Internet News

A Republican congressman and ally of President Trump, Michael Rulli, has filed a bill that would prevent the British internet censor Ofcom from enforcing Orwellian online safety rules on websites based in the US. This landmark bill would also prevent US courts from recognising or enforcing foreign fines relating to online speech.

Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he and his administration have been fiercely critical of the UK Government's approach to free speech, particularly online, repeatedly citing the Online Safety Act. These concerns are also levelled at the EU for its Digital Services Act. In the eyes of the US administration, these censorious legislative regimes have infringed not only on the free speech of British and European citizens, but also on the First Amendment rights of US citizens, while unfairly targeting American businesses.

The bill introduced by Congressman Rulli is called the Granite Act (Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion).

Speaking to The Times, Rulli said: F

Foreign bureaucrats do not get to decide what Americans can say. My bill makes clear that if a foreign government tries to punish an American for speech protected by the First Amendment, that judgment is dead on arrival in our courts.

Ofcom has repeatedly gone after US websites for alleged breaches of the Online Safety Act, notably 4chan and Kiwi Farms. In March, Ofcom fined 4chan a staggering £520,000 after finding that it had failed to comply with its duties under the Act.

Both 4chan and Kiwi Farms have launched legal action in the US seeking an injunction against Ofcom. The regulator responded by asking for the case to be dismissed, arguing that, as a foreign governmental body, it was protected,claiming sovereign immunity, from being sued under US law. Rulli's bill would remove that protection.

It is not expected that this particular version of the bill will make it onto the statute book, but with support from a number of key Trump officials, the House Judiciary Committee, and the backing of both the White House and State Department, similar proposals could be taken forward.

The wording of the bill reads:

LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN CENSORSHIP JUDGMENTS.

(a) LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal or State law, a domestic court shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment, or a fine, order, or demand issued by a foreign court or a foreign state, enforcing a foreign censorship law.

(b) RIGHT OF ACTION

A United States person against whom a foreign judgment described in subsection (a) is entered, or upon whom a judgment, fine, order, or demand described in subsection (a) is served or purportedly served, may bring an action in an appropriate district court of the United States seeking declaratory relief that such judgment, fine, order, or demand is unenforceable under subsection (a)

 

Update: Another bill opposing foreign censorship from the likes of Ofcom

9th September 2026.See article from prestonbyrne.com by Preston Byrne

US Representative Warren Davidson has introduced the HOMEFRONT Act , the Halting Overseas Mandates from Extraterritorially Reaching Onto National Territory Act.

The HOMEFRONT Act is a GRANITE-style foreign censorship shield bill, the seventh such GRANITE-architecture bill or model policy to be advanced by American legislators in the last seven months, and the third such bill to be advanced in the last ten days. I anticipate there will be even more GRANITE-style bills, both state and federal, in the next several months.

In terms of where HOMEFRONT fits into the new, but rapidly-growing, ten-month-old American tradition of foreign censorship shield bills, many of Rep. Davidsons additional provisions hew closely to the original Wyoming GRANITE Act proposal introduced by Rep. Daniel Singh in that state earlier this year. There are also some novel provisions which have never been seen in the foreign censorship shield discourse before today.

Between the two bills, Rep. Davidsons bill is the more detailed and the more aggressive. Its private cause of action -- its sword -- includes damages language and would, if enacted, have greater deterrent effect than a declaration-only bill. Much of what Rullis bill implies is, in Davidsons proposal, made express.

Eeither bill is a dramatic improvement over the present state of affairs and, as a lawyer working in the area of foreign censorship defense, on the ground, either bill, if enacted, would be most useful to that work. Any legislator concerned about the fact that Americans are being threatened by foreign governments over our constitutionally protected expression could, quite safely, vote for either one.

XGroovy.com is a porn tube site that is now self blocked to UK users, but unrestricted via VPN.

Ofcom have now fined the website £730,000+ for a now ended period when the website was available without ID/age verification. Ofcom explain:

On 11th September 2025 Ofcom opened its investigation into XGroovy.com.

On 3 September 2026 we issued the provider of X groovy.com with a Confirmation Decision in relation to its failure to comply with section 12 of the Act requiring ID/age verification for pornographic sites and its failure to comply with a statutory information request. 

We are imposing a penalty on the provider of Xgroovy[dot]com of £700,000 in respect of the contravention of section 12.

Ofcom has also determined that the provider of X groovy[dot]com has failed to comply with section 102(8) of the Act by failing to respond to a statutory request for information within the specified time frame issued as part of the investigation.  We have imposed a penalty of £30,000 in respect of the breach of section 102(8)(a). Should Xgroovy continue to fail to comply with this requirement, a daily rate penalty of £200 per day will be imposed starting from 3 September 2026 until the section 102(8) duty is complied with or 3 November 2026, whichever is sooner.

