The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
Kimmel landed on a completely erroneous conclusion based on an insane false flag conspiracy theory – and voiced that live on air:
"the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it"
If you think that is not worth attempting to get a host taken off the air for (at least for a while), I don't think you understand how dangerous amplified disinformation can be.
Well, people are not trying to take Fox News off the air for their many incidents of amplified disinformation, so maybe people think freedom of speech should be protected, even if people disagree with said speech?
Now consider that one is a comedian and the other is a news outlet, what does that tell you about your argument.
Did CNN or MSNBC lose a billion dollar lawsuit for knowingly promoting false stories while, and I quote from the Fox case, calling their own viewers “stupid, stupid, stupid” for believing their content? Did CNN or MSNBC shareholders sue them due to the damage caused by promoting false stories on purpose?
Maybe there is some demonstrable difference to size and scale of willful dishonestly among outlets.
Comparing either CNN or even MSNBC to Fox like this is a clear indication that you have never critically viewed these three channels in comparison.
The ridiculousness Fox gets away with and have gotten away with for decades is mountainous compared to anything else that boomers watch. Ailes and Murdoch wrote the playbook on modern disinformation and it is laughable to compare Fox to any other news channel.
Unfortunately, Fox has been so successful as an entertainment “news” organization that the other competing ones, praise be capitalist ingenuity, have adopted much of their scumbag playbook.
This isn't misinformation. The MAGA gang were trying to do that. They were trying to score political points from it. They still are.
Of course, they were also correct. But these quoted statements are primarily about intention and motive, not really arguing (or even speculating particularly strongly) that the shooter actually was MAGA.
Incidentally, this does not seem like particularly dangerous misinformation at all. MAGA supporters are probably the safest group in America (it is, after all, not a safe country for anyone).
- they blame the left/some minority group for literally just about every violent act ever
- they say it in most instances, including this one, with zero evidence
- they say it, as in this instance, not to get to the truth, but to score political points
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
> Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country?
well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying
>4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026
Correct, but this update is in regards to Ofcom's evidence of 20th October in front of the parliamentary select committee to which they have to report, and at which they conceded that their ability to make legally binding cross-jurisdictional enforcement actions is limited when faced with the laws of another country. The wording she used is in fact very interesting: "If foreign courts decide to... try and get in our way, there will be a point at which we have to accept that we won’t be able to recover that money."
>Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
That comment, your comment, is misleading and legally selective - much like Preston Doo-dah's post.
The CLOUD Act bypasses traditional MLAT procedures, faced significant civil liberties opposition (EFF), and resolved a genuine jurisdictional dispute, not a mere drafting oversight. Claiming that data location is irrelevant ignores foreign laws and national sovereignty. Explaining why the US wants extraterritorial powers doesn't establish that it should have them.
Remember, this was in response to your listing the CLOUD Act as a US double standard.
Yes, the MLAT stuff is terrible, but it does not involve any double standard.
The non-MLAT stuff does not involve a double standard because pretty much every country has something equivalent.
The US version (and the foreign versions) are not extraterritorial because they are all compelling someone in their territory to turn over something that person controls.
If my government asks me for two files, one of which I happen to have stored on file storage service in my country, and one I've stored on a file storage service in another country, the fact that I scp from an in-country server for one an an out-of-country server for the other doesn't make it an exercise of extraterritorial power.
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here
And then you didn't. Don't throw 'obiter dicta' to the rubes and then completely fumble your distraction with the incoherent legerdemain of 'double standards.' Show some art, at least.
1. Can you point to the relevant transcript in which he does this?
2. "tended to demean the character of his political opponents" - this is the world in which we live, and quite frankly, much of it is well deserved. While he did not deserve to be assassinated, Charlie Kirk himself earned plenty of skewing. He was hardly a saint, and neither was his supporters. Also, Jimmy Kimmel Live is a freaking comedy show, not a news program or law enforcement press office. Unlike the Government, he doesn't owe his audience even the slightest semblance of impartiality.
3. Whether something is a matter of debate is often time- and circumstance-dependent. When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out. I'm not saying it's necessarily right if Kimmel (like others) came to a conclusion before the facts were settled, but it's also not unusual, and people can and should issue corrections if they are wrong.
