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.
If I were a bit richer, and a really crooked bastard, I’d be setting up an age verification company right now.
The sheer amount of blackmail material I could amass in 1 month would beggar belief. Hell, I’d probably bag enough politicians to evade prosecution for the rest of my natural life.
All you would get would be politicians because everybody else knows how to use a VPN.