Article By Cam Wakefield
A foreign censor is demanding that US police override the First Amendment to finish its collection job.
Ofcom has landed on a fresh plan for collecting the £520,000 it insists 4chan owes, and here it is in all its glory: get American police to do the British censor’s dirty work.
That, more or less, is what the regulator told The Independent this week. Asked how it intends to squeeze cash out of a company with no staff, no servers, and not so much as a spare fiver anywhere in the United Kingdom, Ofcom said it had “initiated work” to chase the money and would pursue it “regardless of where the firm is based.”
For a company that keeps everything abroad, a spokesperson said, the job “can involve engaging debt recovery and financial investigation specialists in the jurisdiction where companies do have assets, as well as local law enforcement agencies and courts.”
Local law enforcement agencies and courts. A British quango has floated the idea that American cops will be dispatched to collect a British speech fine, on the week of America’s 250th birthday, from a website whose entire legal existence sits under the First Amendment. You could not make it up, and yet here we are.
Preston Byrne, the US lawyer representing 4chan, gave the plan the review it deserved.
“This is legally illiterate,” Byrne wrote on X. “If they really want to sue us in the United States to recover a foreign censorship penalty, we welcome the fight.”
He was only warming up. “we now have a foreign censor claiming not only that their laws work on U.S. soil, but also that they can conscript U.S. police forces to finish the job,” Byrne wrote, adding that “Ofcom’s threats here are, much like their fines regime, toothless and designed to intimidate.”
His conclusion on the whole business: “it’s long past time for the U.S. to put the UK back in its box.”
The police point is not a lawyer’s flourish. Byrne noted that “deprivation of rights under color of law is a literal felony in the United States,” then wondered aloud, “Not sure how much assistance Ofcom is expecting to get under those circumstances.”
Recruiting American officers to enforce a foreign censorship penalty against a protected American publisher is the kind of favor that comes with a harsh sentence attached. Byrne went further still, saying Ofcom “basically says it’s going to engage in espionage against US citizens who, entirely lawfully refuse its orders.”
Every legal road Ofcom might take runs into a wall. US police cooperation “would have to go through the MLAT, which they have previously refused to use; a US lawsuit would lead to certain defeat + adverse precedent,” Byrne wrote.
A US court will not lift a finger to help “in a million years,” he said, because “U.S. courts don’t collect debts for foreign sovereigns, and the UK knows it.” His theory on why the demand letters keep arriving anyway is worth quoting in full: “What this tells me is that Westminster is using Ofcom as a pressure release valve for the OSA regime,” and “Admitting that the regime is unenforceable against Americans is politically disastrous. They’re going to pretend the Emperor is wearing clothes as long as they can.”
Here is what the emperor is wearing. Ofcom fined 4chan £520,000 in March for allegedly breaching the Online Safety Act, the UK’s censorship and age-verification law.
The bill breaks down as £450,000 for not bringing in age ID checks, £50,000 for skipping an illegal content risk assessment, and £20,000 for failing to explain how it would protect users from criminal content, plus £800 a day for as long as 4chan carries on ignoring the regulator. The latest deadline for payment came and went on Thursday. It was never going to be met.
4chan’s answer has been the same throughout. It operates only in the United States, breaks no American law, and enjoys constitutional protection for what it publishes. “In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment,” Byrne said.
The style of the reply has been rather more memorable than a legal brief. When Ofcom first came looking for its money, Byrne emailed back an AI-generated hamster.
When the regulator wrote again, “penalty remains due and payable,” bank details helpfully attached, Byrne posted: “Ofcom wrote. Again. Demanding that 4chan pay its fine. Sent us bank details and everything. Oh no. Super scary.”
His response? “We replied with a hamster. Again.” The formal version made the same point with fewer rodents: “As 4 chan has no assets in the United Kingdom…that would require you to show in a US court as a plaintiff, waive sovereign immunity, and overcome existing US doctrine regarding the non-enforcement of foreign regulatory penalties.”
Byrne’s earlier promise still stands. “It will be a cold day in Hell before my client pays that fine. Ofcom won’t be collecting it unless they’re prepared to land ground troops in America, overthrow our government, and rescind our constitutional order by force.”
The lawyers watching from the sidelines are no kinder. Myles Jackson told The Independent that Ofcom has “no right imposing fines on US domiciled companies that they have no right to collect,” that “the UK government has no jurisdiction over the American Constitution,” and that any US enforcement action would “seem destined to fail.”
He called the fight “undoubtedly a test case for global regulatory overreach” and warned the law is having a “disastrous” effect on foreign tech investment in Britain. Nick Phillips of Edwin Coe said enforcing the fine against a company with no UK assets is “going to be difficult.” Daniel ShenSmith, the barrister who posts as BlackBeltBarrister, put it like this: “no U.S. court is ever going to help Ofcom enforce this fine and override your own laws. It’s frankly embarrassing.”
A censorship regime that cannot reach beyond its own borders has two ways to save face. It can admit the limits of its power, or it can keep sending invoices it has no means to enforce and hope nobody notices the difference. Ofcom has picked the invoices. Somewhere in America, a hamster is waiting to reply.
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