[LordN00b]

There is plenty of precedence for this, and I am about to fudge a bunch of details. The basic point is that the United Kingdom can make any law it sees fit to any place or person. Even though it may only exercise punitive issues once they arrival inside the physical jurisdiction. So the example I was taught, the UK can pass a law banning smoking in Paris, but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK. This means that the Sovereign power is omni-whatevers, unless you explicitly say otherwise eg The UK Legislated their way out of South Africa and Canada expilictly. If 4Chans money ever passes through a UK bank, I'm sure Ofcom will grab what they can. It's a very British shakedown.

[morkalork]

The United States (eg. illegal gambling, hacking), South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad) and many other countries operate the same way.

[pessimizer]

> South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad)

And gambling, too. Remember in 2013 when all those celebrities got busted for gambling in Macao?

> After getting caught gambling illegally, Shinhwa’s Andy, Boom and Yang Se Hyung received their punishments.

> On November 28, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Andy, Boom, and Yang Se Hyung to monetary penalties. Andy and Boom must pay 5,000,000 won, while Yang Se Hyung will pay 3,000,000 won.

> The fines were dependent on how much money each person bet. Andy spent 44,000,000 won, Boom 33,000,000 won, and Yang Se Hyung 26,000,000 won.

> The three are all currently pulled out of all schedules and self-reflecting on their actions.

> Meanwhile, Lee Su Geun, Tak Jae Hoon, and Tony An are waiting for their first trial to take place on December 6. They bet more than several hundred million won.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.inte...

[morkalork]

There's also all the countries that have laws regarding sex-tourism abroad as well.

[kstrauser]

That's different in that it prosecutes citizens of those countries for things done outside their borders, not unrelated people doing things elsewhere.

America will prosecute Americans for doing certain things that are illegal inside America outside its borders. As another example, if you take a boat to international waters and kill someone on it, you're going to get arrested and prosecuted when you get home.

America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

[xp84]

Ok, hypothetically though, and going back to the smoking in Paris law, if the UK banned smoking in Paris, and a French citizen proven to have smoked in Paris vacations in the UK, the only thing stopping the UK from prosecuting them is that it would be kinda "act-of-war-ish" to start imprisoning French citizens. Technically they could under their own law, they just wouldn't dare since they don't want to start a major diplomatic incident or war.

[kstrauser]

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 plans, though.

[msh]

The US have done this a lot, luring “hackers” and other criminals to the US and then arresting them.

[vintermann]

There are a few cases of claiming universal jurisdiction criminalizing what citizens of other countries do even outside the country, but that's generally things like crimes against humanity.

[umanwizard]

> America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

Sure it will. Citizenship is irrelevant. If you travel abroad to have sex with underage people and then come to the US, you can be prosecuted regardless of your nationality.

[throwaway48476]

Boats are considered the territory of the flag state.

[tremon]

You are saying that when US citizens engage in illegal gambling in other parts of the world, the US sues and threatens the foreign gambling venues? That South Korea sues marihuana dispensaries in the US when they sell to visiting Koreans?

[BeetleB]

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 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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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 brought to the US without a treaty (or even in violation of a treaty), which may become a diplomatic and/or international legal issue between the US and the state where you were seized, and may subject the agents doung the seizing to personal legal difficulty in that state, but has no bearing on the validity of the criminal process brought against you once they haul you back to the US. See, e.g., U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992).

[amanaplanacanal]

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.

[lazide]

Or at least, they’ll claim they did it for that reason after they blow up your boat and kill you.

Notably, if you survive, they’ll send you back home without bothering with a trial?

[morkalork]

The USA has gone after gambling site operators in other countries, yes

[wannadingo]

I think he is saying that once US citizens return to the US, then they will be arrested.

[dragonwriter]

The US has seized non-US citizens, abroad, for acts committed abroad, over which the US asserts (and exerts) extraterritorial jurisdiction, not just US citizens, and not just waiting until they enter the US on their own.

[tremon]

If they were talking about the US arresting US citizens, then the equivalent would be Ofcom sending a fine to the UK visitors of 4chan. That's clearly not what they're doing.

[jandrese]

Sure, but those laws apply to US Citizens, and typically aren't enforced until the person returns to US soil.

Sovereignty is a big thing in international politics. Countries as a whole are loath to meddle in other countries domestic affairs, even in extreme cases like genocide/ethnic cleansing. Violating weird online protection laws are not the sort of thing a country is going to risk an international incident over.

Sure you can find some examples of countries that violate those norms, but they are the exception not the rule.

[jojobas]

This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries going after a Parisian tobacconist.

[binary132]

Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the client is.

[beardyw]

Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.

[ibejoeb]

Not exactly. It's like if a brit goes to paris to buy cigarettes, the UK is stating that it's the tabac's job to refuse the transaction.

They can say whatever they want, but the UK can't conduct an extra-territorial police action in france. They can bar subject from traveling to france instead. The onus is on the UK.

[tgv]

They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK. The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

[parliament32]

In the complaint[1], they explicitly state "4chan has no presence, operations, or infrastructure outside of the territorial limits of the United States." So, no, 4chan is not bringing their services into the UK: UK users send requests that travel to the US and hit 4chan servers/CDNs there.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...

[ang_cire]

No, the ISPs who operate the ASes and routers that make up "the internet" are the ones who bring the service to the UK.

4chan does not reach out to UK users in any way, only responds to their incoming requests.

It really is analogous to UK users going to a foreign country, buying something that their home country has an issue with, having a third party ship it to their home country, and then their home country getting mad at the store.

