[3rodents]

That’s not really true. The Ofcom representative said “not allowed” not “unable to”. Even if cocaine is legal in my country, I’m “not allowed” to sell it to British consumers by the power of the British authorities. The British authorities may not have legal authority in my jurisdiction but they can take action in their own, including issuing penalties and stopping my deliveries at the border.

[oliwarner]

But if a Brit comes to your country and buys cocaine from you, in person, you wouldn't expect to be convicted as a dealer in the UK.

Ofcom has a bad handle on web requests. Clients connect out. 4chan et al aren't pushing their services in anyone in the UK.

[3rodents]

If we want to base the argument on technical nuance, 4chan are sending their packets to the U.K. just as the cocaine dealer would be sending packets (of cocaine) to their buyers in the U.K.

[oliwarner]

They're replying to an externally-established connection. The packets they're sending are going to a local router.

If you posted cocaine from your cocaine-legal country to an address where it was illegal, and you followed all the regular customs labelling rules, I'm not sure you should be liable. And you shouldn't be extradited either. Even the UK demands that extradition offences would have been criminal had they been committed in the UK. Now I'm sure in practice, you'd find yourself in trouble immediately but I don't think it's fair.

The ramifications of laws like this is everyone needs to be Geo-IP check every request, adhere to every local law. It's not the Internet we signed up for.

[falcor84]

I would strongly disagree with that, in the sense of the layer of communication that 4chan operate at. I would argue that 4chan aren't sending packets to the UK any more than I'm currently sending my keystrokes to wherever you are reading this from - these actions are performed at a different layer.

If the UK wants to block packets from across the pond, they should (but I hope they don't) do it via a Great Firewall, rather than expecting random foreign websites to do it for them.

[Ajedi32]

This isn't a physical product. A better analogy would be a phone call, initiated by someone in the UK to a foreign country.

[strideashort]

What if I send http request over snail mail? And they send me back printed http/html response?

Is it “different” then?

Being serious here.

[saaaaaam]

I think (but am not sure) that there are long established postal laws in most territories about sending “obscene” material through the mail. I think this was used to prosecute pornography publishers in earlier times. BUT you needed to (a) intercept mail and (b) have a good reason and (c) get a warrant to open (interfere with) that mail.

Possessing pornography was a separate issue which may or may not be allowed. Typically (I think) authorities went after publishers not consumers - because they were easier targets to pin down.

Which would seem to imply that if you’re sending encrypted traffic at the request of a recipient the as a publisher of “obscene” material then unless you are delivering very clearly illegal content to a user then you should not prosecuted.

I haven’t got a single source for anything I’m saying, so I might be entirely wrong - I’m simply going off half-remembered barely-facts. So please do argue with me!

[imtringued]

It's different, because you are willingly sending a reply to a known UK address.

In the website scenario, there are no physical addresses with a geographic component to them. The physical topology of the network is only known by the operators of the network. Only they know where the routers are physically located.

This means geoip blocking can only ever be done on a best effort basis. Actual blocking can only be done by the operators of the routers, which is why it is unreasonable to expect the website operator to be responsible for perfect compliance.

[estimator7292]

The user mails you a box with a note that says "1kg of 4chan packets pls", and a prepaid return label to an address local to you. You put the packets in the box and kick it down the street to its "destination". Job done as far as you know.

The place you sent the box then repacks it and mails it to the UK. Somehow the UK thinks that you and only you have broken the law.

[oliwarner]

1kg of packets is 100 exabytes over copper. That's a heck of an order.

Buyer beware: this calculation is based on several derivations of napkin maths with very fixed assumptions. It should be accurate to the nearest zettabyte.

[IshKebab]

Not actually how TCP/IP works though.

[estimator7292]

Yes, it is. When you reply to an IP address, you don't magically punch a hole through the entire network to the user's physical location.

You send a packet to your ISP with an address on top. That packet physically travels to your nearest exchange and then the network figures out how to route it to the recipient's real location.

In addition, the recipient's IP address tells you nothing about who or where they are. It's fundamentally un-knowable from the sender's perspective, no matter what the UK wants you to think. IP addresses are not evidence of physical location.

When you receive a packet, there is no way to know where in the world it came from or where it wants to go. It's just a number. You can make guesses but it's still just reading tea leaves.

