This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.
I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
This quote from the court is amazing:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
The write-up from the lawyers is unintentionally hilarious
1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
> Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk
Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:
https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here
They have tariffs on foreign double standards because it's a key export business.
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...>
Or how about the FBI declaring that parents at PTA meetings as “domestic terrorists”? Or targeting the Catholic church as an “extremist organization”?
> That’s incitement to violence
While actual incitement to violence isn't protected speech, that wasn't even close to incitement to violence, which requires meeting three prongs clearly defined by SCOTUS.
I encourage you to review actual statements which SCOTUS has previously ruled are NOT incitement to violence. It's so incredibly narrow and particular, I was left wondering if anything can meet the definition. Jimmy Kimmel is so far from it your assertion is ludicrous.
True, but irrelevant given that ABC is not in any way part of government. It was justified that the general public deemed those comments unacceptable, specifically because they were an attack on the very principles that made them legally permissible; and ABC was capable of, and morally justified in, punishing them (and also legally permitted to punish them).
> There are no book bans in the US.
When the government declares under penalty of law that libraries cannot stock certain books, that is a book ban.
> If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...>
Unlike your other examples, banks are private entities and can generally refuse to do business with whomever they like.
> There are no book bans in the US. ...
Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books that taught slavery was bad, revoked tenure and fired all teachers who were reported teaching that slavery was bad. The new state-approved textbooks teach that slavery taught blacks useful skills and that there was violence on both sides.
> Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books
The books are not banned.
The public schools don't allow them, which is the case for many things.
Whether you agree with it or not, calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking" or "Florida banned pornography" because they're not allowed in schools.
The acrobatics ya'll are performing to reach these conclusions sure are impressive.
It's not a war, just a special military operations that lasts longer than WW 2.
Remember. Over 20% of America still supports this fascism.
Statistically some of them would be here
> The books are not banned...The public schools don't allow them
What's a word that means "forbidden from being included" or "disallowed"? "Banned"! Check your local dictionary, or just type it into your favorite search box.
> Calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking"
No, it's not dumb. Children don't go to school for the purpose of getting drunk or smoking. They do go to school to learn things, including things that might be politically controversial or divisive.
You know what is dumb? Gatekeeping truthful information from being accessible to kids.
Praising a murderer for committing a murder is not incitement and is protected speech. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech loses protection only if it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce it. A comment on a murder after the fact can’t meet this standard unless the comment is “go do another murder right now!”
Kimmel also did not praise the murderer. He implied (incorrectly as it turns out) that the killer was right-wing.
Your misstatements of the well-known facts and law in this case cast doubt on the effort you put into researching the other issues mentioned.
He did more than imply the falsehood. He implied that people had no good reason to disbelieve the falsehood, and that the right wing was seeking to deceive on this basis for political gain. In doing so, he (perhaps inadvertently) ran cover for the ideology that was actually responsible.
Right-wingers have lost their jobs in the US many times for far less, even when their comments were on social media accounts unrelated to the job. When these responses are described as unjust or disproportionate, American left-wingers have consistently and repeatedly (across a span of many years) told me the same line about how 1A only applies to government and not corporations. Which is correct, but also entirely missing the point about bias.
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
> Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country?
well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying
That seems... Unlikely?
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Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions (not even that, but third parties' understanding of those opinions). Kirk himself never proposed anything violent; the narrative was promoted based on wild misrepresentations to that effect.
But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.
> Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions
Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:
https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...
By pinning the blame on the wrong ideology (with full confidence, apparently based on nothing but his own world view, and implying that others were dishonest in coming to a different (ultimately shown to be correct, and strongly evidenced at the time) conclusion, he ran cover for the ideological group responsible, and their narrative.
Donald Trump is currently suing the BBC for their speech.
In a UK court, of course.
It's a US federal court in Florida https://share.google/j1xPrAt1Swvuec7bx
Not for any speech. For misleading cutting his speech together.
I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment. The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
>I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.
Is it protected if you are challenging a UK company in the UK?
It sounds like it's in a US court.
> I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.
It is, the government can not prevent or punish people speaking on the basis that the government decides it was misleading.
A civil dispute between private parties is entirely different though. One can be found liable for misleading speech that causes damage to another party.
> The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
What damage? He's rich as fuck, and President of the United States!
