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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.
normally I would say 4chan can get fucked, but this is a bad precedent to have foreign governments bullying websites and communities outside their jurisdictions. and for anyone about to start angrily typing on their keyboard about how disgusting 4chan users are, may I remind you that anti-genocide Palestinian activists were just declared terrorists in the UK for throwing paint on warplanes used to direct bombs on little kids in Gaza. do you really think that the UK would have any qualms about going after Lemmy or Mastodon instances that don’t enforce pro-Israel censorship? do you think Germany would have any qualms about it? what about Israel themselves?
governments should not be able to censor speech within their own borders, let alone worldwide.
We call on Trump to end this vile censorship!
4chan, if you’re a USA company, then why are you accepting payments from UK residents?
What on earth does that have to do with anything?
If someone offers to make and post custom Christmas cards to people, are you saying they should care which country the person paying them is in? Why would that matter at all?
Yes. As a business in the united states, there are countries that you are not legally allowed to do business with. There are sanctions and regulations put in place.
If the UK decides that 4chan is not following UK law, then I imagine that 4chan will be fined until they either start following UK law or completely back out of the UK as far as selling their 4chan passes.
So if I call a US company from the UK, the US person on the other side of the line has to know I’m calling from the UK, and better not say anything to me that is illegal in the UK? That’s weird logic.
The fault and responsibility should be on the caller, not who they are calling.
Calling is one thing. Accepting payments is another.
They can levy the fine all they want. There’s not much they can do to collect it without going through US courts. I’d suspect 4chan is just raising this as they don’t want that shadow over their heads.
The payment processors for 4chan passes should probably not allow UK residents to do business with 4chan.
That will be hard, they only accept crypto to my knowledge.
Sure, there are countries that the US government says US businesses can’t do business with. What the governments of those countries think is irrelevant, in principle, unless they have some leverage they can apply.
If a business has no presence in a country, and the government of wherever they’re hosted has no interest in enforcing the other countries law for them, then threatening of fining the business is largely irrelevant. Note that this letter we’re commenting on doesn’t say “this order is invalid, and we’re going to challenge it in court”. It says “it’s irrelevant, and we intend to ignore it”. They go on to say they’re going to ask a US court to back them up, but that’s actually incidental to the legal statement they’re making.
The UK courts only really control what happens in the UK, at the end of the day. That’s what sovereignty is. If they decide 4chan is a sufficiently significant problem then there are a bunch of things they could tell people in the UK to do about it, like block the site, but 4chan seems to think that they can’t tell 4chan to do anything at all.
Beside which, what I was actually saying is that not being in the UK has nothing whatsoever to do with accepting payment from people who are
It happens all the time. US companies get fined by the UK. My initial point is if 4chan has UK customers, then im sure the UK will butt in at some point if 4chan isn’t behaving.
I mean 4chan is the hub for degens so i can understand why youd want to see them lose. But I think this sets a bad precident If anything it should be up to the UK to block in and out going traffic to 4chan. (Dont think they can do this either though)
If 4chan bends the knee lemmy could easily be next. Itd be more effort attacking each instance. But still possible. I really hope youre just playing devils advocate and arent praying for our collective downfall.
Lemmy is not a subscription-based service for users.
4chan offers 4chan passes for their users, which makes them a commercial entity that should probably follow some commerce laws.
I don’t see lemmy and 4chan as similar services at all.
True, but why does it matter here? The original letter to 4chan stated that they are violating the Photo ID based online safety laws, nothing about their intent to follow commerce laws.
ALSO
Directly from the ofcom website
Enforcement powers
Where we identify compliance failures, we can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance. We can also impose fines of up to £18m or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.
Where appropriate, in the most serious cases, we can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.
Edit: jsyk LEMMY falls under these guidelines it could easily be unjustly blocked by isps.
You literally posted why it matters. 4chan does business with UK residents through Coinbase, a payment processor.
If Coinbase is no longer able to process payments for 4chan, then 4chan will not get paid. Period.
Once more for good measure.
4chan intends to ignore these complaints. if they do, sure they can attack the payment processors. But there is no law that states “If 4chan accepts payments in the UK that they must comply.” as youve previously implied. Therefore if further action is taken (like blocking coinbase payments) Then 4chan will respond.
Your initial comment was largely irrelevent to the actual laws that affect 4chans buisness or modderation practices which the letter is in response to… further more your advocation of said tactics to attack 4chan is concerning considering your CURRENT presence on a decentralized platform that accepts dontations through similar payment processors and can be blocked through ISPs.
Im simply basing my original comment on the fact that multiple video game storefronts are having to remove certain NSFW video games based on payment processor demands. They had to comply or risk not being able to accept payments for their entire catalog of games.
Im not calling for any action to be taken against any decentralized platform. 4chan is very much a centralized platform with a single instance that uses a single payment processor and has backed itself into a corner. Their current plight would be of no concern if they moved to a decentralized platform and did not hamstring themselves to a global processor named Coinbase.
Again… how is this relevant? The payment processor debacle happened due to an austrailian activist group called collective shout they directly attacked payment processors by filing complaints to american payment processor companies. Nothing to do with following international commerce laws. I PROVED that there was no direct corrilation between accepting international payments and following local laws. The excerpt from the ofcom website admits that they have no direct power or laws backing their complaints, and will attack using the same underhanded tactics used by collective shout. not to mention the payment processors rolled back this decision in light of back lash.
Okay Ill concede that 4chan is not decentralized. however my original point stands. The violations of consumer protection laws are the same on both platforms. The sites both prioritize, anonimity, freedom of speech, and self modderation.
Believe it or not lemmy has similar issues to 4chan you just havent seen it. You can definitely find stances with some degenerate stuff and even some that are still federated.
Youre constantly moving the goalpost to protect your ego. Youve failed at every turn to properly dispute me or any of the other logical users attempting to change your perspective. I believe you lack the facilities to have honest and productive conversations, similarly I lack the pateince to help lead you to the same conclusions we have intuited. I hope you improve, Ill attempt to do the same. Allthough I do not have high hopes for either of us.