To believe that IP geolocation is in any way reliable is a gross misunderstanding of TCP/IP and networks in general.

[strken]

Can you elaborate? The metaphor is a good description of how a VPN works, if not plain old TCP/IP.

[IshKebab]

IP packets have the source address in them so you can directly reply. It's not hierarchical.

[tyho]

4chan send their packets to their ISP, not the UK.

[3rodents]

The destination of the packet where it is sent, just as a toy sent from the U.S. to a customer in the U.K. is sent to the U.K. rather than the local Fedex store.

[strideashort]

not at all, 4chan only sends packets to their isp!

[imtringued]

The technical argument is that the routers that are physically located in the UK are passing the packets through, not the website operator.

This is the same as letting a delivery cross your borders, except the delivery vehicle here is permanent infrastructure, similar to a pipeline and it is purposefully set to be permissive and allow anything through.

Why are you suddenly pretending that there is no equivalent to the customs office in this scenario?

It's not like the website operator is sneakily smuggling cargo on a container ship. VPN usage is done UK citizens. The operator has already denied shipments to UK addresses in this scenario.

[otherme123]

It is easier than that: in Germany for example swastikas are forbidden. But they don't prosecute or fine web pages served in other countries. Or books for that matter. In some countries communist symbology is prohibited, yet they don't fine US web pages for having them. And don't forget the Great Firewall: China blocks pages, and get along with some webs to tune what they serve. But you can publish Tiananmen massacre images in your european hosted web, and they don't fine you: it is their problem to limit access, and they understand it.

[echoangle]

Just to clarify for casual readers: there’s no blanket ban on swastikas in Germany. You can use it for satire or historical reasons. You’re going to find a lot of swastikas on the German Wikipedia for example.

[marcus_holmes]

France stopped Yahoo! from selling nazi memorabilia in France (because it's illegal to do that in France). This actually went through the US courts and they agreed, mostly [0].

It's kinda voluntary, though, there's no international agreement about this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!

[wrongwrong111]

This isn't strictly true, major magazines like Der Spiegel can use it for 'satire' or some such nonsense, it's basically at the whim of those in power as CJ Hopkins learned, his satirical use resulted in him being perversely punished, but state aligned magazines get a pass.

EU doesn't believe in human rights or freedoms.

[pelorat]

The USA doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to human rights.

[mattmanser]

Not so clear cut though is it. For example, does 4chan use a CDN? And is that CDN on UK/EU soil, serving this content?

Therefore they're actually transacting that business on UK/EU soil.

Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?

I wonder if the UK/EU will reverse uno the US's stance and start extraditions on US CEOs.

[ronsor]

The US would likely not process those extraditions, and it would make trade and international relations worse for no real benefit.

[mattmanser]

Like random tariffs?

Imagine this scenario, a major G7 country declares:

All bytes sent to a computer on their soil count as a transaction on their soil.

And the end client being on a VPN is not a defence UNLESS the website owner attempts to verify the user's identity.

Immediately have to pay local taxes, conform to local laws.

Unless you keep all your assets in the US and never fly abroad, our shady website operator is exposing them self to real risk of being snatched by police somewhere or having their assets seized.

The only thing stopping that from happening is the trade agreements the Americans have put in place, the very trade agreements everyone's now looking at and thinking 'what are these really worth?'.

Yeah, it's fantasy and it won't happend but it could.

The internet is not free, it runs on sufferance of a bunch of governments and some, like China, already lock it down.

The more America, who probably gains the most from it right now, plays with fire, the more risk something like this crazy scenario happens.

Another more plausible scenario is countries simply start repealing safe harbor laws. End of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc. in those countries overnight.

[ronsor]

This is basically a mutually assured destruction scenario.

The US is not going to let all US companies get fined out of retaliation, so there would be more retaliation from the US against the EU, and everyone else. In the end everyone loses, except for China, which as you mentioned is not stupid enough to play these games and decided to simply pick a lane.

China locks down the Internet and blocks foreign players (to varying levels of success). They don't reach overseas to prosecute foreign executives or fine Meta for not removing Party-critical content from Facebook. Of all the parties that could be involved in this censorship drama, China is somehow the most honest.