I'm not aware of what damages Trump alleges in the suit or if it has any merit at all. Being rich does not mean there is no damage or disqualify a person from restitution though. And holding public office or a government job doesn't disqualify a person from protecting their private interests, although I imagine it could make the case a lot more complicated.
Aside, using civil courts to attack opponents is certainly a problem, but in USA it favors the speaker a compared to a lot of other countries. In US the plaintiff has to prove the speech is false and for public figures that there was malice. Which in my opinion goes a bit too far and gives media corporations more power over politicians and other public matters. I think the public figure stipulation is reasonable and important to allow private citizens to discuss politicians and public matters so that's good, but I think there should be a counter to that which requires organizations reporting the news to have more duty to report truth and not mislead.
BBC and Trump have similar fan bases. Both love getting lied to.
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> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
The UK is Russia in denial? I am massively confused
Basically everyone is Russia in denial at this point
From the last few conversations I've had with Russians, they aren't remotely in denial but also feel powerless to change anything.
Absolutely, Brexit was a Russian psyop
Oh sorry I assumed you were Murican
Oh well, same thing. At this point the UK is basically the mutant kid sprouting from the body of that guy in Total Recall :)
The same shitty some of the worst authoritarianism among the Western world etc.
sounds like you live in the bastion of righteousness. can we move in?
huh? the case here is the UK trying to get the US to enforce some UK law in the US
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International politics is done via Twitter now
In the same way that a child tumbling down a hill is an Olympic gymnast.
I mean if they're in the Olympics then that is essentially true.
The only people who think that Twitter matters are on Twitter, it’s less of an Olympic competition and more of an asylum for the terminally dim.
I'm saying that right now, certain high-profile idiots are making it matter by definition. Once they stop using Twitter for that, then it'll stop mattering again.
The high profile idiots might matter, their participation on Twitter doesn’t.
Twitter isn’t the active ingredient.
They didn't say it was, they said it was VIA twitter.
The medium is the message.
(Or at least, it heavily shapes the message).
They would literally announce new decisions on Twitter before anywhere else. High-impact political decisions and international decisions. You would be a fool to ignore it just because of the platform. You'd die on that hill.
> Twitter isn’t the active ingredient.
The idiots aren't an active ingredient either. Russia and Iran could have used any puppets. These ones just happen to also twitch like a frog leg.
sauce is 404
While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.
While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
> While Ofcom were barmy to even try this
Quote from the article:
> Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused
Seems like Ofcom broadly got the result they wanted. A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
Standard regulator strategy: try to make the one thing you actually want to comply be the odd one out and then point at them going "but why not you too?" (The FTC do this as well).
4chan was absolutely the defining target of this wave of noise, but X is what really bothers the UK establishment.
X is different because it does have a business presence in the UK: UK advertisers
The rest of them presumably wanted to continue doing business in the UK & did not want to IP-block the entire country.
How many of those organizations had business within Ofcoms jurisdiction? No one operating outside of their legal jurisdiction should have complied.
Presumably a decent chunk of those might now reconsider?
And also this only worked once, but in the future other entities getting sued now know they can just ignore it.
it depends on what those other orgs want.
Not being able to do business in (or, depending on how serious they are about enforcement action, visit) the UK is actually pretty constraining. It's understandable if other companies decided they would prefer to find a middle ground that lets them provide one face to the US and another to the UK, or even that they're not interested in 4chan-style maximalism and found it non-onerous to comply with the UK asks because they're pretty in-line with the site's existing standards (I'd have to see the list of sites that complied to have a real opinion on that part).
> A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
The thing is, you can afford sticking the finger to the UK if you do not have any business interests there. A platform like 4chan won't be bothered even if the UK government says "all payments to be made towards 4chan for advertising are hereby seized until the fine is paid off". But places like Twitter or Meta, that derive millions if not billions of euros a year from the UK and European advertisers? Now that's a lot of money to lose, money that even American shareholders will complain about it being missing from the revenue sheet.
> from the UK and European advertisers Why would "European" advertisers come into this, I don't think ofcom has jurisdiction outside of the UK?
Did any of them move to a .onion? I would expect commercial sites to cave and some small sites to just move to Tor which probably accomplishes the same thing as far fewer people use the Tor Browser or Brave. I could also be delusional.
> there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't
In my comment I explained how countries, including the US, project their laws by imposing controls within their jurisdiction.