> Can you point to the relevant transcript in which he does this?
Yes. Someone already linked it upthread.
> Unlike the Government, he doesn't owe his audience even the slightest semblance of impartiality.
He does owe them honesty.
> When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out.
It was immediately obvious that the facts did not support his narrative to anyone who was actually attempting to gather the facts. Furthermore, that narrative should have been heavily discounted a priori on the basis of Occam's razor: obviously it is far more likely that a politically controversial figure gets targeted by opponents than by people on the same side.
"We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them"
Seems pretty harmless to me. The second clause of that statement is factual; that is what they were doing. They happened to be correct in the end, but the statement itself is still truthful.
> The second clause of that statement is factual; that is what they were doing.
No; to "characterize" someone as "anything other than one of" your group requires that person to be of your group. The person in question was not of their group, and everyone reasonably should have expected it to turn out that way. The clear and obvious thrust of that quote is to falsely accuse a) the murderer of being a right-winger and b) other right-wingers of lying to cover it up. That's how English works; it's how Kimmel's sycophantic audience understood it; and it's how the justifiably offended right-wingers understood it.
> to "characterize" someone as "anything other than one of" your group requires that person to be of your group.
It does not. If I declare that "zahlman's not a family member," that's a true statement. If Alice, a third party observer of the conversation, then says, dramatically, "OMG otterley says zahlman's not a family member", that's also a true statement. There was no "requirement" that you actually be a member of my family for any of this.
What you're arguing about is not the truth or falsity of a statement, but the suggestions that emanate from it. How the audience might have interpreted it is subjective. It's not objective.
I no longer believe you are arguing in good faith. You're struggling mightily to make your argument cogent, you're getting a lot of feedback that it's nonsense, and yet you just can't seem to process that.
It's at the top of the second block quote in your source. It's extremely obvious, and frankly I'm extremely irritated that multiple people are disingenously asking me to demonstrate an extremely obvious thing based on their own citations while I get downvoted.
> KIMMEL: We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
That's not assigning blame for Kirk's murder. There is no way to interpret that as saying "Charlie Kirk's murderer was MAGA." It's saying that MAGA representatives were jumping to conclusions, prematurely focusing on blame assignment. To steel man your argument, you could say that it is saying the likelihood that the murderer was MAGA is greater than what the MAGA crowd is reporting. But since they were saying the exact opposite, that reduces to "there is a non-zero probability the murderer is MAGA" -- that's not an extreme position five days after the event.
Neither Kimmel or Kirk ever said anything that wasn't fully protected under the 1st Amendment, and anyone claiming otherwise is either ignorant of the law, a blind political partisan, or (more likely), both.
You miss the point completely. ABC is not a government agency.
You will note that at no point did absolutely anyone whatsoever propose prison time for Kimmel. Kirk, on the other hand, lost his life in an act of what the evidence strongly suggests was vigilantism.
You miss the point completely. The issue here isn't that ABC fired Kimmel because he isn't funny and his show was losing money. The issue here is that government regulators threatened and pressured ABC over Kimmel's Constitutionally protected speech.
You miss the point completely. ABC is not a government agency. You will note that at no point did absolutely anyone whatsoever propose prison time for Kimmel.
Then why do you give a shit. Anyone, government or private, can go and say they want to kill all Republicans, which Kimmel didn't say either, so I am not sure what exactly it is you are whining about. If you are so triggered about people spreading false narratives or downright fake news, you should be complaining about MAGA and Trump.
Why is it not? You still haven't explained why you are whining about innocuous statements and free speech. If you will keep whining for no clearly explainable reason, people will rightfully ask why you are whining.
I'm saying that right now, certain high-profile idiots are making it matter by definition. Once they stop using Twitter for that, then it'll stop mattering again.
They would literally announce new decisions on Twitter before anywhere else. High-impact political decisions and international decisions. You would be a fool to ignore it just because of the platform. You'd die on that hill.
> Twitter isn’t the active ingredient.
The idiots aren't an active ingredient either. Russia and Iran could have used any puppets. These ones just happen to also twitch like a frog leg.
