If we want to base the argument on technical nuance, 4chan are sending their packets to the U.K. just as the cocaine dealer would be sending packets (of cocaine) to their buyers in the U.K.
They're replying to an externally-established connection. The packets they're sending are going to a local router.
If you posted cocaine from your cocaine-legal country to an address where it was illegal, and you followed all the regular customs labelling rules, I'm not sure you should be liable. And you shouldn't be extradited either. Even the UK demands that extradition offences would have been criminal had they been committed in the UK. Now I'm sure in practice, you'd find yourself in trouble immediately but I don't think it's fair.
The ramifications of laws like this is everyone needs to be Geo-IP check every request, adhere to every local law. It's not the Internet we signed up for.
I would strongly disagree with that, in the sense of the layer of communication that 4chan operate at. I would argue that 4chan aren't sending packets to the UK any more than I'm currently sending my keystrokes to wherever you are reading this from - these actions are performed at a different layer.
If the UK wants to block packets from across the pond, they should (but I hope they don't) do it via a Great Firewall, rather than expecting random foreign websites to do it for them.
I think (but am not sure) that there are long established postal laws in most territories about sending “obscene” material through the mail. I think this was used to prosecute pornography publishers in earlier times. BUT you needed to (a) intercept mail and (b) have a good reason and (c) get a warrant to open (interfere with) that mail.
Possessing pornography was a separate issue which may or may not be allowed. Typically (I think) authorities went after publishers not consumers - because they were easier targets to pin down.
Which would seem to imply that if you’re sending encrypted traffic at the request of a recipient the as a publisher of “obscene” material then unless you are delivering very clearly illegal content to a user then you should not prosecuted.
I haven’t got a single source for anything I’m saying, so I might be entirely wrong - I’m simply going off half-remembered barely-facts. So please do argue with me!
It's different, because you are willingly sending a reply to a known UK address.
In the website scenario, there are no physical addresses with a geographic component to them. The physical topology of the network is only known by the operators of the network. Only they know where the routers are physically located.
This means geoip blocking can only ever be done on a best effort basis. Actual blocking can only be done by the operators of the routers, which is why it is unreasonable to expect the website operator to be responsible for perfect compliance.
The user mails you a box with a note that says "1kg of 4chan packets pls", and a prepaid return label to an address local to you. You put the packets in the box and kick it down the street to its "destination". Job done as far as you know.
The place you sent the box then repacks it and mails it to the UK. Somehow the UK thinks that you and only you have broken the law.
1kg of packets is 100 exabytes over copper. That's a heck of an order.
Buyer beware: this calculation is based on several derivations of napkin maths with very fixed assumptions. It should be accurate to the nearest zettabyte.
Yes, it is. When you reply to an IP address, you don't magically punch a hole through the entire network to the user's physical location.
You send a packet to your ISP with an address on top. That packet physically travels to your nearest exchange and then the network figures out how to route it to the recipient's real location.
In addition, the recipient's IP address tells you nothing about who or where they are. It's fundamentally un-knowable from the sender's perspective, no matter what the UK wants you to think. IP addresses are not evidence of physical location.
When you receive a packet, there is no way to know where in the world it came from or where it wants to go. It's just a number. You can make guesses but it's still just reading tea leaves.
To believe that IP geolocation is in any way reliable is a gross misunderstanding of TCP/IP and networks in general.
The destination of the packet where it is sent, just as a toy sent from the U.S. to a customer in the U.K. is sent to the U.K. rather than the local Fedex store.
The technical argument is that the routers that are physically located in the UK are passing the packets through, not the website operator.
This is the same as letting a delivery cross your borders, except the delivery vehicle here is permanent infrastructure, similar to a pipeline and it is purposefully set to be permissive and allow anything through.
Why are you suddenly pretending that there is no equivalent to the customs office in this scenario?
It's not like the website operator is sneakily smuggling cargo on a container ship. VPN usage is done UK citizens. The operator has already denied shipments to UK addresses in this scenario.