The weird part about this case is how they thought they could directly project their laws into another country in a way that overrides that country’s constitution, and they expected the other country to override their own constitution in agreement.
That’s not the same. This was something weirder, which is why there is speculation that it was designed to fail as a demonstration.
That's exactly what the US do though. We recently saw server seizures in Amsterdam, there is the US Cloud act and so on.
The US fundamentally disagrees with other countries on the limits of their own jurisdiction to include basically anything tangentially related to the US.
Again, I am far from anti-US but any outsider can see this for what it is: a one way street.
Was this in violation of the Netherlands constitution or just not explicitly illegal in Amsterdam? I don’t know the details or the incident you’re referencing, but there is generally a distinction.
Basic property rights. If they weren't breaking Dutch laws then the server shouldn't be seizable.
Let's see the Dutch get a US based server that is violating Dutch laws. It will never happen.
Were they actually not breaking Dutch laws? Around terrorism-related activities I would guess the laws are fairly similar across Western countries, partly due to 9/11. Speech regulation has been consistently different between the US and Europe, including the UK - the US even passed laws to refuse to enforce UK libel judgments 15 years ago after Americans became aware of their abusive effects.
If European countries banded together to direct their banks to offer services to the sanctioned ICC judges, for example, I think the US would back down on that - yes even under Trump, although there would be some bluster first.
A/I didn't break any laws at all, not even US ones. But the US president currently gets to override US laws, so they still committed a crime in the US despite not breaking any law, but even the US president doesn't have that power outside the US. No crime was committed in the Netherlands, nor in Italy. It's actually illegal in Italy for their Italian bank to keep A/I's money, since that's plain old theft - they're currently figuring out a way to give it back to them without triggering the mango.
maduro definitely wasnt breaking venesuelan law, as a clearer example, nor is Brazil's non-visa/mastercard payments system
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European countries need to get off Mastercard/Visa and US Tech and Energy dependencies first, otherwise it's just a shakedown by the US every time they hit an external legal system.
// If European countries banded together to direct their banks to offer services to the sanctioned ICC judges, for example, I think the US would back down on that - yes even under Trump, although there would be some bluster first.
That's a very good way to force the Hague Invasion Act to manifest in some form or another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Trump personally intervened when two US spooks were driving on the wrong side of the road in London, with the driver most likely on her phone, killed someone, and then fled the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn
Compare this with a hispanic american who severely injured someone in similar circumstances. Extradition granted and was convicted for a 32 month prison sentence in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y89k07we3o
> That's a very good way to force the Hague Invasion Act to manifest in some form or another.
You may note from the title that this is the "American Service-Members' Protection Act".
The current attempt to destroy the ICC is not due to protection of American service members, but Israeli ones.
The admin is going after the court on the basis of it prosecuting American allies. However, America loses NATO if they were to invade over this.
The admin (and perhaps many in the country) might like to think they can go alone, but the US has a surprisingly poor record when it comes to fighting without allies.
While I'm sure Trump did his usual thing with regards to the death of Harry Dunn, "war crimes" is on a somewhat different scale to "dangerous driving".
This looks to be the case https://decrypt.co/381296/terrifying-precedent-dutch-hand-us...
The servers were seized under a mutual legal enforcement agreement and it remains to be seen if it underwent a separate Dutch legal review. Quite of a bit of legal footwork gets skipped when the “terrorism” charge is invoked. But it looks like the servers are not being physically turned over, the disks are being imaged and that is what is being transferred.
Why be far from anti-US if this is what the US does?
The US also has laws imposing restrictions on institutions outside their borders/jurisdiction. FATCA for example.
But they do that via things in their control. For example, banks that don't follow FATCA cannot access the US banking system. It's rare for the US to send law enforcement to banks that don't comply
The UK would have been perfectly justified in saying 4chan can't access any of their systems.
Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.
This. The regulation organisations can sometimes try to make a point when they're tasked with enforcing an unenforceable or otherwise unworkable rule.
As a US citizen, I'm inclined to agree.
The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.
Ofcom didn't "try this"
4chan is suing Ofcom, not the other way round.
Ofcom started it. They sent nasty legal letters to 4chan first.
Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who, this is supposed to be a happy occasion!
Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.
4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
This is how the UK gets it's own great firewall.
Demand online services change their services to conform to their law. Because its accessible from the UK.
