UK is trying to Censor 4Chan

[thecoalman]

The UK is trying to impose fines on 4chan based on their Online Safety Act, a site wholly owned and operated in the US. They didn't even file this though proper US legal channels as required by US law. Instead they sent them an email. Their lawyer has told the UK government to pound sand. Here is snippet of initial response.

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.

It's more that just the first amendment, you can't be compelled to provide documentation without a court order (fourth amendment) and .due process(fifth amendment). That snippet was from a few days ago and 4chan is now suing in US federal court to get a US court to declare the UK's actions illegal, they will win.

[bbc.com...]

Ofcom told the BBC: "We are aware of this lawsuit. Under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based."

That's some "chutzpah" to think you can regulate a US company. I realize they have leverage with companies like Google because of assets, subsidiaries and other physical presence but that is not the case here. They are about to get taken down a peg or two.

[graeme_p]

@nottoeasy - you could delete it?

@thecoalman I agree with you, but its much harder to get people to stand up for "bad" speech so its politically easier to do it this way. The people pushing for such laws can conflate the people defending the principle of free speech with the people expressing various nasty view. That is how hate speech laws got passed, for example.

I think in general there has been a trend in the west towards banning such speech because people have had free speech for long enough to take it for granted, and people do not value what they take for granted. Its not entirely new. Even the "fire in a crowded theatre" example was reasoning to justify criminalising speech that was NOT a direct threat of violence or similar - the case was Schenck v. United States over a century ago if you want to look it up. Free speech can be gradually chipped away.

Regardless of my opinions or anyone else's it's not up for debate here in the US unless it was Constitutional amendment.

I hope so, but give that a number of censorship laws have been passed (e.g. the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act) so there is clearly significant support for restricting free speech. AFAIK surveys show young people in the US are more in favour of restricting free speech, so I think the US is following the same trend as the rest of the west, albeit slower because people are defending the first amendment.

[thecoalman]

Young people can be in favor of whatever they want, it's a free country. :) However, they'll need 38 of 50 states to agree with them to make any changes to the first amendment. The ultimate power in this country is the states with each state having equal power. If you could get 38 states to agree they could abolish the federal government in it's entirety.

[not2easy]

@nottoeasy - you could delete it?

No, that was why both got deleted. I would delete one and both were still there. Then eventually I came back to try again and saw both were gone. I tried a dozen times to move it back here but I could not get it to splice back one of the duplicates. After the issue was resolved, it worked. :)