[mattmanser]

Like tariffs?

The US are already playing this game. Can you not see that?

[buzer]

> Another more plausible scenario is countries simply start repealing safe harbor laws.

It already happened via GDPR to some degree. CJEU ruled in December that platforms can qualify as controllers for personal data published in user-generated advertisement. The given reasoning was basically that the platform determined the means and the purposes of the processing.

Due to that they can be liable for article 82 damages.

[jimnotgym]

Whereas the US are very happy to demand extradition when the shoe is on the other foot.

[oliwarner]

> Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?

The extradition has succeeded so far because it's based on acts that would have met a criminal bar in New Zealand, and deemed to have a high likelihood of being successfully prosecuted. Fraud, copyright infringement, etc.

The US has standing because many MegaUpload servers were in the US.

[imtringued]

This is a fair argument since you are no longer operating exclusively in one country, but I'm pretty sure most CDNs let you block access to specific countries.

[YetAnotherNick]

> But if a Brit comes to your country and buys cocaine from you, in person, you wouldn't expect to be convicted as a dealer in the UK.

No? All countries catch drug dealers from other countries all the time even for the crime that happened outside of their borders. Or do you really think El Chapo could vacation freely in Europe.

[oliwarner]

El Chapo was extradited and convicted for crimes actively committed in Mexico, then the US in relation to managing a multinational drug cartel. Murder, money laundering, more murder, smuggling, yet more murder, etc etc etc.

This seems significantly different to openly and honestly posting narcotics.

[jimnotgym]

Howard Marx was arrested in Spain and extradited to the US on RICO charges by the DEA for something like this. It seemed like extraterritorial action by the US when I read about it.

But US=Good and Europe=Bad on hn

[rootusrootus]

> But US=Good and Europe=Bad on hn

LOL, classic. Everyone thinks they are the one being picked on. Plenty of people would argue that what you say here is actually the polar opposite of what happens on HN.

[DevKoala]

That sounds so gross. Why do British people tolerate that? It’s as if British people belong to their government.

[michaelt]

The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates.

The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.

As such our windsock government with no strong beliefs does what the survey says is most popular.

[gzread]

Interesting - There was once a movement in Germany to criminalise bestiality, and the opposition to this movement were vocal enough to hold street marches for the right to fuck dogs. https://www.webpronews.com/zoophiles-march-on-berlin-to-dema...

[LAC-Tech]

The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates.

The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.

I think there is an argument to made the pornography in general is harmful.

But to single out one single type of porn strikes me as... very odd. Maybe politicians can list, explicitly, all the other porn genres they find acceptable or agreeable to them, as a kind of compare and contrast exercise.

[michaelt]

I chose incest because https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/pornography-sexual-relationshi...

> So-called "barely legal" pornography and content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives are set to be banned amid efforts to regulate intimate image sharing.

> Peers agreed by a majority of one to ban videos and images depicting relationships that would not be allowed in real life.

> They also agreed by 142 votes to 140, majority two, to bring intimate pictures and videos of adults pretending to be children in line with similar images of real children.

There's actually a 200+ page government review of pornography https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-a-safer-...

[Dylan16807]

What's especially silly is effectively deciding the legality based on the dialog.

[jimnotgym]

I guess you have to draw a line somewhere, if you are going to legislate against porn you are going to have to decide what is and what is not ok

[3rodents]

The same principles apply around the world. The U.S. recently invaded a sovereign nation and abducted its democratically elected leader because that leader was ostensibly involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_interventio...

[anvuong]

Saying Maduro was democratically elected was too rich.

[rawTruthHurts]

Ostensibly involved in made up cocaine shipping.

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/06/department-of-justice-quiet...

[ImJamal]

Maduro was not legitimately and democratically elected.

[3rodents]

Potato potato. No less legitimate than Trump.

[ImJamal]

Trump was validly elected. He won the required number of electors in the electoral college in the 2016 and 2024 elections.

Maduro on the other hand...

[markdown]

Didn't Trump admit that Musk fixed it for him?

[drnick1]

So what? The only reason the U.S. did this is because it can. What will the UK do when 4chan tells its online regulator to go suck a d***, send in James Bond?

[__d]

> What will the UK do when 4chan tells its online regulator to go suck a d**, send in James Bond?

