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A comment on 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is overwhelming. Parent comment

Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by beardyw on Friday October 17, 2025 @07:14AM (#45615368)
Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by jojobas on Friday October 17, 2025 @07:55AM (#45615688)
No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by tpoacher on Friday October 17, 2025 @08:17AM (#45615877)
yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was shipped there.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by Palmik on Friday October 17, 2025 @09:37AM (#45616674)
No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to Britain.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by ibejoeb on Friday October 17, 2025 @12:38PM (#45618766)
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.

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by tgv on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:12PM (#45619189)
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.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by parliament32 on Friday October 17, 2025 @02:30PM (#45620213)
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...

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by ang_cire on Friday October 17, 2025 @03:30PM (#45620991)
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.

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by RHSeeger on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:48PM (#45619652)
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.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by Mountain_Skies on Friday October 17, 2025 @04:15PM (#45621517)
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.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by tremon on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:43PM (#45619571)
4chan brings their services into the UK

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

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by ibejoeb on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:20PM (#45619282)
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.

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by mikkupikku on Friday October 17, 2025 @02:09PM (#45619923)
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.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by throwaway48476 on Friday October 17, 2025 @02:59PM (#45620596)
The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to throw around.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by account42 on Monday October 20, 2025 @08:01AM (#45642928)
> 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.

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by foobarian on Friday October 17, 2025 @12:49PM (#45618913)
Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by fecal_henge on Friday October 17, 2025 @12:57PM (#45619008)
I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by ibejoeb on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:02PM (#45619065)
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.

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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by awesome_dude on Friday October 17, 2025 @12:57PM (#45619001)
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
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Re:4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence. Irony is ove... by ibejoeb on Friday October 17, 2025 @01:01PM (#45619052)
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...
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