If you’re going to cross an ocean to tell Americans what speech they can and can’t allow, the least you can do is not trip over your own jurisdictional nonsense on the way in.
Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, which has lately decided to try and become an international speech cop, managed to do exactly that.
But when the regulator began sending enforcement letters to small US platforms under its sweeping online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, it probably didn’t expect to trigger a constitutional ambush.
But that’s exactly what it got.
Preston Byrne, one of attorneys representing 4chan, Kiwi Farms, and two other American companies, said Ofcom had been sending “frankly asinine letters under English law.”
His clients, he explained, “are entirely American. All of their operations are American. All of their infrastructure is American, and they have no connection to the UK whatsoever.”
Despite this, Ofcom threatened the companies with “a £20,000 fine plus £100 daily penalties for 60 days thereafter.”
Byrne responded to Ofcom’s pressure by filing a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit was designed not only to challenge Ofcom’s jurisdiction but to force a contradiction into the open.
Byrne said the purpose of the lawsuit was threefold. One, to show the global censors that the resistance in the United States is now prepared to fight back, and they don’t have freedom of action.
Two, to assert hims client’s claims and defenses in a US court, and make the argument in front of a US federal judge.
And the third one was to provoke Ofcom into “doing something stupid, which is exactly what they did.”
After the case was filed, Ofcom sent what Byrne called “a 40-page letter of tremendous length, which is deeply unserious.”
Ofcom’s written response delivered exactly what Byrne says was needed: an explicit admission that Ofcom doesn’t “think US law applies on US soil and that they’re going to use [the argument of] sovereign immunity.”
This was more than a legal contradiction; it was a political one that directly undercuts the British government’s public assurances.
“This rather undermines the British government’s assertions that it’s made time and again, including to the President, to his face, that the British government is not using its sovereign power to censor American citizens,” Byrne said.
In its official notice to 4chan, Ofcom made an extraordinary admission which, in trying to assert its authority, effectively undercut its entire legal position.
The regulator wrote: “We also note 4chan’s claim that it is protected from enforcement action taken by Ofcom because of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. However, the First Amendment binds only the US government and not overseas bodies, such as Ofcom, and therefore, it does not affect Ofcom’s powers to enforce the Act in this case.”
This reveals the fundamental flaw in Ofcom’s claim to authority over American companies.
By asserting that the First Amendment “binds only the US government,” Ofcom admits it stands entirely outside the US constitutional order, yet it simultaneously claims the right to enforce UK speech law against US entities operating solely on US soil.
Ofcom cannot have it both ways: it cannot disclaim the reach of US law while insisting that British law somehow extends across the Atlantic.
If the First Amendment has no force on Ofcom’s actions in the United States, then neither does the UK’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act, which has no legal effect beyond the UK.
By saying the First Amendment does not limit it because it is “an overseas body,” Ofcom concedes it operates as a foreign power.
But that very status means it has no jurisdiction within the United States, no legal foundation to compel compliance, levy fines, or demand risk assessments.
The notice collapses under its own logic: Ofcom disavows being bound by US law while simultaneously asserting the ability to act within the United States.
For Byrne, the case is as much about principle as it is about law. “Ultimately, from a global free speech resistance standpoint, and this is something that I think Ofcom really doesn’t understand. We don’t care what the UK thinks in the United States…And our objective is really to demonstrate the toothlessness of these global regimes in the United States where most of the internet is based.”
The lawsuit has also become a rallying point for lawmakers. “We’ve also contacted the White House, both houses of Congress,” Byrne said.
“I’m advised that there are a number of senators in Congress and representatives in Congress who are looking at introducing a bill to put a stop to this.”
He added that he was in New Hampshire proposing a state law that “basically creates a cause of action against a foreign censor seeking to enforce foreign censorship law on US soil with penalties of $1 million per occurrence and a waiver of sovereign immunity in the New Hampshire courts.”
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In the pages of its decision notice, Ofcom makes a confident declaration. Actually, it makes two:
“There is no requirement in the Act for Ofcom to use the MLAT procedure to serve notices issued under the Act.”
“The MLAT procedure is not an appropriate method of service for administrative investigations, but reserved for obtaining assistance in the investigation or prosecution of criminal offences.”
That’s the rationale. Since Ofcom says it isn’t prosecuting a crime, it isn’t obligated to use the US–UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, known as the MLAT.
