If I had a website operated outside of the US, where you can download US citizens private medical records and phone conversations, I would be liable to breaking US law.
If you do not want to be held accountable to a regions laws, then you do not offer a service to or deal with data that relates to that regions citizens.
I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.
Jurisdiction does not imply enforceability. There are laws from your country that you can break while not even being in that country and be held accountable.
That's what's happening here - a webserver is operating entirely out of the UK, with no nexus. UK citizens send requests to it - just like all other countries citizens do, so either the website would be covered by all laws or just the places where it has nexus.
This is especially true in the US, where speech is strongly protected - making Ofcom's assertion that its regulation overrides the first amendment especially egregious. The UK government's behavior here is a bit shameful.
You are allowed to sell lemonade to British tourists. But if you're shipping lemonade to the UK, you are subject to UK lemonade regulations. That doesn't mean that the UK has jurisdiction over your business and can shut it down or anything like that, but if you travel to the UK or UK banks handle your transactions, they have the right to seize funds and shipments, close your accounts or detain you if you set foot in the UK. Your choice are: follow UK regulations; stop shipping lemonade to the UK; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.
The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse[1]. Lots of piracy sites located in jurisdictions where US copyright laws don't apply are seized by US federal agencies and replaced with a notice about piracy. Those sites haven't broken any laws in the countries they're hosted in, they have no legal presence in the US, and yet the domains are banned/seized and administrators detained if they ever step foot on US soil. The UK is not threatening to seize anyone's site.
I was with you up until here. Shipping to a physical address, where if you don't specify the country name, it won't arrive. Is very different than shipping to an Internet address, which has no "reasonable" connection to a physical location.
> Your choice are: follow UK regulations [give up the core gimmick of your entire site]; stop shipping lemonade to the UK [the shipping analogy really breaks here, how? and what about vpns? what if the other endpoint is in the UK but the address isn't?]; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.
I don't disagree that [country] can make laws that make society worse... But I don't think it's reasonable to defend them as if these actions aren't egregious. There's the armchair arguments that I enjoy as a thought experiment, but it's still important to point out how antisocial this behavior is.
> The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse [...]
There's an argument to be made they're using a domain registratar in the US, which is subject to those laws (obviously). But what about [other disappointing behavior] because it's worse. Is exactly the example you're arguing against. Precedence of bad stuff is still bad, ideally everyone would point out it's bad, and suggest alternatives to the bad thing, no?
Yet? :)
part of the high bar is claiming juristriction requires sending your army. (Sanctions are often used too which might or might not work). That is why the threat is if the directors travel to the uk - that gives them sone power - but still expect US government to do 'things' if the arrest any US citizen on this.
It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK.
Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?
Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?
I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200 countries and at any given moment, especially while online, you're probably violating some law of some country. Before internet globalization, the geography based jurisdiction was such an objective approach. Now it is more like "catch me if you can" which is obviously not a solid foundation to build on. Like that plane that had emergency landing in Minsk, and the Belorussian dissident flying on that plane was arrested by the Belorussian police. And many here on HN were critical of MBS when Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul - what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...
Whether the website is illegal or not would depend on Russian law in your example. I'd also suspect that other laws might apply, like wire fraud. Some of those would likely be enforceable in other countries.
I'll be pretty shocked if someone ever gets extradited out of the US for not showing a cookie banner.
