While I agree it seems absurd, this is how the UK's unwritten constitution works - the UK Parliament is not restricted to legislating just for the territory of the UK. Of course it can only realistically enforce within UK borders, but it can pass whatever legislation it wishes.

There is a famous quote regarding this nature of British parliamentary sovereignty that is taught to every law student in the UK: "If Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence" - Ivor Jennings.

Doesn't it ridicule its own agencies to allow them to go after entities that they have no hope of policing? It's such an impotent gesture to do this.

No, because it’s a step in a process.

Next steps would be blocking the site uk wide.

We will likely see a future where uk puts out interpol notices on the individuals involved.

If they enter a country with extradition agreements they will get extradited.

This dynamic could also be argued as a cause of the War of 1812.

This is false. You of course can regulate and fine a foreign business. That's how trade regulations work.

The UK isn't going to get a cent from that but the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future.

Doing this a lot as a country is how you achieve pariah status and losing a bunch of trade, though.

> the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future

Not at all. But if they do enter, they might find difficulty leaving.

They haven't pierced the corporate veil as far as I can tell - it's not moot or any other executives that have been personally fined. Also as far as I'm aware the UK doesn't have debtors jail.

On the contrary. Online Safety Act breaches can carry personal liability and up to 2yrs jail.

moot doesn't own or run 4chan anymore. The current owner and admin is Japanese, residing in Paris at this time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Nishimura

Trade regulations apply to the importer, which might also be the exporter if they have a local presence, but also may not be.

If I buy something illegal off of AliExpress, the US government won't and can't do squat to the seller. If they decide to enforce the law, they'll go after me.

How is this different than, for example, the US fining TikTok? https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-ftc-record-fine-childrens...

Simply put: The US has the ability to enforce or to cause enough pain to cause self-enforcement </realpolitik>

Which will ultimately push alienation towards US for good.

Trump is merely a huge accelerator of an existing trend.

People keep saying this and it a profound misunderstanding of how the world works.

Nobody likes USA. Nor is that required. It is irrelevant. International politics do not run on emotions. As long as USA is capable of enforcing its will, USA's view will be the one that matters. You may dislike it, but that is what it is.

Or one can say enough and decide to cut off doing business in or with US.

Not a realistic option in today's world, sorry. I can suggest some literature

I’m not sure you’ve been reading the news lately. Hundreds of billions of trade dollars are being routed around the US.

It’s extremely realistic to cut them out.

Genuinely what does the US sell that a country like Brazil or Canada or Australia can’t get elsewhere or live without?

You don't need to, I have worked with multiple clients that faced this very option.

And yes, the choice was still to do business with US in every case, but I can tell you 100% it was far from a crystal clear easy decision and that the camel is breaking.

You can only push so much.

I mean, first and foremost, Tiktok has offices in the US and employees thousands of people here.

> You can make it illegal for your own citizens but you can't regulate a foreign business

The us does that regularly. There's thousands of companies that cannot do business with entities from countries like China or they can face criminal charges in US.

A former company I had as a client, EU based SaaS faced this.

But to be clear, those businesses wanted to make money from the US market. In the case of 4chan, they don't make money from the UK. Somehow, this important distinction keeps getting ignored. You want to sell in the UK market, you have to follow their rules. Same with the US. Somehow the British government doesn't seem to understand this.

Money has nothing to do with it, other than practicalities.

> but you can't regulate a foreign business.

Sure they can. It’s unlikely they can do anything about it though.

Depends on whether those businesses want to do business with the EU

It should only affect companies that have a presence in Europe, as in an office or some entity.

I think that's different because I have a positive personal opinion of the GDPR and a negative personal opinion about what the UK is doing. Therefore the GDPR is good and this is bad. It's really quite objective.

You can hold a mirror up to HN, but you can't make them look.

I may have a positive personal opinion of the GDPR, but I ignore all GDPR requests for the website I have that you can just visit, because I don't want to be seen as doing business that makes me subject to GDPR

Or these are oranges and apples, and your perspective is simply blurred because you are starting a fight whenever someone wants you to put up your glasses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The GDPR is about your data being handled overseas.

OFCOM&co is about overseas data going to you.

They only apply to your business in Europe.

You don't need to apply gdpr when serving non European users.