Here’s how Ofcom will bring about censorship in the UK; it will…

1/ declare itself (truthfully) to be acting on behalf of the UK sovereign government…

Ofcom has claimed it has “sovereign immunity” as it seeks to fend off a US free speech lawsuit from the website 4chan … Lawyers for the regulator told a US court that there were “substantial grounds” for throwing out the lawsuit … The US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act shields foreign governments from lawsuits in the US.

Source: Telegraph (archived)

2/ …rather than maintaining the fiction that they are an “independent regulator”, incidentally funded by fees that are paid by those regulated:

How Ofcom is funded as an independant regulator

Most of Ofcom’s funding comes from fees paid to us by the companies we regulate, to cover the cost of the work we do in their sectors … While we’re funded by fees paid to us by the companies we regulate, this does not affect our independence. Ofcom is an independent regulator and we make evidence-based decisions without fear or favour. Although Ofcom is accountable to Parliament, we are independent of government and the companies we regulate.

Source: Ofcom

3/ …and because Ofcom are, in the USA at least, dropping this fiction by clearly claiming to be a state actor with sovereign immunity (i.e.: cannot be sued by 4chan) their attempts to fine/punish 4chan will absolutely fail:

Recognition of foreign judgments is available only for private-law judgments (contract, tort, etc.), not for public-law sanctions.

So if the UK obtains a regulatory fine or order via … OFCOM penalties … the U.S. court will refuse recognition on public-policy grounds … Even if the underlying conduct would also be illegal in the U.S.

If the U.S. corporation … has a UK subsidiary has assets in the UK derives revenue from UK operations …then the UK can enforce penalties inside UK jurisdiction, and the only question is whether the parent corporation wants to protect those assets, subsidiaries, or revenue streams.

Source: ChatGPT Analysis

4/ Since the UK is only 7% of 4chan userbase, the risk of financial sanctions is not actually a huge deal, especially when so many dedicated users will simply circumvent and see the same adverts via other VPN-host countries. Nothing else is open for Ofcom to attack:

Demographic Age: 18-34 Gender: ~70% male, ~30% female Location: United States (47%), United Kingdom (7%), Canada (6%), Australia (4%), Germany (4%) Interests: Japanese culture, anime, manga, video games, comics, technology, music, movies Education: Majority attended or currently enrolled in college

Source: 4chan

5/ Therefore Ofcom will lose any law-based approach to punishing 4chan — and in the process of attempting may poison future abilities to attempt the same — and will instead, to deliver its duties, have to start demanding censorship:

Suffice it to say: when the equivalent US laws would be violations of the 1st amendment, there’s no hope for Ofcom here. To fulfil their duties Ofcom will need to demand that {DNS, IP, DPI} blocks are imposed by ISPs to prevent Britons from accessing:

• 4chan
• KiwiFarms
• SaSu
• <various other US-based forums>

…which — being censorship — will lead to:

1. Streisand-Effect motivation / boosting of traffic to go see those websites
2. Enormous bunfights to attempt to get VPNs to censor access similarly
3. Attempts to block VPNs which do not comply, as well as privacy-enabling tools such as the Tor Project (which is used, e.g., by the BBC as part of its public service)
4. Inability to block cross-border wireless services, e.g. France, Ireland, …
5. Eventual collapse of public trust in censorship as everyone walks around the blocks

Source: this blog

---

So Ofcom will have to reboot itself as the Internet’s Lord Chamberlain’s office, in utter denial of the Streisand Effect, driving a huge chunk of the UK population to further adopt internet censorship circumvention strategies that will inevitably lead to legislators starting to treat the British people (rather than “racism”, “sexism”, “intolerance”, etc…) as the problem to be addressed & whipped-in, whilst increasingly frantic child-safety campaigners bay for Ofcom’s blood for their failure to deliver American censorship …

It’s regrettable that so many of the sensible, pragmatic, or liberty-preserving perspectives are coming from or in support of odious sources — but that does not mean that they are wrong; and that many of those calling for censorship are (e.g.) aggrieved parents does not make them right.

Either someone high-up in Government needs to diffuse all this noise and pro-censorship drum-beating, or else the UK will soon be turning itself into a Chinese-style digital prison to stop Britons from accessing websites or expressing views that the Government deems to be repugnant.

Also: it’s not like reducing Ofcom’s power has not been considered previously…