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This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries going after a Parisian tobacconist.

binary132
Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the client is.
beardyw
Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.
ibejoeb
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.

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.
parliament32
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...

ang_cire
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.

RHSeeger
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.
ibejoeb
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.

tremon
4chan brings their services into the UK

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

Mountain_Skies
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.
mikkupikku
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.
throwaway48476
The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to throw around.
foobarian
Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!
fecal_henge
I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.
ibejoeb
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.

awesome_dude
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
ibejoeb
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...
jojobas OP
No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.
tpoacher
yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was shipped there.
Palmik
No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to Britain.
littlestymaar
Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace “tobacco” with “cocaine” and “Parisian” with “Colombian”.
CaptainOfCoit
Still sounds absurd to me.

> UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.

kemayo
I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats currently: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trum...

(I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and probably criminal.)

throwaway48476
They likely do not have a flag state and could be considered pirates. Fisherman dont have 100k worth of outboard motors either.
lesuorac
Which law allows the death penalty for allegedly transporting drugs?

Shooting first and asking questions later is how we got into this mess of deporting us citizens.

lazide
That is the war on drugs yes?
iamnothere
It still sounds absurd to me. Nations should not be in the business of passing laws that apply to extraterritorial actions of foreign citizens. I know that it happens, especially with the US, but IMHO it’s just not how things should work.

This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines. Just wait until 30 years from now when you can’t safely visit anywhere in the far East because you made a subversive comment about China. Although I’m sure the same people will hypocritically wail and gnash their teeth about the laws made by those people, when of course our extraterritorial laws are just fine.

8note
The end punishment will still end up being that 4chan is not allowed to do business in the UK. If they want their website to work in the UK, they should follow UK law.
iamnothere
Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses outside their control.

If this kind of BS becomes too common then running a small internet business will become impossible. Even if you don’t do business in a country, you will have to consider whether or not they might consider you in violation of some obscure law and then consider whether or not that country has the leverage to impact your business or even your own personal safety. It’s utterly ridiculous. This would spell the end of the global internet, except for megacorps. It’s already a tough business environment as it is.

The status quo is that some countries have these laws, but they are generally ignored unless you’re a citizen, you manage to do something geopolitically significant, or you get involved in transnational crime rings. This seems acceptable to me. If countries don’t like the free internet, then ban it so we can all see what you’re really up to.

lenerdenator
> This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines.

This has been happening long before the US started doing it.

If anything, it's normalized in the US because of the bad behavior prior to the US doing it. China's a great example. What does brutally crushing dissent internally and abroad without even a facade of a single care about human rights get you? Well, in their case, damn near superpower status. Been that way since at the very least Nixon's administration.

The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy". The concern for human rights shown since the end of WWII in the West (particularly the US) is an exception, not norm, in history.

yupyupyups
>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".

Who are these people you're talking about, tankies, faschists?

The Chinese have the government that they deserve. They screw each other over, and what goes around comes around. It's a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.

madeofpalk
What about marijunana? It's absurd for the UK government to try and go after a legal California weed store.
littlestymaar
If the California stores ships to the UK, you can be certain that they will.

And they'd be right to do so as a country has sovereignty over what is allowed or not in their country, not matter the country of origin of the seller.

knorker
It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice of a fine to Pablo Escobar.

Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.

Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good luck with sending warships to invade the US.

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