[RHSeeger]

To argue the details, no they don't bring their service to the UK. Rather, they surface their services where ever their servers are. And then "the internet", other people's hardware and such that they have no control over, bring it to the UK. I know it's pedantic, but this particular thread is _about_ the pedantics.

[ibejoeb]

You can argue that either way. It's not the best analogy. I extrapolate in another comment in this thread.

NZ agreed to cooperate with the US request. That made all the difference. If the US agrees to allow UK to proceed, then that's trouble for 4chan.

[Mountain_Skies]

From what I've heard, their servers are in the US, so UK residents are connecting to the US to access the site and not the other way around. 4chan sells memberships that allow users to bypass some of the rules. If they accept payment from UK banks (no idea if they do or not), then perhaps the UK can make a claim they're doing business in the UK.

[tremon]

4chan brings their services into the UK

How exactly do they do that? Do they have peering agreements with UK-based ISPs?

[account42]

> They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK.

They don't bring their services to the UK, ISPs and other network operators do - the UK can go after those and force them to implement the Great Firewall of Britain but that would be less popular so they don't yet.

> The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. The UK can try to go after US citizens abroad if they want to but they will quickly find out why that's a bad idea.

[mikkupikku]

The most important difference between this and Kim Dotcom is the US has a lot of weight to throw around, evidently having enough to lean on the governments of small countries like NZ. In the case of 4chan though, it's a once-great but now relatively minor country trying to have their way with an American company, meanwhile America has laws explicitly for the purpose of telling the British to fuck off with the imposition of any of their free speech violating antics against Americans.

[throwaway48476]

The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to throw around.

[foobarian]

Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!

[awesome_dude]

There was an Australian case, I'll look it up, but the relevant bit, the publishing of the web page happened on a computer in Australia, which they claimed (successfully) gave them jurisdiction

[ibejoeb]

But what does successfully mean? An Australian court can rule on it, but Australia is going to have to take it up with US State from there. Or send the navy, I guess...

[fecal_henge]

I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.

[ibejoeb]

I could be milk, right? Or a sheet of paper.

I'll concede that it's not terribly far fetched. If the french entity produced a good that is illegal in the UK put it in the post to be delivered to the UK, then we have something like an analog to producing HTML in one place and displaying elsewhere.

However, the thing about sovereignty is that you don't have it if you can't enforce it.

[jojobas]

No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.

[tpoacher]

yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was shipped there.

[Palmik]

No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to Britain.

[littlestymaar]

Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace “tobacco” with “cocaine” and “Parisian” with “Colombian”.

[CaptainOfCoit]

Still sounds absurd to me.

> UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.

[kemayo]

I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats currently: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trum...

(I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and probably criminal.)

[throwaway48476]

They likely do not have a flag state and could be considered pirates. Fisherman dont have 100k worth of outboard motors either.

[lesuorac]

Which law allows the death penalty for allegedly transporting drugs?

Shooting first and asking questions later is how we got into this mess of deporting us citizens.

[lazide]

That is the war on drugs yes?

[iamnothere]

It still sounds absurd to me. Nations should not be in the business of passing laws that apply to extraterritorial actions of foreign citizens. I know that it happens, especially with the US, but IMHO it’s just not how things should work.

This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines. Just wait until 30 years from now when you can’t safely visit anywhere in the far East because you made a subversive comment about China. Although I’m sure the same people will hypocritically wail and gnash their teeth about the laws made by those people, when of course our extraterritorial laws are just fine.

[8note]

The end punishment will still end up being that 4chan is not allowed to do business in the UK. If they want their website to work in the UK, they should follow UK law.

[iamnothere]

Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses outside their control.

If this kind of BS becomes too common then running a small internet business will become impossible. Even if you don’t do business in a country, you will have to consider whether or not they might consider you in violation of some obscure law and then consider whether or not that country has the leverage to impact your business or even your own personal safety. It’s utterly ridiculous. This would spell the end of the global internet, except for megacorps. It’s already a tough business environment as it is.

The status quo is that some countries have these laws, but they are generally ignored unless you’re a citizen, you manage to do something geopolitically significant, or you get involved in transnational crime rings. This seems acceptable to me. If countries don’t like the free internet, then ban it so we can all see what you’re really up to.

[lenerdenator]

> This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines.

This has been happening long before the US started doing it.

If anything, it's normalized in the US because of the bad behavior prior to the US doing it. China's a great example. What does brutally crushing dissent internally and abroad without even a facade of a single care about human rights get you? Well, in their case, damn near superpower status. Been that way since at the very least Nixon's administration.

The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy". The concern for human rights shown since the end of WWII in the West (particularly the US) is an exception, not norm, in history.

[yupyupyups]

>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".

Who are these people you're talking about, tankies, faschists?

The Chinese have the government that they deserve. They screw each other over, and what goes around comes around. It's a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.

[madeofpalk]

What about marijunana? It's absurd for the UK government to try and go after a legal California weed store.

[littlestymaar]

If the California stores ships to the UK, you can be certain that they will.

And they'd be right to do so as a country has sovereignty over what is allowed or not in their country, not matter the country of origin of the seller.

[account42]

They have a right to stop the packages at the border. They have no right to go after the stores themselves and more importantly they have no power to do so unless the US helps them, which they would never do over a free speech issue.

[knorker]

It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice of a fine to Pablo Escobar.

Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.

Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good luck with sending warships to invade the US.

[adolph]

> but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK

Many entities assert extraterritorial jurisdiction [0] for a broad range of activities. The critical question is if the offense would be categorized under an existing extradition treaty's list [1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition