4chan and Kiwi Farms sued the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) over its age verification law in U.S. federal court Wednesday, fulfilling a promise it announced on August 23. In the lawsuit, 4chan and Kiwi Farms claim that threats and fines they have received from Ofcom “constitute foreign judgments that would restrict speech under U.S. law.”
Both entities say in the lawsuit that they are wholly based in the U.S. and that they do not have any operations in the United Kingdom and are therefore not subject to local laws. Ofcom’s attempts to fine and block 4chan and Kiwi Farms, and the lawsuit against Ofcom, highlight the messiness involved with trying to restrict access to specific websites or to force companies to comply with age verification laws.
As a UK citizen who has massive issues with the OSA, this story makes me empathise with how the ordinary citizens of Minas Tirith must’ve felt as they hid as best they could but could hear the marauding Orc army murdering their way through the city - and then hearing the clear horns trumpeting from over a hill in the middle distance…only to see not the armed might of Rohan come over the brow but a loose collection of people so bad even Sauron was too ashamed to have serve with him.