In addition Ofcom have progressed censorship investigations of two companies. Both are now on notice of enforcement action.

The  Cyberitic LLC is now blocked to all UK viewers.

• www.shesfreaky.com

The  Czech company ZD Media c.r.o. has several adult sites which now require UK viewers to submit to ID/age verification:

• www.hello.porn
• www.homo.xxx
• www.max.porn
• www.ok.porn
• www.ok.xxx
• www.perfectgirls.xxx
• www.pin.porn
• www.pornhat.com
• www.pornhat.one
• www.pornstars.tube

WWE is a US wrestling organisation that is known for outrageous but entertaining hype. In addition to the wrestling it shows feature theatrical beatings and the like that are not shy of showing a little blood.

Netflix recently took to screening WWE programming and agreed censorship rules with WWE to censor (or no doubt to get some ideas not to get written into the script in the first place).

Nethertheless the censorship rules are being noticed by wrestling fans seeing some diminished fun in the proceedings. An example is Netflix's recent censorship of Monday Night Raw .

WWE made the decision to tape this week's Monday Night Raw which opened with angle of hype that saw Royce Keys and OTM attack The Usos in the parking lot, leaving them a bloody mess.

Unfortunately for the angle, and WWE for that matter, Netflix made the call to censor the segment heavily. Not only did it negate the angle's impact, but it also drew heavy criticism from the WWE Universe online. Shortly after Raw went off the air on Monday, Triple H took to social media to post the segment in its entirety, uncensored.

See a video of that uncensored segment in an article from si.com

UK internet censor Ofcom has provided a statement outlining progress in blocking 14 unnamed websites that it classes as 'small but risky' services. 7 have self blocked all UK users, 2 have introduced ID/age verification, 3 have refused to communicate. Ofcom writes:

Ofcom's Small but Risky Services Compliance Taskforce is a dedicated team focused on identifying and driving compliance from regulated services with small userbases that pose a disproportionate risk of serious harm to UK users.

On 24 July 2025, Ofcom launched an enforcement programme focussing on services whose principal purpose is the hosting or dissemination of Primary Priority Content or Priority Content, to ensure such services used highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing the service. Since then, the Compliance Taskforce has monitored and carried out active engagement with providers of 14 services that represent a significant risk of harm to children from the harmful content they host or disseminate. Today we are providing an update on progress.

Geo-blocks implemented:

Following proactive engagement by the Compliance Taskforce, seven of the identified services, each of which were dedicated to hosting particularly harmful types of content - including suicide and self-harm content, violent and graphic content, and eating disorder content - have geo-blocked the UK and are no longer accessible to UK users (including children) as at the date of this update. This includes five services dedicated to hosting graphic violence and serious injury content, and two dedicated to hosting suicide content.

Warning letters:

Providers of three identified services who failed to engage have been sent warning letters from Ofcoms Enforcement team. These notify them of their requirements under Section 12 of the Act to prevent and protect children from encountering content which is harmful to them on their service, including through the use of highly effective age assurance. We continue to assess whether additional action is required and will take into account their response in considering our options.

Highly effective age assurance implemented:

Two high profile services identified by the Compliance Taskforce, dedicated to hosting graphic violence and serious injury content, have implemented highly effective age assurance to prevent access by UK children following engagement.

Next steps:

The work under this enforcement programme has been coordinated across Ofcoms Supervision and Enforcement teams. It has so far demonstrated that seeking voluntary engagement from services is often the most rapid way to protect users. Particularly in cases involving smaller services that may not have a wide reach but that represent a significant risk of harm by hosting or promoting content that is particularly harmful to children.

We have made good progress with the majority of services we have engaged with so far. Going forward, we will continue to prioritise active engagement with services that pose the highest risk of harm to children.

Where service providers do not engage or fail to comply with their duties under the Act, including those in Section 12, we will not hesitate to move to formal enforcement action.

We will provide further updates on the work of the Compliance Taskforce in due course.

A Republican congressman and ally of President Trump, Michael Rulli, has filed a bill that would prevent the British internet censor Ofcom from enforcing Orwellian online safety rules on websites based in the US. This landmark bill would also prevent US courts from recognising or enforcing foreign fines relating to online speech.

Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he and his administration have been fiercely critical of the UK Government's approach to free speech, particularly online, repeatedly citing the Online Safety Act. These concerns are also levelled at the EU for its Digital Services Act. In the eyes of the US administration, these censorious legislative regimes have infringed not only on the free speech of British and European citizens, but also on the First Amendment rights of US citizens, while unfairly targeting American businesses.

The bill introduced by Congressman Rulli is called the Granite Act (Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion).

Speaking to The Times, Rulli said: F

Foreign bureaucrats do not get to decide what Americans can say. My bill makes clear that if a foreign government tries to punish an American for speech protected by the First Amendment, that judgment is dead on arrival in our courts.

