Ofcom has a bad handle on web requests. Clients connect out. 4chan et al aren't pushing their services in anyone in the UK.

In hindsight it is dumb to buy random pills and take em.

Sometimes it self resolves - as you contributed here, yes, countries limit and interfere and fine other countries businesses, all the time!

I don’t know what yours means though. What electrics are made in the UK? How are they over engineered?

Precedent in the US is that courts do in fact have jurisdiction over a foreign website's owner if the owner "purposefully availed itself of the U.S. forum or purposefully directed its activities toward it", a test which is less demanding than it sounds. [1]

And US has taken advantage of this to go after foreign websites such as Megaupload, BTC-e, Liberty Reserve, etc.

Therefore, if there were a US law requiring companies to follow free speech rules, it could potentially be enforced against foreign website owners. But no such law currently exists. The First Amendment itself only applies to the US government (and to companies working on behalf of the US government). There is also the SPEECH Act, which, among other provisions, creates a cause of action where if someone sues a US person in a foreign court over their speech, they can sue back in US court. But only for declaratory judgement, not damages or an injunction. The goal is mainly just to prevent US courts from enforcing judgements from the foreign court in such cases.

[1] https://tlblog.org/how-to-find-personal-jurisdiction-over-fo...

Not even China and North Korea whine about or send fake “fines” to offshore entities. They just block their sites and move on with life.

The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.

And the UK... each time it delivers there.

They also force ISPs to block IPs [0].

I feel trying to say that's not "blocking websites" is playing games with words, and the results are functionally the same to the "average" user.

The fact that the US effectively claim juristiction over the root DNS system is a more a geopolitical power thing rather than a legal restriction.

[0] https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-orders-every-isp-in-the-un...

It's fucking stupid that an American site that is afforded free speech protection in its own country has to deal with the UK acting like a tyrant.

It’s like fining Parisian bars to hand over alcohol to couriers without checking to whom couriers will deliver it.

Couriers = all involved network providers.

Laws apply to actions in the country, they’re not based on citizenship.

If you go to Amsterdam and sleep with a hooker, you didn’t break a law by doing that: despite prostitution (specifically purchasing sex) being illegal in many western countries.

Not at all. But if they do enter, they might find difficulty leaving.

If I buy something illegal off of AliExpress, the US government won't and can't do squat to the seller. If they decide to enforce the law, they'll go after me.

OFCOM&co is about overseas data going to you.

It already sounds like Ofcom is likely to lose lawsuits about this, as they do not have jurisdiction in the U.S., where 4chan is hosted.

Someone at school has parents who aren't watching their children and allowing them unrestricted Internet access? This is where the bounty-hunter private-right-of-action morality-police laws that seem to be gaining traction can be put to some actual good use instead of, for example, hunting down trans people in Kansas. If someone's child is showing other children inappropriate material because their parents are negligent, the other parents should be able to take those parents to court and recover damages if they can collect evidence. Once parents are fined for letting their children roam with an unrestricted Internet connection it'll stop pretty quick.

> they need help from the wider society they live in.

Help that is not material support (e.g. paying hospital bills, babysitting, etc.) is usually interference.

> I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults

Agreed, but I can handle myself on the internet (my parents did their job and I am also not a dog and know the difference between a screen and a real object), and shouldn't be tracked with verification nonsense because someone else can't.

That means making it possible for parents to actively block bad websites, and making that hard to circumvent.

We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door, and there's plenty of theoretical dangers there too. Let the parents educate their children.

We don't sell bottles containing alcohol and then expect to filter the alcohol out if the child wants to drink from it. We have two different bottles: alcoholic bottles and non-alcoholic bottles. If you are a child, you cannot purchase the former.

Stop selling unrestricted computing devices to children. Require a person to be 18+ to purchase an unrestricted internet device. Make it clear that unrestricted internet access, like alcohol and nicotine (and the list goes on) is harmful to children. That resolves 90% of the problem.

And lets be fair, the problem isn't the children. Children want what all their peers have. The problem isn't their peers. The problem is the parents. Give the spineless parents a simpler way to say no to their children, and the overall problem goes away.

At least we seem to agree the solution lies with better tools for parents.

"proper parental control software" doesn't exist for a lot of the platforms.