I’ve never had a twitter account so yeah, color me dead on that hill. I’ve been getting my information several minutes behind you, but in a much more honest, reliable, useful, and complete form.
Turns out that when it comes to info quality is genuinely important, and I have no inclination to fish through raw sewage.
Oh, I never followed the live stream on Twitter either, because as you say - raw sewage. Some of it is funny (in a dark way) sometimes, but it's too much and I don't really care about much of it. So I often see secondary sources first anyway.
Before "truth social", Twitter was just often how those secondary sources would first hear of things to investigate. It's just one of the places where the shit would first come out. Hence "international politics is done via Twitter" not because it's good or proper to do so, but because that's simply what's been happening lately.
Damages awarded for libel/slander in UK courts are outsized super pay days, and many a foreign sheikh or business mogul has tried to establish that the matter under question was made known to UK citizens and therefore UK has jurisdiction, because the damages will beat anything awarded anywhere else in the World.
Weirdly, Trump has argued that this was damaging to his election chances (reminder: he won the election he's arguing about), and in a jurisdiction that the BBC can show the material wasn't available in, at least not legally and through their enablement.
As a result, even the BBC's critics in the UK (of which there are many), are seeing this as just a grifter trying to shakedown an organisation he doesn't like the reporting of, because he can't do it to a US network without getting into a first amendment quagmire.
The size of awards is just part of it. The burden of proof is just as much of an issue.
In the UK, an alleged defamatory statement is presumed false and the defendant needs to prove it is true, and that burden is unusually low compared to most other jurisdictions, and certainly much lower than in the US where the burden is on the accuser to prove the statement is false.
I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment. The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
> I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.
It is, the government can not prevent or punish people speaking on the basis that the government decides it was misleading.
A civil dispute between private parties is entirely different though. One can be found liable for misleading speech that causes damage to another party.
> The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
My point is "He's rich as fuck, and President of the United States!" doesn't mean people can do things to him. The utter foolishness of putting people in a box so you don't have to treat them like a human any more is evil no matter what label is on the box.
I'm not aware of what damages Trump alleges in the suit or if it has any merit at all. Being rich does not mean there is no damage or disqualify a person from restitution though. And holding public office or a government job doesn't disqualify a person from protecting their private interests, although I imagine it could make the case a lot more complicated.
Aside, using civil courts to attack opponents is certainly a problem, but in USA it favors the speaker a compared to a lot of other countries. In US the plaintiff has to prove the speech is false and for public figures that there was malice. Which in my opinion goes a bit too far and gives media corporations more power over politicians and other public matters. I think the public figure stipulation is reasonable and important to allow private citizens to discuss politicians and public matters so that's good, but I think there should be a counter to that which requires organizations reporting the news to have more duty to report truth and not mislead.
You're not "laying anything out", you have been wrong from start to finish about this.
1. You were wrong about the first amendment providing protection from libel / defamation action.
2. You were wrong about damage not existing or not applying because the person has a certain amount of wealth or holds public office.
3. What you have written above is regurgitating what I already explained to you in other posts. As you can see, it is I who have laid it out for you. That you couldn't bring yourself to reply to my other post that educated you is telling.
Again, if you want to make a useful point or observation about the case, the idiotic internet gotchas and stupid rhetorical questions do not do that. You really can't fathom what possible damages a person whose success relies on public perception and who spends money to improve their public image could possibly suffer by being defamed? Please.
The BBC admitted a mistake. The error was reported by an internal BBC investigation, not because Trump's team complained (it is highly unlikely they saw it originally, because it was an UK broadcast).
The BBC makes thousands of hours of video annually. You can't expect perfection, or to sue them for billions of $CURRENCY for every mistake.
The mistake in this case was to make their quite reasonable case (that Trump encouraged the violence of January 2021) very slightly more emphatically than was perhaps justified.
Trump of course showed his disapproval of the violence by pardoning all the rioters, including those convicted of injuring police with weapons.
Is it legal free speech or is it not? Who cares otherwise legally speaking. If you are so worried about defamation theres thousands of cases from maga, why aren't you fighting those?
