Below is relevant enforcement correspondence sent by the UK Office of Communications, known by the Orwellian portmanteau “Ofcom,” to my client, 4chan, in relation to its Online Safety Act fines, disclosed publicly in the interests of transparency, and because the First Amendment allows it. Civil rights are like non-rollover vacation days: use ’em or lose ’em.

I represent 4chan, pro bono, in its U.S. federal lawsuit against Ofcom, together with my co-counsel Ron Coleman.

4chan operates its business entirely lawfully in the United States with exactly zero regulatory paperwork required. Zero as in none. All of the paperwork called for in these letters is what the UK expects every Internet company in the world that hasn’t geo-blocked the entire island to maintain and file. Every demand, it expects everyone to comply with.

Every threat and penalty – including threats of multi-year prison terms – contained in these letters pertains to speech and conduct which is constitutionally protected in the United States.

The UK wants to make operating a publishing platform as complicated, from a regulatory perspective, as running a complex financial institution like a bank. With requirements as insane as these, it is no surprise that the country’s tech industry is anemic.

In these documents, in particular the fining decision issued on Monday, October 13th, 2025, the UK’s Internet regulator claims that its powers have supremacy over the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment, and U.S. law for U.S. companies and citizens engaged in constitutionally protected speech and conduct occurring exclusively on U.S. soil.

LOL.

In addition to claiming that US law is an irrelevancy when 4chan seeks to rely on it, Ofcom claims that its rights under US law are “fully reserved” when Ofcom needs to rely on it, namely, in the lawsuit 4chan and Kiwi Farms brought against Ofcom in the D.C. Federal District Court seeking nothing more than confirmation from a U.S. judge that Ofcom’s orders were void on U.S. soil and an injunction blocking their enforcement here.

Among the rights Ofcom reserves? Sovereign immunity under the (American) Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

This rather undermines the British government’s prior assertions, communicated by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to President Trump and Vice-President Vance, to their faces at the White House, that the UK would not use its sovereign power to censor Americans.

In Sir Keir’s words:

“Certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across (to censor) U.S. citizens, and we don’t.”

As seen on TV:

I’ve been trying to convince the U.S. government for ten months that the UK and foreign censors have no respect for the First Amendment, and are out to destroy it, and Ofcom just came out and said it, more or less. Saved me from having to write a long memo, so, thanks, I guess.

I freely admit I had hoped our lawsuit would needle the agency enough that they’d make a political mistake like this. I still can’t believe they actually put it in writing.

Ofcom’s assertion that UK rules hold sway on US turf is laughable. It is, however, also entirely consistent with the UK legal doctrine known as parliamentary supremacy, which holds that the UK Parliament has theoretically unlimited power. The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”.

This line is taught to every first-year English law student, and presumably is part of the kernel for most of the UK government’s legal strategists on that side of the pond.

Absurd or not, that’s the rule. This means that the UK could enact a law that says that the entire world has to genuinely believe that 2+2 = 5 or that the Moon is made of cheese and every man, woman, and child in the entire world would, again theoretically, have to obey it. It could also pass a law, as it has in the form of the Online Safety Act 2023, that says its censorship codes apply in the United States and override the U.S. Constitution, and its censorship agency has the power to enforce those codes in America.

Both of aforementioned laws, one hypothetical and one real, are equally ridiculous and not based in reality.

This overreaction from the UK’s communications regulator, directed towards my client, has happened for one reason, and one only: Ofcom asked an American company to explain its constitutionally protected conduct, and that American company, in the lawful and proper exercise of its constitutional rights, refused.

So, in terms of whether I accept Ofcom’s argument here, it is not just a “no” but a “hell no” from me, and probably for most other Americans too.

The First Amendment means Americans don’t need a permission slip to speak to anyone, anywhere in the world. It means official censors have no say in what Americans host. And it means the UK, whose rule Americans overthrew in a revolution 250 years ago, doesn’t get a say either.

The U.S. Constitution expressly protects every American from the due-process-free mandatory disclosure of confidential internal documents about First Amendment protected activity, especially without a judicial warrant (Fourth Amendment). It also doesn’t require Americans to waive our constitutional right of self-incrimination (also the Fifth Amendment), which this correspondence purports to do.

Vice-President Vance went to give talks about free speech at the Munich Security Conference and in Paris. The Europeans ignored him. The State Department complained, and the UK ignored it. President Trump warned the UK to not censor Americans, and the UK ignored – and arguably lied to – him.

We explained to the UK that the Online Safety Act had a snowball’s chance in hell of being enforced in the United States and the UK didn’t just ignore our arguments, which for avoidance of doubt are 100% legally correct, it said they were of no validity whatsoever and that the rights secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States were a nullity when Americans need them, but fully reserved when the UK needs them.

The UK is not going to listen to reason until America forces it to. The time for talking is over. America must fight this politically, and we must fight it now.

American legislators would do well to remember that the UK’s censorship law is not called the “4chan Safety Act” – it is called the “Online Safety Act.” 4chan is a politically controversial company and an easy early target. But it will not be the UK’s only target, it is merely the first.

After UK Ofcom goes through the strange and utterly unenforceable mock public execution of an American company by sending letters to 4chan that 4chan (entirely lawfully) ignores, it will try to use that as a precedent to push around other American companies – X, Meta, and Google, included. Millions of American internet users’ privacy and freedom, and the global competitiveness of America’s most successful corporations, is in danger.

If American tech companies wind up deciding that it’s easier to obey foreign censorship laws than to assert their constitutional rights, the Internet will wind up becoming a Constitution-free zone – meaning a free speech-free zone, too. I don’t think any of us would like that outcome.

I renew my calls, which so far have gone unanswered, for the Trump Administration and the United States Congress to intervene with new laws.

The UK can do whatever they want on their little island. 4chan is American, and by virtue of that fact alone, 4chan shouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit. No American citizen or corporation should.

We fought a lot wars with Europe to defend the American Way, and we won them all. We deserve to continue to enjoy the fruits of those victories.

My client’s contact information has been redacted.