4chan’s law office, Byrne & & Storm and Coleman Law, stated in a declaration on August 15 that “4chan is a United States company, incorporated in Delaware, with no establishment, assets, or operations in the United Kingdom. Any attempt to impose or enforce a penalty against 4chan will be resisted in US federal court. American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an e-mail.”

4chan looks for Trump admin’s aid

4chan’s attorneys included that United States “authorities have been briefed on this matter… We call on the Trump administration to invoke all diplomatic and legal levers available to the United States to protect American companies from extraterritorial censorship mandates.”

The United States Federal Trade Commission appears to have a comparable issue. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson the other day corresponded to over a lots social networks and innovation business cautioning them that “censoring Americans to comply with a foreign power’s laws, demands, or expected demands” might break United States law.

Ferguson’s letters straight referenced the UK Online Safety Act. The letters were sent out to Akamai, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack, and X.

“The letters noted that companies might feel pressured to censor and weaken data security protections for Americans in response to the laws, demands, or expected demands of foreign powers,” the FTC stated. “These laws include the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, which incentivize tech companies to censor worldwide speech, and the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which can require companies to weaken their encryption measures to enable UK law enforcement to access data stored by users.”

Wikipedia is on the other hand combating a court fight versus a UK Online Safety Act arrangement that might require it to confirm the identity of Wikipedia users. The Wikimedia Foundation stated the possible requirement would be difficult to users and “could expose users to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.”

Independently, the Trump administration stated today that the UK dropped its need that Apple produce a backdoor for federal government security authorities to gain access to encrypted information. The UK made the need under its Investigatory Powers Act.