The law firms of 4chan, Byrne & Storm and Coleman Law, said in a statement on 15 August that “4chan is a company of the United States, founded in Delaware, without location, assets or activities in the United Kingdom. Any attempt to provide a fine from the American company or send a strange bureaucratrates.
4Chan seeks the help of Trump Admin
The 4chan lawyers added that the US “authorities were informed about this … We call on the Trump administration to call all diplomatic and legal levers for the United States to protect American companies against extraterritorial censorship mandates.”
The American Federal Trade Commission seems to have a similar care. FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson yesterday sent letters to more than a dozen social media and technology companies that warned them that “Americans censor to meet the laws, requirements or expected requirements of a foreign power” can violate American law.
The letters from Ferguson referred directly to the UK Online Safety Act. The letters were sent to Akamai, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, Godaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack and X.
“The letters noted that companies could put pressure on the protection of data safety for Americans and to weaken in response to the laws, requirements or expected requirements of foreign powers,” the FTC said. “These laws include the Digital Services Act of the European Union and the Online Safety Act of the United Kingdom, which encourage technology companies to censor the global speech, and the UK's Investigatory Powers Act, for which companies can demand that they give their coding measures to be stored by British Wetshenshinginging
In the meantime, Wikipedia fights against a lawsuit against a British online security law that could force it to verify the identity of Wikipedia users. The Wikimedia Foundation said that the potential requirement for users would be difficult and “users could expose to data breaches, stalking, worse court cases or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.”
Separately, the Trump administration said this week that the VK has dropped its requirement that Apple would create a back door for government safety officials to gain access to encrypted data. The United Kingdom has raised the question on the basis of its research powers.