Services refuse.
Up goes the wall.
I guess you don't know what actually happened. All but four of the 200 companies Ofcom asked for compliance, complied. The point is about any business that operates in the UK, and especially if it generates income from the UK, should be subject to certain laws in the UK. Not because they're accessible from the UK.
It's about honor, I remember Saddam Hussein saying that after they held against the US for 40 days they "won" the war, because in their culture when a higher power entity goes against a weaker one, it is without honor and the weaker entity "wins" honor by being able to defend for that long.
That's not unique to their culture. Remember The Alamo? That was 190 years ago and we still celebrate our defeat.
We don't celebrate our defeat. We celebrate the men, the courage, the greater meaning.
The greater meaning of... holding a position over a period of time that seems unreasonable against a far superior force? Exactly like the GP described for Hussein? It certainly sounds like we're celebrating the same things, unless I misunderstood your point...
exactly, defeat.
The greater meaning of a revolution that was fought to preserve slavery.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/how-leaders-texas-r...
When we remember history, what we remember tends to be white-washed.
The Mexican government and especially Santa Anna were not even close to saints and were not primarily fighting the Texans for reasons of slavery. The Mexican empire carved out slavery as being explicitly allowed in the Mexican state that become known as Texas.
This is no different than what happened in the Civil War.
Each side had a list of grievances. A big one on one side, was the preservation of slavery in perpetuity. The other side wanted to preserve the unity of the nation as a whole.
You are right that Mexico was not fighting to ban slavery. But it was clear that eliminating slaver was still in their roadmap. Texas had only gotten an extension.
Similarly the election of Lincoln wasn't an immediate threat to slavery in the Confederacy. But the Confederacy still was motivated to head off the long-term threat to their economic system.
So the fact that Mexico wasn't fighting to end slavery, doesn't contradict the fact that Texans were fighting to preserve it.
> [1]: The Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act
I mean, Lincoln being elected is a direct threat to slavery.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_State...
Mexico was about to end that carve out. But slavery was only one of the causes (and you're right about Santa Anna).
The myth is that Bowie and Crockett battled until their last breathes. The truth is that Bowie was sick and died in bed. Crockett gave up and was executed.
That's all from the 2021 book Forget the Alamo.
Iran is pulling the same trick now, claiming it "won" just because the regime did not fall (yet). This is despite having lost most of their conventional army, navy, and air force, and having also mostly lost control of the straits of Hormuz.
I thought the claims of Iran winning were based on Iran's opponent collapsing. But it's a very slow collapse, and still not definitive yet, but some people are extrapolating the trajectory, to see that at the current rate, Iran's enemy will fall long before Iran does.
I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive. So it is a victory of sorts so far: the US has not achieved its strategic goal of regime change, and Iran has managed to inflict a fair amount of pain in retaliation.
(You could say the Taliban were even more thoroughly 'defeated' in Afghanistan while the country was occupied by the US, but it can hardly be said that it was a victory for the US either, given what happened as soon as they left).
> I mean, the Iranian regime has had one goal the whole war: survive.
No it wasn't. If Iran's only goal is to survive then it would have made peace with the USA and surrounding Middle Eastern territories decades ago.
This whole war is happening because Iran had great political ambitions than just thriving on its own.
Iran has been funding proxy terrorist groups for a long time now, specifically because it is trying to achieve larger goals than just surviving.
And on those fronts, well those proxy groups have taken a ton of damage and aren't long for this world.
This whole war is happening because after his easy coup in Venezuela, Trump thought he could just do it again in Iran, and now he can't extricate himself without losing face. And American politicians on both sides of the aisle are subserviant to Israel.
Their goals are to survive and control the strait of Ormuz. And they will do both because eventually the US will pull out, because to try to hold the strait is a financial drain. Just like Afghanistan. So it's a waiting game and everyone knows Iran will win. Orange man can say he won every day and after a year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years eventually the US will have to admit defeat.
> Their goals are to survive
As I just said before, if this was their only goal, they could have had it decades ago by choosing peace instead of funding proxy milita groups en mass.
The fact that they fund all they proxy groups shows that actually yes they have other goals beyond surviving (They they are quickly failing to achieve as their proxy groups get dismantled), and they are actually willing to risk war and risk their survival to attempt to achieve them.
