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Comment by alphazard | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree that wanting to further one's own career is complex or sinister. If the enforcement of laws wasn't aligned with career progress it would be bad for enforcement, including the laws that you and I want enforced.

Even if the goal is just enforcement, you would get more enforcement, collect more fines, if you didn't put your ability to actually collect fines into question. When 4chan successfully defends itself and the UK extracts no money, that will show US companies which would have been in doubt, that they can also defend themselves.

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Sure I mean, people generally want to do their jobs, which in this case means fining sites that don’t comply with the legislation. I don’t see any reason to think that it’s more complex than that. If 4chan doesn’t comply then the site will probably be blocked by UK ISPs, so I don’t think the logic in your second paragraph really goes through.

A job is not just robotically following a script. If your actions have negative impact on the goals of your job and you do it anyway, you are bad at your job.

I didn’t make any claim about people being good at their jobs. But I’m not sure why you think that this will have a negative impact on OFCOM’s goals. Imposing the fine is probably just a formal preliminary to having UK ISPs block 4chan.

In this case, Ofcom's stated goal (which I admit may be different than their actual goal) is to get overseas companies to comply with their rules.

I think you may be giving them too much credit. You're essentially saying that their real goal is to get an ISP block and everything they are doing now is performative to get to that real, unstated goal.

On the other hand I may be underestimating them as, to me, they just seem like power-tripping troglodytes.

I don't think the fine is performative. It's just the first sanction that gets applied. I don't understand why you think that's incompatible with Ofcom's stated goal.

>> When 4chan successfully defends itself

How do you expect this to happen? The law is pretty clear and afaik 4chan has been pretty explicit that they know the law and they're ignoring it. 4chan's 'out' is that they don't have any legal presence in the UK. More legitimate enterprises do so the results of this will have no bearing on them.

I'm talking specifically about US companies, which make up the lion's share of popular websites. They are served from the US as a primary location, and the company is incorporated there as well. Modulo CDN hosted assets, there is no presence in the UK.

If the company is in the UK, then yes, they are obviously screwed. The damage to the UK's web presence has already been done. I don't expect anyone would want to incorporate an internet dependent company there.

If this is deemed illegal in an US court then the OSA will be unenforcebale against US entities in the US (though not sure what's needed to set precedent).

This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.

> This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.

UK law is generally unenforcible in the US except extradition agreements for crimes commuted while residing in the UK. That's not the case here and there's no agreement that applies to this case.

It is possible to enforce UK judgements and fines in the US, though my understanding is that it is not simple or guaranteed.

I suppose the action 4chan is taking in US court is exactly to avoid this possibility.

> It is possible to enforce UK judgements and fines in the US, though my understanding is that it is not simple or guaranteed.

I am curious as to how that could possibly work. Is there some trade agreement that requires the US to respect UK court rulings? Generally the US has sought to distance itself from any kind of foreign influence or control.

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