Instead of going through the formal channels of international cooperation, it decided to send enforcement letters directly to American companies, treating them as if they were UK-based firms with a bad compliance record.
The MLAT is the process governments use when they want to legally compel evidence or cooperation across borders.
It’s the official state-to-state channel, routed through justice departments, involving courts, treaties, and a trail of documentation. You don’t get to use it just because you’re nosy, and you can’t skip it just because paperwork is inconvenient.
Ofcom treats its Section 100 information notices as administrative requests, not as judicial or criminal process.
Under that view, the regulator is simply carrying out routine compliance monitoring that Parliament has authorized to have extraterritorial reach, much like how data protection or competition authorities contact foreign companies.
Because the Online Safety Act says its duties apply “regardless of whether [providers] are based in the UK or not,” Ofcom considers itself entitled to bypass MLAT entirely and email companies directly.
The US companies on the receiving end of these notices disagree. Strongly. In their federal lawsuit, they argue that Ofcom’s actions aren’t casual oversight; they’re enforcement disguised as paperwork.
“None of these actions constitutes valid service under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, United States law, or any other proper international legal process.”
The lawsuit goes further:
“Ofcom…may require United States citizens to comply with information notices and potentially incriminate themselves on demand without Ofcom first obtaining a judicial warrant or serving a request under the UK-United States Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty procedure.”
X has also criticized another country, Brazil, for attempting to bypass the US–Brazil MLAT process, warning that the country’s efforts to force content takedowns and data disclosures without proper legal channels threaten both internet freedom and international law.
In filings to US trade officials, X argued that Brazil’s unilateral actions set a dangerous precedent for extraterritorial censorship disguised as regulatory enforcement.
The US government responded to Brazil’s censorship campaign by expanding sanctions against officials involved, including Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Citing threats to freedom of expression and the rule of law, the sanctions were part of a broader move to push back against politically motivated content takedown orders and judicial overreach targeting social media platforms.
What the UK’s Ofcom calls routine administration, the plaintiffs call coercive extraterritorial power.
The plaintiff’s argument is that, if Ofcom wants to gather evidence or compel information on US soil, it is supposed to file a formal request with the US Department of Justice under the MLAT, and then let the American courts decide how and whether to honor it.
What it can’t do, at least under US law, is email a webmaster and demand records under threat of criminal penalty, then pretend that’s normal.
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In case Ofcom’s legal theory wasn’t already elastic enough, it turns out their definition of jurisdiction now includes any website that British people happen to use.
The regulator admits the Online Safety Act only applies within the UK, but then interprets the phrase “links with the UK” so broadly that the limitation ceases to exist.
Take 4chan. According to Ofcom, it has “links with the UK” because a noticeable chunk of its users, precisely 7 percent, by their count, are from Britain.
That’s enough, in Ofcom’s view, to say the site “targets” the UK. It even goes further, claiming that “a UK user base in the hundreds of thousands is, of itself, a significant number.”
By that logic, any global website with incidental British visitors can be declared under British jurisdiction. It’s a legal framework built on wishful thinking.
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Ofcom seems convinced that neither the First Amendment nor the US–UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) matters in its effort to shake down American websites.
In its view, British law applies because Parliament said so, and enforcement is just a matter of sending strongly worded emails to companies with British users. Constitutional law, international procedure, and jurisdictional boundaries are treated as bureaucratic clutter.
But there’s a problem with that fantasy. If Ofcom ever intends to actually collect on its threats, like slapping 4chan or Kiwi Farms with fines, it won’t be able to do it alone. It would need the help of the United States government to enforce a foreign penalty on American soil. And the odds of that happening are somewhere between zero and “not a chance.”
The US government is not in the business of enforcing overseas censorship laws, especially ones that directly contradict the First Amendment.
American courts don’t help foreign states punish speech that would be protected at home. If Ofcom thinks it can dodge the MLAT process and still expect cooperation from US authorities, it hasn’t been paying attention.
And this isn’t theoretical, as the sanctions against Brazilian judges have shown.
Ofcom’s current strategy, ignoring the US Constitution, dismissing MLAT, and issuing fines it can’t collect, is performance. At best, it’s a symbolic exercise in regulatory theater. At worst, it’s a self-inflicted embarrassment that exposes just how little leverage the UK actually has when it tries to export its outdated speech policies across the Atlantic.
