I invite you to search HN for 'libor' and see how many of the American users of this website were affronted by the vast fines dished out by the US government to UK-headquartered banks for manipulating the LONDON Interbank Offered Rate from their offices in London, UK. If you can find a single one I'll eat my hat.
Being a country means you can make your own laws so the authority question has a pretty clear answer. Unless you disaviow national borders and state power and such stuff generally of course. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty
If it affects UK citizens, living in the UK, then there's jurisdiction. Either the entities comply, remove their services to the UK, or they risk sanctions/being arrested when abroad/etc.
Why should a US company harm UK citizens just because they're in the US?
If you want to serve a market in another country you have to follow their rules.
In this case, Imgur have been misusing UK children's information. Considering the laws are pretty similar, I suspect they're misusing EU children's information too.
It was about authority, synonymous with jurisdiction, I understood it. A sovereign country can decide they have authority/jurisdiction in anything they want. For example various countries have decided they can legally assassinate people in other countries even though other counties might not agree.
Placing the fines is pretty easy; they just go through their legal system, finish up the case and get their judgement. Russia has a giant outstanding fine against Google for example since Google is not censoring things the Kremlin doesn't like, even though Google has no corporate presence in Russia and the fine is iirc now larger than the entire world economy. (So it's an unrealistic amount designed to deter Google more than anything else in practice.)
The difficulty is getting enforcement; in practice, what happens is that the fine is put down as outstanding and if any executive or employee of the company enters the country, they're arrested and held hostage until the company pays up (or are held directly responsible for whatever the company is accused of). Most countries usually have corporate presency laws to avoid this sort of scenario though.
Alternatively, the judgement can be enforced through diplomatic channels, but that's a giant clusterfuck and unlikely to succeed unless it's something that's very blatantly a crime in both countries, since it's effectively retrying the case. (And even then it can depend on if the country just doesn't feel like cooperating for that specific case, for no other reason than spite; France for example is fond of doing this.)
Arresting executives is pretty extreme and not normally done. Generally countries will only go after assets and revenues in the country.
Even for local companies. I had a UK ltd company and it got some fines for not filling in the correct forms but you can just close it down still owing money, which I did, and there's no liability for the director(s).
Right, but the UK is saying they'll fine Imgur even after Imgur blocked access. At that point, what tooth does the fine have? "You must pay this fine if you want to, err, nothing I guess"?
They used to have UK legal presence, and planning to move out. The UK is saying something like "crimes done during your presence won't be ignored".
If Imgur never had UK presence, then yeah there would be no teeth. But if you're doing business in a country you can't break the law then leave and expect them to just ignore what you did during that time.
Why does it have to be immediately enforceable? Now Imgur have thrown the baby out with the bath water and cannot serve the UK and it leaves a big market for another company to come along and capitalise on that.
American companies are too use to being able to bully their way in America. Some countries do have better consumer protection laws.
The regulatory hurdles here are quite small, actually. If COPPA were worded better, Imgur would've been in violation of that, too, from what I can tell of the complaint.
How do you expect the "pull out" to happen? They must have had a UK bank account or similar, whose transfers won't get approved as they're trying to escape from criminal prosecution. Or they'll work with the US to ensure responsible individuals are held responsible.
It isn't exactly the first time someone/something commits crime in a country then try to escape, there is lots of ways to work with others on this.
>they'll work with the US to ensure responsible individuals are held responsible.
I heard here recently during a similar discussion (about 4chan and this same British watchdog agency) that the US does not allow extradition of its citizens for breaking non-US laws if the behavior is legal in the US.
> they'll fine Imgur even after Imgur blocked access
after they have infringed the data protection laws.
For example, if I get a parking fine, and then move my car. I can't claim that now that I've moved my car, I'm not liable for the previous fine. This is no different.
There are various international economic laws, treaties and agreements between cooperating countries, whether or not any of them cover this scenario for to US, and whether the US would honour any agreement in the current political climate remains to be seen. But there are mechanisms in place that allow w the UK to reach US companies through each others legal systems to a degree and vice versa, regardless of asset location.
> whether the US would honour any agreement in the current political climate remains to be seen
That this is even a question is bananas to me. Isn't that handled by the judicial system rather than involving politics/the administration? Shouldn't be possible for the US to have a treaty, and there are questions about if the treaty will actually be enforced or not, how could anyone trust the US as a whole for anything if those aren't enforced?
If Imgur decides they want to make money in the UK after all, and they have an unpaid fine outstanding, that money can be seized to pay off the fine first.
The whole point of corporations is that the company is liable, not its employees. also the shareholders are only liable for the money they put in, and not anything else.
Convictions in the UK are non-transferable. you can't convict a company, then transfer guilt onto its employees, they need to be tried at the same time.
> Are you saying that the Pavel Durov situation wouldn't have been possible in the UK
first Durov is a French citizen, so its not like he's immune to french laws
Second france has a totally different legal system to the UK(legal code vs common law)
thirdly, he's the primary owner of telegram, not an employee
Fourthly he was arrested on fraud, money laundering and child porn charges. Those are all criminal charges, not civil(GDPR is mostly Civil, same with the online saftey act, howefver with the OSA "senior managers" could be criminally liable, but again that's for CSAM, of which possession and distribution is a criminal already)
> Seems naive.
I really wish people would actually bother to understand law, because its pretty important. For programmers is much easier, because we are used to reading oddly worded specifically ordered paragraphs to divine logical intent. The law is really similar to programming.
They're only threatening to fine them for previous violations of the law, not anything after they block access. Blocking access doesn't make the existing fine from when they were doing business in the UK go away, it just prevents future fines.
Whether they can collect the money while Imgur aren't doing business in the UK is a different argument, but it's not particularly controversial that a country can fine a business operating in its jurisdiction for violating that country's laws. Even if those laws are authoritarian bullshit.
Sure, I'm only saying that I don't think there's much they can do by way of enforcement if the company decides to stop doing business there, especially over fines this small (it's not like the UK will push to extradite over this).
Honestly, that's the most noteworthy part of this. The EU hasn't pursued any site that just blocks EU access (see any number of US sites than aren't GDPR compliant and I can't access from Europe). The UK is threatening to do something nobody else has really done before. It's crazy, imo, because I can see a whole lot of sites immediately blocking the UK to avoid any potential litigation.
Thanks. That needs to be in an HN guide somewhere, along with: online services cost money to run so don't be surprised that they need either fees or advertising.
Being accessible over the internet from a country can't be the same as having a physical presence there. Otherwise, anyone putting any content on the internet needs to comply with the laws of every single country.
