This reminds me of the Kim Dotcom saga where US attorneys accused Mega of copyright infringement when he was living in New Zealand and his company, Mega, was based in Hong Kong. Dotcom had never stepped foot in the US but somehow that was enough grounds to extradite him and force him to comply with local laws. There are plenty of examples of judicial overreach in all parts of the world. The US is no exception.
Hong Kong and New Zealand are Berne Convention countries so that would be the grounds for extradition. I don’t remember other countries signing up to enforce Ofcom’s laws.
I don't see any evidence Ofcom is currently asking anyone else to enforce their laws. As far as I can they're currently simply taking the steps they can themselves to enforce their laws - i.e. as far as people in the US go sending letters.
Letters that put them in a position to levy fines and maybe arrest people in the future should they have the opportunity to, for example if the relevant people travel or have assets in the UK in the future. Or if at some point in the future some country does sign up to enforce Ofcom's laws here and relevant people travel to that country. The US is presumably barred (short of a constitutional amendment) from making such an agreement under the first amendment, but other countries are likely not barred.
Just because a government doesn't currently have the power to arrest you doesn't mean they can't internally begin processes to arrest you if/when they get that ability, or that they can't communicate to you that they are doing that. In fact governments of all sorts (including the US) do exactly that against people they can't arrest all the time.
> Prompt and voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on child safety issues, including UK law enforcement, is what really matters for children’s safety online. That work happens quietly and non-publicly with officials who are tasked with performing it, namely, the police. My client will not be working with you on that important work because your agency is a censorship agency, not a law enforcement agency. Ofcom lacks the competence and the jurisdiction to do the work that actually matters in this space.
This whole bill is about increasing government control. Now the civil servants get to geoblock our internet. Something they've been desperate to do. I feel it's part of a wider pattern along with the police deciding recently that the law allows them to police social media like the stasi. Not a new law, just a creative interpretation of one that has been around for a while. Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id. I'm not sure what exactly is going on because we are still a democracy. I think it's just a lot of people living in an ivory tower.
It's not about child safety at all. If anything our government has shown time and again that that is simply not a priority for them.
> Then you have that horrible idea with mandatory digital id.
As the plan stands, the only case where it would be mandatory is for employment. The extension to right to rent is under consultation. I strongly recommend reading more on the Digital ID framework - it isn't as the press and influencers have led most people imagine. For instance there isn't a single id, there's no central database and government's role is only as a passive reference and legislator. I was opposed to the idea when I first heard about it, but won over by its sensible structure, which will actually strengthen citizens.
I think that is a bit of a stretch. Ofcom is the telecommunications regulator. They are responsible for censorship, but to be a censorship agency it would have to be your primary role. Starting a blog like this, suggests everything below is going to be a bit OTT. Instead of censorship we have propaganda.
Ofcom license amateur radio, but spend no time censoring it that I know of. Last week they fined Virgin media for making a hash of converting vulnerable people from analogue to digital phone lines, without regards to their telehealth monitoring systems. That sort of mundane thing is Ofcoms raison d'etre
ofcom is "fun". been working on implementation UK Telecommunications Security
Code of Practice that been managed by ofcom. There are some very undefined controls with rather vague examples (that say "for example" and "not exhaustive list"). I tried to get from them clarification about how it should be applied, as controls/examples not clear. they wrote me back that I should simply look at example as they explain everything
If you needed to ask the permission of every apparatchik in the world before you said anything online, you wouldn't even be allowed to say "no comment". Glad someone is fighting this and doing so publicly. And the GRANITE act looks interesting: https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/18/the-granite-act-how-cong...
Calling these letters toothless is missing the point. Ofcom doesn’t expect 4chan to comply. They are creating a paper trail to justify the next step of forcing UK ISPs to block the content at a network level.
Readit News
Letters that put them in a position to levy fines and maybe arrest people in the future should they have the opportunity to, for example if the relevant people travel or have assets in the UK in the future. Or if at some point in the future some country does sign up to enforce Ofcom's laws here and relevant people travel to that country. The US is presumably barred (short of a constitutional amendment) from making such an agreement under the first amendment, but other countries are likely not barred.
Just because a government doesn't currently have the power to arrest you doesn't mean they can't internally begin processes to arrest you if/when they get that ability, or that they can't communicate to you that they are doing that. In fact governments of all sorts (including the US) do exactly that against people they can't arrest all the time.
Well said
It's not about child safety at all. If anything our government has shown time and again that that is simply not a priority for them.
As the plan stands, the only case where it would be mandatory is for employment. The extension to right to rent is under consultation. I strongly recommend reading more on the Digital ID framework - it isn't as the press and influencers have led most people imagine. For instance there isn't a single id, there's no central database and government's role is only as a passive reference and legislator. I was opposed to the idea when I first heard about it, but won over by its sensible structure, which will actually strengthen citizens.
https://enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2025/06/26/shari...
https://enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/
I think that is a bit of a stretch. Ofcom is the telecommunications regulator. They are responsible for censorship, but to be a censorship agency it would have to be your primary role. Starting a blog like this, suggests everything below is going to be a bit OTT. Instead of censorship we have propaganda.
Ofcom license amateur radio, but spend no time censoring it that I know of. Last week they fined Virgin media for making a hash of converting vulnerable people from analogue to digital phone lines, without regards to their telehealth monitoring systems. That sort of mundane thing is Ofcoms raison d'etre
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