for big compagnies to do it