Preston Byrne, known to co-conspirators as the 4chan lawyer who last week trolled Ofcom with a picture of a giant hamster, has co-authored a model ‘Free Speech Bill’ that would function as a British First Amendment.
Published by the Adam Smith Institute, the bill would repeal the Online Safety Act, Public Order Acts, and Malicious Communications Act in their entirety. In their place, it would establish a broad statutory right to expression including speech that is “offensive, grossly offensive, insulting, abusive, shocking, blasphemous, indecent, or otherwise objectionable”. It would also gut Ofcom’s content regulatory powers. Basic protections you’d expect in a free society…
Byrne has published an overview of the bill here. The key lines:
“In a free society, fools, bigots, and assholes get to speak and remain free men. That is not the price of liberty. It is liberty, and the rest of us get it too. The Model Bill’s authors are aware that this Model Bill, if enacted, would decriminalise expression that we find morally repugnant.
We accept and embrace that consequence. But we ask the reader to consider who these laws actually catch. Overwhelmingly, victims of the UK’s censorship state are not hardened extremists, who operate in encrypted channels beyond the reach of any statute, but ordinary people. The present state of the UK, where expressing an opinion that gives rise to even mild offence may result in arrest, and does result in arrest, for tens of thousands of people per year, is a heavy price that this country has been paying for two decades.”
Spot on. Good luck convincing Labour to listen…
Read the full bill below…
Continue reading “ASI Publishes First Amendment-Style British Free Speech Bill”
The tin-pot internet police at Ofcom have fined US-based platform 4chan an unbelievable £520,000 (plus daily penalties of around £800) for repeatedly violating the Online Safety Act. They claim the site failed the OSA’s risk assessment duty, its illegal content safety duty, and its children’s safety duties. That’s half-a-million quid, please…
Below is 4chan lawyer Preston Byrne’s response email, which contains a picture of a giant hamster dressed as Godzilla:
Ofcom,
Thanks. As has been explained to your agency, ad nauseam, the United Kingdom lost the American Revolutionary War. We are not in the mood to discuss the matter further, and have not been in the mood for 250 years.
I note for the record that, last time your agency sent my client a censorship fine, we responded with a hamster joke. Since you have now sent my client a giant fine, a fine so large that Mr. Whiskers’ enclosure is not big enough to contain it, we will need to send the fine to Mr. Whiskers’ giant hamster cousin, Nigel J. Whiskerford. Unfortunately, Nigel is out of the country this week, touring in Japan. Here’s a picture of Nigel in Tokyo, dressed up as Godzilla and holding an equally giant peanut.
Isn’t he just the cutest?
My client reserves all rights and waives none. Reserved rights include the right to sue you again and/or to respond to future correspondence with an even larger rodent, such as a marmot.
Or, maybe, you could just stop sending Americans stupid letters and acknowledge the sovereignty of the United States.
Byrne & Storm
Doesn’t look like 4chan is playing ball…
UPDATE: 4Chan’s lawyer Preston Byrne tells Guido:
“Dame Melanie says that getting sued in the United States is a sign Ofcom is ‘having the impact it wants.’ If Ofcom’s desired impact was to inspire the first foreign censorship shield bill in American history, and a 46-12 supermajority vote to pass such a law the first time one was ever voted on by a sovereign American legislative body, then yes, Ofcom is having exactly the impact it wants.
American free speech activists will be back with more shield bills, in Wyoming and elsewhere, in 2027, if not sooner. Filing windows for numerous state legislatures are coming up in the autumn.
In the meantime, we await Ofcom’s fine with relish. Last time Ofcom fined 4chan, we replied with a hamster joke. Ofcom has advised us that it provisionally intends to issue a giant fine to 4chan. Accordingly, this time, we are planning to send Ofcom a joke about a giant hamster.
Increasing the size of an unconstitutional fine does not cure its legal invalidity in the United States. We can only suggest that Ofcom pare back its ambitions to UK-nexus targets, as it appears to be doing now, and as it should have been doing all along.”
Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes has inflamed the rhetorical (and legal) war against social media firms. Asked on the Today programme about ongoing legal action from US platform 4Chan – the first firm fined by Ofcom under the OSA – Dawes said legal action against the regulator is a good thing:
“We’ve seen quite a lot of pushback, but we expected that and we will use all the tools at our disposal to keep forcing through that change. I mean, it’s very difficult for me to talk about individual investigations. That one remains live… we’ve got significant legal pushback in the US, but I see that as a sign that we’re having the impact we want.”
In November Ofcom declared ‘sovereign immunity‘ in proceedings from 4Chan and has moved to dismiss the case. Dawes is clearly gearing up for legal clashes with more firms…
Ofcom wrote a threatening letter overnight to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, and X, telling them that they aren’t doing enough to protect children online with checks. Dawes boasted about that too:
“I think they’re quite uncomfortable about this. We’ve given them a deadline of the end of April to come back to us. We’re strongly encouraging them to publish those letters when they come back to us. And whether they do or not, we will publish the responses in May. It’ll be a report card on the industry, on those six companies, and we will then follow up with enforcement action where we need to.”
The platforms themselves are bemused that Ofcom is going after them instead of so-called ‘higher risk’ platforms which veer much closer to illegal activity in the corners of the internet. Dawes is ploughing ahead anyway – it’s all-out war…
The US government is launching a web portal allowing Europeans to bypass internet firewalls going up around the continent. The UK is leading the charge when it comes to egregious online censorship…
“Freedom.gov” will be the web address. It may include a Virtual Private Network service. Starmer is currently trying to ban them…
Reuters reports it was meant to go public at the Munich Security Conference but has been delayed. Internal legal disputes reportedly could further delay its launch. A State Department official insisted it would go ahead: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department… and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.” British citizens are once again faced with a bizarre situation in which the US government cares more for their right to free expression than their own…
Labour is planning to ban Virtual Private Networks for children after insisting it would not do so. What number U-turn is that?
Back when the Online Safety Act first came in Guido exclusively reported on Labour’s support for action against VPN usage. The party supported Sarah Champion’s proposals to look at curbing their use if, after the OSA was introduced, people were circumventing the age verification firewall. Exactly what has happened – every outlet was very keen to run the government’s denial of this at the time…
Peter Kyle claimed in July last year that the government was “not considering a VPN ban” because there are “far more people who are actually there to prove their age in a legitimate way.” This was written up as Labour ‘ruling out’ a ban…
The position now, as per Starmer’s Substack: “Limiting VPN access for kids: to make it harder for kids to get around age limits of services or certain functionalities.”
That’s now been U-turned on. VPNs are crucial for internet security – Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo points out that an age threshold is effectively a ban on usage. Is Starmer going to start giving his speeches in Mandarin, too?
New data shows that internet and communications regulator Ofcom has almost tripled the amount it spends on monitoring public use of Virtual Private Networks. Vital tools for circumventing the excesses of the draconian Online Safety Act…
A Freedom of Information response reveals Ofcom has spent almost £500,000 on monitoring how many people use VPNs since 2022. Spending has more than doubled in the lead up to and implementation of the OSA:
- 2022/23: £111,118.81
- 2023/24: £97,834.26
- 2024/25: £264,348.55
Such data would be vital to any government attempting to justify a crackdown on the software, which digital campaigners the Open Rights Group say are “an important cybersecurity tool for businesses, politicians, journalists and members of the public.” Government guidance has long recommended using them…
In 2022 Labour supported an amendment to the Online Safety Act which would “require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112. If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” A crackdown…
Ofcom says of its monitoring effort: “The work was undertaken to analyse the impact of the introduction of age assurance online. This is foundational work to assessing compliance, the efficacy of age assurance and to understanding the impacts on users’ safety online.” I.e. it wants to make sure VPN use doesn’t get too high – more regulation to follow…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”
