If 4chan continues to ignore Ofcom, the forum could be blocked in the UK. And 4chan could face even bigger fines totaling about $23 million or 10 percent of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. 4chan also faces potential arrest and/or “imprisonment for a term of up to two years,” the lawsuit said.
Imagine for a moment that 4chan is a business that sells alcoholic beverages in the US. Now imagine the UK has instituted prohibition and banned the consumption of alcohol.
now, some enterprising individuals have taken it upon themselves to buy, smuggle, and then sell those beverages inside the UK.
Clearly, the government has intended to ban the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of it.
Now the UK government is trying to shackle hefty fines against an American company for having the “audacity” of selling a product to an individual within the confines of the US.
again, the UK banned the consumption of alcohol, not the sale of. 4Chan isn’t forcing UK citizens to drink the alcohol. They are simply selling the product, within their country of origin, to individuals who want to purchase it.
now, do you still think the UK government has a right to fine 4chan or do you think maybe the UK government should elaborate on their prohibition regulations to ensure their citizens are properly “protected”?
Wouldn’t it be more akin to those individuals putting the alcohol into 4chan’s trucks that are taking other stuff to the UK? (and worse with 4chan’s knowledge)
In that case do you think it’s unreasonable that the uk government imposes penalties for 4chan refusing to remove the alcohol that they know is there from the trucks.
And then if 4chan then refuses to pay said penalties start to not allow them to bring any trucks into the uk at all?
the “trucks” in your example are the users computers/phones.
the highways are the Internet, which is owned and maintained by the UK government after their “gate”.
the alcohol is the content.
4chans trucks deliver to the UKs “gate” and the UK user does the rest from there on the UK highways.
if the UK doesn’t want the alcohol in their country, they need to stop their citizens from purchasing it and block it from entering their country at their “gate”.
this is what any reasonable country would do. they (UK) already do it for actual physical products like potassium bromate, azodicarbonamide, and certain artificial food dyes like Yellow 5 and Yellow 6.
Are they going to sue or fine the companies that manufacture those products? no. They’re going to ban the products that use them and then go after the individuals that smuggle them in.
Okkkkkay so I’ll play your hypothetical game.
So in your scenario here, some enterprising individuals start off by smuggling alcohol into the UK. By definition according to Merriam-Webster, smuggling is: “to import or export secretly contrary to the law and especially without paying duties imposed by law”.
According to UK laws, this has the following consequences:
Lets move to the selling of the illegally imported alcohol:
For the sake of your argument, we’ll remove the law that says its illegal to sell alcohol to children, I guess? Regardless, it might be some enterprising individuals that are selling it, but they are selling the alcohol in the UK. In UK currency, To UK residents. In the UK. We are getting into possibly exchanging UK currency for US currency, which is a whole new can of worms, but we can save that for later.
Now to your question:
Easy answer is yes. They should be fined for smuggling alcohol into the UK, which is what the current law calls for.
Now hypothetical for you.
Imagine for a moment that the UK has banned looking at alcohol if you are under 18. Doesn’t matter if you look at alcohol if you are over the age of 18, but you just can’t legally look at alcohol if you are under 18.
Now someone comes along named 4chan and builds a giant building in the UK that has a ton of alcohol inside of it. There isn’t anything outside of the building. Its only inside where the alcohol is. They don’t have protections in place that prevent anyone under 18 from going inside the building. Anyone can come in and look. You can be 5 years old, or 100 years old. As a matter of fact, tons of people from all over the UK come and visit this building daily, even children.
Now the UK government comes along and says, “Hey 4chan, you need to verify that anyone that goes into your building is at least 18 years old, because if someone under 18 looks at the alcohol in there, thats against the law.”
4chan ignores the UK and continues letting anyone inside, not verifying anyone’s age. Not only that, but they’re actually selling alcohol to children in there, and letting children make their own alcohol as well.
Should the UK be allowed to fine/arrest 4chan until they meet the demands?
Learn to read.
Read what, exactly?
gonna be honest, I didn’t read anything past this part.
I didn’t read any of it because you clearly didn’t read what I said.
here’s the part you conveniently forgot and it literally changes the entire argument.
next time you want to argue your point don’t employ the use of bad faith tactics and try to argue your point without manufacturing flaws.
LOL okay but you said:
I went ahead and edited it for you so it says enterprising individuals… which you end up asking about 4chan anyways
still not reading it. you attempted to argue under false pretenses and I’m not wasting my time on something you probably used AI to generate.
I didn’t use AI at all.