Ofcom has repeatedly gone after US websites for alleged breaches of the Online Safety Act, notably 4chan and Kiwi Farms. In March, Ofcom fined 4chan a staggering £520,000 after finding that it had failed to comply with its duties under the Act.

Both 4chan and Kiwi Farms have launched legal action in the US seeking an injunction against Ofcom. The regulator responded by asking for the case to be dismissed, arguing that, as a foreign governmental body, it was protected,claiming sovereign immunity, from being sued under US law. Rulli's bill would remove that protection.

It is not expected that this particular version of the bill will make it onto the statute book, but with support from a number of key Trump officials, the House Judiciary Committee, and the backing of both the White House and State Department, similar proposals could be taken forward.

The wording of the bill reads:

LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN CENSORSHIP JUDGMENTS.

(a) LIMITATION ON ENFORCEMENT

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal or State law, a domestic court shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment, or a fine, order, or demand issued by a foreign court or a foreign state, enforcing a foreign censorship law.

(b) RIGHT OF ACTION

A United States person against whom a foreign judgment described in subsection (a) is entered, or upon whom a judgment, fine, order, or demand described in subsection (a) is served or purportedly served, may bring an action in an appropriate district court of the United States seeking declaratory relief that such judgment, fine, order, or demand is unenforceable under subsection (a)

 

US Chief District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a New Mexico abatement fund. He refused to overtly order age verification across Facebook and Instagram. But then he ordered a narrower version of it, aimed at the accounts Meta's own systems predict belong to children under 13, which would ultimately lead to age verification anyway.

New Mexico Attorney General Raoul Torrez sued Meta and Mark Zuckerberg in 2023, alleging that the company failed to protect children from abuse, online solicitation and human trafficking. This legal action was addressed in two trials:

A Santa Fe jury in March found 75,000 violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act and imposed $375 million in civil penalties , the maximum state law allows. The jury determined that the company knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Now a second, bench asked whether the platforms are a public nuisance, and Biedscheid concluded that they are a significant contributing cause of the teen mental health crisis in New Mexico.

Torrez had asked the court to require Meta to apply various age-verification tools on its platforms , accurate to 99%, enough to keep under-13s off the apps entirely.

Because of the COPPA Rule, it is the Court's conclusion that it cannot order Meta to request children to submit personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age-verification purposes, Biedscheid wrote. But how would Meta know that an account belongs to someone under 13 without at the very least passively tracking them, what they write, say, and do?

What Biedscheid did order on age came from Meta. He adopted the company's own proposed relief, calling it far from ideal or sufficient and, all the same, most appropriate. Meta must keep improving its age assurance models in New Mexico using AI tools, and must attempt within two years to build a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model. Where it cannot estimate a precise age, it must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until they verify. And verify here likely means adults have to show ID to speak online, even though Judge Biedscheid said he wasn't mandating that.

Meta must also delete the personal information it has already collected on under-13s, and build a portal with schools or a child safety organization for flagging suspected underage accounts.

The money will be paid over five years, with $420 million of it going to treatment and the rest to awareness, prevention, screening, referral and evaluation. It comes on top of the March penalties.

 

Comment: The Meta Settlement: What It Means for Your Speech and Privacy

Under the teen safety provisions is a court-supervised identity system for every Facebook and Instagram user.

See article from reclaimthenet.org

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has once again spoken out against what he sees as France's unjust and politically motivated prosecution of him and his company. He said in a statement:

Two years ago, I was detained in Paris by police for 3 days -- the longest they can hold someone before charging them.

In an unprecedented move, French authorities accused the head of a major platform of crimes committed by its users.

That investigation is still ongoing, although it makes less sense with each passing year.

Why?

Because we now have extensive evidence that Telegram was neither worse than other popular platforms at moderation, nor the worst at cooperating with authorities.

So why was Telegram singled out?

Over the last two years, we have seen a pattern emerge in multiple countries: Telegram is quietly asked to grant political favors -- such as illegal censorship or surveillance. When we refuse, local media and non-governmental organizations launch orchestrated campaigns portraying Telegram as a cesspool of crime, from child pornography to terrorism.

Our moderation is no worse than that of other major platforms. Yet these campaigns instill the idea that Telegram should be persecuted or restricted.

Suddenly, officials start caring about crime and protecting children -- but only on platforms that reject their secret political demands. Platforms that accept such deals get away with almost anything -- including literally selling ads promoting child pornography.

Is the French investigation against me political? It certainly fits the pattern we see elsewhere, mostly in authoritarian countries. And it definitely raises questions.

In time, this investigation may itself be investigated -- especially now that Macron's war against free speech is facing pushback. This month, France's Constitutional Council struck down his social media ban for children under 15 on freedom-of-expression grounds.

In the end, freedom and truth will prevail