they can be fined.
Sounds like no? How are they going to make a company with no assets or staff in the UK pay the fine? American courts likely won’t enforce it.
They serve users in the UK, therefore they can be fined. There is an established way to not get fined by governments of states whose markets you operate in: get out of that market. Block traffic from the UK. It is not the country's obligation to block, it is the company's. This has been already played out over the years in courts.
festus@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
TehPers@beehaw.org 4 days ago
This is also hilariously relevant with export-controlled GPUs in China. GamersNexus put out a great video on it recently, but basically in China there’s no laws preventing someone from buying or selling the GPUs (despite the US’s attempts to block it), so entire above-ground businesses operate on selling these GPUs, even providing their own warranties and support.
Microw@piefed.zip 4 days ago
I mean, the state can fine them, they just can't execute that if the owner company of 4chan truly has no assets in the UK.
TehPers@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Websites have no way to know where a user is located. They can only use heuristics to predict a user’s location. Such a law would be unenforceable anyway because 4chan can just tell the UK to blow themselves and there’s nothing the UK can do in US territory except politely ask Trump to ship them to Europe.