[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.

[strken]

Sure, but a VPN makes it hierarchical by rewriting packets.

[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?

[ronsor]

I know the tariffs are the bad thing of the moment (and they certainly are capricious), but I don't think you understand how much worse things can get.

[hunterpayne]

You realize that the EU has had tariffs on US goods for a very long time right? I'm not saying tariffs are good, but its hypocritical to protest against behavior in which you are currently engaging.

[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.