I'm not fighting any of them. If someone has a defamation case against Fox News then I bet everyone here doesn't go and defend Fox News, because they're not principled and are just emotionally activated by Donald Trump and the BBC being involved in this one.
They are notorious for their left wing bias by right-wing commentators and for their right-wing bias by left-wing commentators. By law they are neutral.
> Their mistake was to twist Trump's speech to make it say the actual opposite of what he did say.
I don't see how you can argue that. His speech involved 70 minutes of falsely claiming that the election was stolen (how's that for twisting the truth?) and encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol. He wasn't stupid enough to explicitly call for violence, but the implication was there.
The circumstantial evidence supports this: the actual ensuing riots and violence, Trump refusing to condemn it, and then pardoning the rioters.
> Yes, there were no postal vote irregularities anywhere. Everything was 1,000% above board. Would you like buy a bridge?
There is no credible argument that the election was stolen. This has been repeatedly challenged in court, and each attempt has failed.
> Political prisoners, ushered in by the docents. I don't think putting your feet on Pelosi's desk is worth 4 years in jail.
David Dempsey attacked officers with flagpoles, crutches, pepper spray and broken furniture after standing at a gallows talking about hanging Democrats
Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly drove a stun gun into officer Michael Fanone’s neck, causing him to lose consciousness and suffer a heart attack
Patrick McCaughey crushed officer Daniel Hodges in a doorframe with a stolen riot shield for over two minutes
Julian Khater pepper sprayed Police Officer Brian Sicknick in the face, causing him to collapse, and he died the next day
Do you really want to pursue this line of argument?
The judge and jury were in the courtroom and heard the evidence. You are just repeating political talking points to take the blame off the guilty. None of which has anything to do with the lawsuit.
Yes? What kind of absurd question is this? Do you think all videos you see are legally required to be 24x7 streams? I mean its beyond absurd, I cannot even begin to think why you'd think editing videos is not speech? I seriously cannot even make up even a remotely imaginary explanation for the utterly confused state of your thinking.
1A protection is entirely irrelevant, first off because freedom of speech is not a defense against defamation of character and second because the BBC is not American.
I think you misunderstand how the law works. It doesn't matter if the BBC is American, if the lawsuit is in an American court. It's going to be run under American law.
If he sues in Britain, then it will be run under British law.
> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
Is that also the case with the common Brit or American?
That was most of the point. America and the UK have become the evil twin of Western Freedom™ and still believe they're better, or know they've fallen but can't/won't do anything.
When you see a litany of bad shit like in one of the GP comments, like book bans etc, you can't be sure if they're talking about the US or the UK, they're basically equally as shit now.
I don't want to waste my red pen marking this comment but thinking the UK is anything like the US or slightly similar in these regards is like using song lyrics as a source in your essay.
No, America is utterly different than in Russia. In America people can freely and openly criticise the government under their own name. When I talk to someone who is in Russia they're very careful to use a communications medium not tied to their identity and where what they say will expire.
Likewise the talk of book bans is just silly. What books are banned in America?
No, the UK regulator was asking a service provider owned by a Japanese guy to comply with UK laws in order to do business in the UK, and the service provider sued the regulator in a US court. 196 other service providers agreed to comply
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
While actual incitement to violence isn't protected speech, that wasn't even close to incitement to violence, which requires meeting three prongs clearly defined by SCOTUS.
I encourage you to review actual statements which SCOTUS has previously ruled are NOT incitement to violence. It's so incredibly narrow and particular, I was left wondering if anything can meet the definition. Jimmy Kimmel is so far from it your assertion is ludicrous.
True, but irrelevant given that ABC is not in any way part of government. It was justified that the general public deemed those comments unacceptable, specifically because they were an attack on the very principles that made them legally permissible; and ABC was capable of, and morally justified in, punishing them (and also legally permitted to punish them).
> It was justified that the general public deemed those comments unacceptable
Is this the same general public whose backlash over the suspension got it reversed a few days later by the network, and by Nextstar and Sinclair a few days after that?
Of course "the general public" is not a homogeneous group by definition.