Quite the contrary. It doesn't matter what Iran does: their crime is existing without being under the control of the US. The US installed a puppet regime in Iran in 1953, and had a powerful vassal in the middle east, close to the Soviet Union. They freed themselves in 1979, gaining control of their own resources, and the US never forgave them for it. The only way the US would have allowed them to go on existing without attacking would be for them to become slaves again.
You're forgetting that a perfectly serviceable truce was established with the JCPOA until Trump tore it up to satisfy Israeli interests.
They did make peace with the US. It was a whole thing, papers were signed, agreements were made, they pinky-promised to not make nukes, everyone walked away happy. Except the Israelis, who don't like their regional power status being challenged, and apparently Trump, who... didn't like that the Iranians gave up on their nuclear armament program?
Either way, the US and Iran were at peace right up until we decided to pull out of our disarmament treaty with them. And then executed a decapitation strike against them.
> Iranians gave up on their nuclear armament program?
They never gave up. The plan was always to lie and get sanction relief from the West, in order to to sell oil and fund Islamist terrorism throughout the region and the world. It isn't only about the nukes. Fundamentally, this is about containment of a dangerous anti-Western ideology. Same thing in Cuba.
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.
Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
Maybe they weren't allowed to not try? Like adding Denuvo to your game doesn't stop piracy, but your investors will be angry if you don't make the (wasted) effort at due diligence.
Those toolkits don’t even seem to be intended to stop piracy - they seem to add value by slowing it down long enough to make the first 2 weeks (days) of sales. The people using them usually understand that.
Yes, but the point is that the motivation for taking these actions isn't for them to be effective, but to satisfy performative requirements imposed by external parties.
There is an old saying "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM". This is just yet another facet of CYA where we know it's of limited utility and the cracking will happen either way but if you specifically argued against Denuvo before the cracking happens it's your ass on the line for it.
Yes
I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.
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> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.
Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
I actually wouldn’t have been shocked if other countries had helped, and the powers that be may regret enforcing their sovereignty here.
Countries used to enforce this at their borders (for foreign information) because it largely worked. They couldn’t stop 100% of the copies of the book, but they could stop there being enough copies for it to be part of the cultural zeitgeist (most of the time).
Not anymore. The companies don’t have a local HQ to harass, and the information doesn’t flow through infrastructure the government owns. They’ve pretty much entirely lost the ability to control the flow of information, and they’ve largely lost the ability to control its direction either with the fall of major news outlets.
I don’t think they have the support for a China-style great firewall, but I’m not British so maybe I’m wrong.
I think it’s a good thing information is set free, but I see why they tried it. It’s the only politically tenable way they had to try to keep that control.
No need gor a china-style great firewall. Just compel your local dns providers to stop resolving that website. That's what they do for copyright violations
Easy to circumvent ? Sure, but most people don't know how, so you've made the website inaccessible to the vast majority
I'm continually surprised there are no operating systems, not even Linux distros, that run their own resolvers by default.
The infrastructure is already in place for a global great firewall. One need only to compel Google and Cloudflare to block a site in their DNS and most of the planet will not be able to reach it.
I am surprised that https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/4102 was not cited.
It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.
Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
Didn't the USA kidnap a president from another country from that country, just the other day?
Yes.
What ties are there to the current conversation?
Because we are discussing law outside of the borders to which normal legal boundaries apply.
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The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.
By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.
Or they really are delusional. I dunno.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
>> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
How this judgment do that?
They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
> Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates
When something can be explained by both incompetence and conspiracy, the correct explanation is usually incompetence.
> Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Not European politicians.
You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.
Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
It’s largely political. Even the rank and file staff there agree that it’s nonsense, being done for appearances.
Exactly. Ofcom understood it needed a dog and pony show to answer the latest UK moral panic over 4chan. The headlines have moved on, and they can safely take off their costumes.
> they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.
Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities, have to declare compliance with US laws (FATCA) when opening a bank account in India with an Indian bank. This is enforced by the Indian government.
>Indian citizens living in India, who have never left India and only do business with Indian entities
That's just one handshake away from their bank which does have business with US and their dollaridos.
> Why is this surprising? The United States does this all the time, successfully.
The surprise is that Britain is a local backwater and the United States isn't. You can't throw your weight around if you don't have any weight.
The difference is that Britain is not a super power and has not been for a long time. There is only China and the US. All other western nations and many eastern ones are shells of what they once were.