Let's say they did. Would you be saying "So what?" then too?

[LAC-Tech]

This argument is tiresome.

You can be against freespeech restrictions in Britain and the 2024 Trump Administrations braindead military and foreign policy.

If I attack either, I am not taking the people in the countries whose politicians make the decisions.

[NullPrefix]

The term is called "Subject of The Crown"

[anigbrowl]

It’s as if British people belong to their government.

Legally speaking, British people are subjects, not citizens.

[dghf]

This myth keeps getting repeated. It hasn't been true since 1949, when British subjects in the UK became Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.

In 1983, the status of CUKC was renamed to British citizen (for those CUKCs resident in or closely connected with the UK: the situation in the remaining colonies was more complicated). At the same time, the status of British subject was officially restricted to those few British subjects who didn't qualify for citizenship of the UK or of any other Commonwealth country in 1949, and who were formerly known as "British subjects without citizenship".

So we are officially and legally citizens, not subjects.

[anigbrowl]

I was unaware of this. Thanks for the correction.

[dijit]

Ironic, because I feel like they’re the same, it’s semantic feely words that are different.

Right to vote was already established before the change of the name (subject->citizen).

So, what changed? Well subjects have “privileges” that are afforded from the monarch, and citizens have “rights” which are given from the state.

Except:

1) In olde english law, the monarch and the state are literally the same thing.

2) Rights seem to be pretty loosely followed if they’re actually, you know, RIGHTS, and not privileges afforded from the state.

I’d say that semantically the difference is how the words make you feel, not the actual applicability of the terms to anything that has been realised.

[dghf]

I think I've heard something similar -- that subjects have duties while citizens have rights.

But of course, citizens typically also have duties -- commonly, the duty to take up arms to defend the state -- and subjects can legitimately expect a reciprocity of obligations from the sovereign (e.g. the enforcement of the "King's Peace"), which sounds quite a bit like rights to me.

(All of which is a verbose and not very coherent way of saying that I agree with you.)

[shellac]

Then somebody needs to let the government know, because the relevant 1981 act is "[a]n Act to make fresh provision about citizenship and nationality". In that 'British subjects' are a quite limited subset of citizens. Most British people are citizens, not subjects.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/contents

[lovich]

What’s the difference? I’m not knowledgeable enough about English law to parse this

[shellac]

My (really limited) understanding is that 'British subject' was the status of people in the British empire. It's now reduced to just some people born pre-1949 in Ireland and India. They have many of the rights of citizens, and can become citizens via a simpler route than other non-nationals.

[miohtama]

But are you allowed to post pictures of your cocaine on a website that is not in the UK?

[3rodents]

You're even allowed to post photos of your cocaine on U.K. websites!

[miohtama]

It depends. If it causes anxiety to someone, it is illegal. Pictures of drugs could fall into this category.

> Current law allows for restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace, sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...

[3rodents]

I don't wish to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to defend U.K. laws so I'll keep this short. You're being intellectually dishonest. That page does not back up your assertion. You have said "If it causes anxiety to someone, it is illegal" but the page says "intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress" which has a different meaning.

[anigbrowl]

This is a meaningless standard since anyone can claim they were alarmed or distressed and there's no way to invalidate such a subjective claim. I can say I'm alarmed by your comment, does that mean it's valid for Ofcom to fine you?

[3rodents]

Again, that's not what the law states. The law is not broken when someone is alarmed or distressed by a comment. The law is broken if you post something that is "likely or intending to" which is not judged by the victim. If you walk into a police station in England and tell them that this comment on Hacker News alarmed and distressed you, it doesn't matter, it is up to the legal system to judge my intent, i.e: whether my comment was "likely to" or "intending to" cause alarm and distress.

Whether you agree with the law or not, it is important to be accurate when discussing it. The U.S. vs. U.K. (not) free speech law discussion online so often seems to frame them as fundamentally different, but they are on the same spectrum. The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.

[egorfine]

Yes you are describing consequences that all take place in the jurisdiction where these consequences legally apply. I.e. in the UK.

What Ofcom wants is for their consequences to happen extraterritorially.

[papa_pandora]

Why aren't they restricting access to the site or having age verification mechanism at their end of access control? why fine a website offshore?