Those who objected to the speech were morally in the right, because the speech clearly crossed a line. It baselessly accused others of trying to cover up a truth which would have been damaging to them, except that it turned out to be the exact falsehood that Occam's Razor would have predicted. And it did so with the force of broadcast media behind it.
The prohibition against inciting violence has nothing to do with whether or not the speaker is a government entity.
Indeed, I think you should look at the speech that SCOTUS ruled is protected in the landmark Brandenburg v Ohio[0] case to see how extremely narrow the "imminent lawless action" standard is. It's ridiculously hateful and inflammatory, and filled with several non-specific threats of violence against minority groups. This was labelled protected speech. Brandenburg was a private citizen here, and he prevailed over the state of Ohio.
You miss the point completely. 1A is irrelevant because ABC is not a government entity. In the phrase "Congress shall make no law", "Congress" is not decoration, and "law" is interpreted literally.
The statements were frankly defamatory, and only not actionable because they didn't define a clear target nor cause demonstrable "actual damages".
What statement again? Be clear, show us what you think is such an evil statement.
Why aren't you making a similar level of vitriol against the "they are eating cats and dogs" or so many other lies and nastiness maga makes?
How does it defame right wingers? You must be really insane to think Kimmel rightfully presenting the possibility the shooter could have been right winger is defamation. Is all political analysis defamation? You sound really confused. ABC's actions are quite distinct from the american governments illegal threatening of regulatory action against it, which is very much looking like a legal violation.
Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books that taught slavery was bad, revoked tenure and fired all teachers who were reported teaching that slavery was bad. The new state-approved textbooks teach that slavery taught blacks useful skills and that there was violence on both sides.
So you can't just go to a local book store and buy a copy or order it on Amazon? Oh wait you can? Crazy damn I really thought a banned book would mean I couldn't buy it at literally any book store.
> Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books
The books are not banned.
The public schools don't allow them, which is the case for many things.
Whether you agree with it or not, calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking" or "Florida banned pornography" because they're not allowed in schools.
> The books are not banned...The public schools don't allow them
What's a word that means "forbidden from being included" or "disallowed"? "Banned"! Check your local dictionary, or just type it into your favorite search box.
> Calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking"
No, it's not dumb. Children don't go to school for the purpose of getting drunk or smoking. They do go to school to learn things, including things that might be politically controversial or divisive.
You know what is dumb? Gatekeeping truthful information from being accessible to kids because the curiosity it sparks might inconvenience some people.
Praising a murderer for committing a murder is not incitement and is protected speech. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech loses protection only if it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce it. A comment on a murder after the fact can’t meet this standard unless the comment is “go do another murder right now!”
Kimmel also did not praise the murderer. He implied (incorrectly as it turns out) that the killer was right-wing.
Your misstatements of the well-known facts and law in this case cast doubt on the effort you put into researching the other issues mentioned.
He did more than imply the falsehood. He implied that people had no good reason to disbelieve the falsehood, and that the right wing was seeking to deceive on this basis for political gain. In doing so, he (perhaps inadvertently) ran cover for the ideology that was actually responsible.
Right-wingers have lost their jobs in the US many times for far less, even when their comments were on social media accounts unrelated to the job. When these responses are described as unjust or disproportionate, American left-wingers have consistently and repeatedly (across a span of many years) told me the same line about how 1A only applies to government and not corporations. Which is correct, but also entirely missing the point about bias.
They were only "an embarrassment to their company" because of the aggressive doxxing and harassing actions of people who refused to tolerate entirely reasonable statements that they happened to disagree with.
For that matter, one time someone who wasn't even noted as right wing got "cancelled" for wearing clothing with a print that some feminists found objectionable. Clothing that was gifted to him by a woman.
Opposing modern feminism is perfectly compatible with retaining the franchise. Not that that has anything to do with anything. There objectively was no remotely reasonable basis to object to the shirt.
Why do you talk about free speech in one place and whine and cry about free speech of others elsewhere? Who cares? Cancellation was an exercise of free speech.
How is right wingers losing their jobs which is a private transaction between free private entities related to a government whining and trying to misuse regulation against a company?
1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.